edwebb's posterous

Nil desperandum

via content.usatoday.com

There are so many reasons to be gloomy about the future of the planet and our species, and of the US (where I currently live) in particular. But every so often something comes along to put a big grin on my face and remind me not to give up hope.

"The USS Oak Hill returned to the naval base at Virginia Beach, Va., after almost three months at sea training in Central America. As homecoming approached, the crew and the ship's family readiness group sold $1 raffle tickets to pick the sailor to be first off the ship to deliver the coveted first kiss on the dock. Petty Officer 2nd Class Marissa Gaeta bought 50 tickets and won, the newspaper reports. Navy officials said it was the first time on record that a same-sex couple was chosen to kiss first upon a ship's return, the Associated Press reports.

Here's how The Virginian-Pilot reported the precedent-shattering event of the post "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" era:

Her girlfriend of two years, Petty Officer 3rd Class Citlalic Snell, was waiting when she crossed the brow. They kissed. The crowd cheered. And with that, another vestige of the policy that forced gays to serve in secrecy vanished."

My main hope lies in our ability to learn. We can get better.

Bruce Sterling finds a niche in Genoa

via flickr.com

Photo courtesy of @bruces flickr stream

On the riots

I posted the following comment in response to Sarah Carr's excellent and touching blog post about the London Riots. It turned out to be more or less the blogpost I've been incubating for the past 24 hours, so I reproduce it here.

In error

If one's DJ moniker is Dr Funk, one might reasonably consider oneself immune to requests for Rod Stewart, no?

What to call the mediations of this event? #media260

DS106TV infinite recursion

Down the rabbit hole

Magnolia Tree

The tree next to our house - I hesitate to call it 'our' tree since
it's been there for decades, seeing many families come and go - the
tree we live next to has exploded into spring fireworks over the past
few days. Amazing.

Iraq: storytelling with links #media260 #ds106

An Iraqi friend sent me the following. It is very economical. The links tell the story, the quotation provides the commentary/punchline.

#Egypt referendum - running the numbers

Egyptian-based Italian economist analyses the result's of Egypt's referendum on constitutional amendments. Good material for thinking both about Egypt's particular political process at the moment and also direct democracy more generally.

Amplify’d from economicrevolution.wordpress.com

While theoretically direct democracy (of which referenda are the best example) is the ultimate realization of political participation, in reality there are a lot of things that can go wrong. For one, you have black and white decisions to be made (yes or no – ya3ani is not an option).  Referendum questions can be (and usually are) complicated. In a country where most people hardly ever set foot in a polling station of their own volition, it is safe to assume that the average voter is not well-versed in Egyptian Constitutional Law. Finally, politicians and media play a huge role in how public perception is shaped around the issues, up to the point that the actual crux of the referendum gets lost in political warfare.

Despite the merit of the vote which I am in no place to comment on, there are two things that stands out: a 41% turnout and a 77% of people voting for yes.

The low turnout means that the majority is silent. More like, deaf and mute.

On the 77%, if any of you ever had the pleasure of taking a political economy class (sarcasm is my second language, did I mention that?) your lecturer would have bombarded with the notion of the median voter’s theorem. I will spare the long boring talk but basically it is a bit of an anomaly how skewed the results of this vote were in favour of ‘yes’. In Italian, we call elections with over 65 % of votes going in one direction as ‘Bulgarian Consensus’. Something just wasn’t free and fair. Not just the procedural aspects, but also how the referendum was communicated to voters. In most referenda I have voted for (and god, don’t we love wasting our tax money on direct democracy in Italy), the split is usually 50-50 or at best 40-60. So this is my shopping list of why I think the vote was so abnormal in its 77-percentedness:

The topic was very complex (constitutional amendments, last time I checked it was not bawab’s forte)

All the questions were lumped together so it was a packaged deal, take it or leave it. One might argue that constitutional reform ought to be a tad bit more nuanced. The fact that 77% of people agreed on all of those issues is a bit bizarre.

Article 2 on the religion and other attributes of the president (hardly Egypt’s most pressing priority at this stage, methinks) was thrown into the lot just for kicks or, if you are a cynical bastard like myself, to play off the secular vs the religious, the christians vs the muslims, the brazar muslimhood vs the salafi, my landlady vs. my bawab etc…

And finally, the referendum was organized in 3 weeks, against the backdrop of tanks in the street and media trying to cope with regional politics slowly imploding and various other  shenanigans such as torture of civilians. Read more at economicrevolution.wordpress.com

On getting to the point: the storytelling genius of Steely Dan #ds106 #media260

One doesn't have to subscribe to alarming (and probably alarmist) tales of diminishing attention spans to recognize that this sentence, given the medium in which it appears, runs the risk of being just too damn long.  In blogging, brevity is usually desirable. It pays to get to the point.

This does not mean that blogs should be dry, inexpressive, unembellished. Twitter and haiku have both shown that brevity can be a spur to creativity, a productive constraint. It is possible to express a great deal in few words.

Songwriting, too, imposes limits. Lyrics in most popular genres are comparable in length to short poems rather than short stories. And too often those lyrics say very little. The banal recycled phrases littering the radio dial (an old media metaphor that's just about hanging in there) tell us nothing much.

But some songwriters tell us stories worth hearing. Two of the best are Walter Becker and Donald Fagen, particularly when working together as Steely Dan. You don't have to enjoy the music to appreciate the economy with which they can draw you into a world, a situation, an emotional drama in the space of the first line or two. They draw on science fiction, Hollywood (in particular film noir), and a sleazy sensibility. Their characters are seedy, their narrative style terse and ironic.

Here are a few song openings that illustrate this skill in getting right into the middle of the action and create a need to know what happens next.  Many are from Katy Lied (1975),  The Royal Scam (1976) and Gaucho (1980): almost any song from those albums would fit here - great collections of stories.

Read and enjoy. If you have particular favorite examples of the great storytelling opening, by great songwriters in any genre, I would welcome examples in the comments. 

Agents of the law
Luckless pedestrian
I know you're out there
With rage in your eyes and your megaphones
(Don't Take Me Alive - probably my favorite example of the economic scene-setting opening)

When Black Friday comes
I'll stand down by the door
And catch the grey men when they
Dive from the fourteenth floor
(Black Friday - striking imagery, immediately evocative of stock market crashes and financial meltdown but using concrete acts to reflect those abstractions)

Rose darling come to me
Snake Mary's gone to bed
(Rose Darling - so simple, but in 10 words we have: three characters - one with a fascinating name; the implication of illicit sex - made explicit in the next two lines; and an invitation to one of the characters that draws in the listener as well - "come to me")

Katy tried
I was halfway crucified
I was on the other side
Of no tomorrow
You walked in
And my life began again
Just when I'd spent the last piaster
I could borrow
(Dr Wu - again, three characters: here Katy, the person the song is addressed to, and the narrator; note how 'piaster' economically places us in exotic territory for a western audience: the whole song is a kind of bitter-sweet orientalist fantasy)

I remember the thirty-five sweet goodbyes
When you put me on the Wolverine
Up to Annandale
(My Old School - this could end well, this could end badly - this being Becker & Fagen, the latter is a safe bet)

Charlie Freak had but one thing to call his own
Three weight ounce pure golden ring no precious stone
(Charlie Freak - you know this will end badly for poor Charlie)

Babs and Clean Willie were in love they said
So in love the preacher's face turned red
Soon everybody knew the thing was dead
He shouts, she bites, they wrangle through the night
(Haitian Divorce - summary of a hot-burning, fast-burning-out romance in three lines; the fourth line puts us into the interminable present of a failed marriage)

Where did the bastard run
Is he still around?
Now you gotta tell me everything you did baby
(Everything You Did - real menace here: will the narrator take revenge?)

We're gonna break out the hats and hooters
When Josie comes home
We're gonna rev up the motor scooters
When Josie comes home to stay
We're gonna park in the street
(Josie - wow, who is this girl? What else are they going to do? Bet it will be fun)

Way back when
In Sixty-seven
I was the dandy
Of Gamma Chi
Sweet things from Boston
So young and willing
Moved down to Scarsdale
Where the hell am I?
(Hey Nineteen - one of many great later Dan songs about aging gracelessly; nostalgia established from the first three words)

6:05
Outside the stadium
Special delivery
For Hoops McCann
(Glamor Profession - drug dealing in Hollywood; straight into the action)

The wind was driving in my face
The smell of prickly pear
[My rival - show me my rival]
The milk truck eased into my space
Somebody screamed somewhere
(My Rival - pure film noir)

Johnny's playroom
Is a bunker filled with sand
(Third World Man - what's Johnny playing at?)

Bad news breaking in 18A
Missy's kitty turn inside out she say
(Two Against Nature - now that's just not right)

It must have been my lucky Thursday
Your dad went on that spree
Before the crew could put out the fires
You hopped a bus for NYC
(Janie Runaway - watch out, Janie! Here's a whole news report about a drunken rampage, a fire, a runaway teenager plus the perspective of the narrator/predator introduced in four lines.)