But I have to do it.

(Prompted by Craig Newmark, who should be held blameless.)

In "Mr. Monk Goes To The Asylum," Kevin Nealon plays a psychiatric patient who over-empathizes.

The line is, "Thanks. Thanks a lot."

(Episode synopsis, including spoilers, here, but you can enjoy the line without knowing the story.)

That's the subject line of an email I just sent economist Greg Mankiw, with the following text:

Prof. Mankiw,

Possibly you'd like to know why one rightist untrained in economics expects never to join the Pigou Club, despite the many good arguments you make for it and the many wise observers who've joined (wittingly or no). My reason is this: it seems to me that whenever government obtains a source of revenue, it uses that revenue for purposes unrelated to its original justification, distributes that revenue irresponsibly, and demands more and more revenue from that source. TARP is the latest example.

Recommendations as to cutting tax rates, removing certain taxes entirely, and shrinking or eliminating government programs, however, will continue to find in me a receptive audience.

Sincerely,
Michael Greenspan
Bronx, NY

(Power Line link via Instapundit. And here's "The Pigou Club Manifesto.")

Nathaniel Kunkel has another column (his earlier piece is here) on Auto-Tune and Melodyne, which can adjust the pitch of a singer's performance:

While many artists can make a record without using Auto-Tune, almost every new release currently on popular radio is tuned, even if only a little bit. (Sometimes more than you could ever imagine.) One observation I have made is that some singers have been getting tuned for so long that they actually think they sound that way. I have worked with singers who issue a “Never tune me” order and then reject every comp until they are tuned and phrased clandestinely. The denial is spectacular. . . .

We have all become so accustomed to hearing perfect music that it’s hard to listen to old stuff sometimes. Don’t get me wrong: I love to listen to old records. But now when I turn on an old record after listening to new stuff for a while, it can sound so out of tune. After three or four listens, I am back in the zone where I can listen without being drawn to the tuning issue anymore, but that first playback can really make me aware of how “perfect” music has become.

I was just talking with a friend of mine who is a working engineer, and his experiences were so interesting and revealing that I just had to quote him:

“I think artists like the sound of being tuned. They try to sing the way a tuned vocal sounds. It’s not possible, as we all know. One band I recently worked with didn’t want to hear their vocals until after they were tuned. Before I would play it back, the singer asked if I did ‘it’ yet. After I played the song, he would say, ‘I love the way I sound Melodyned!’[”]

Even before Auto-Tune and Melodyne, vocals and recorded music in general were extensively manipulated. The big change came with digital technology, which allowed a producer to fashion an ideal track out of dozens or even hundreds of takes, and to do so inexpensively and with remarkable ease. And it's not just pop. A classical-music producer told me in 1983, early in the digital era, that an orchestral recording he'd just overseen included dozens of edits.

Still, for whatever reason, I find digital retuning (unless the singer's trying to sound robotic) dishonest in a way that editing isn't. On this little ditty, for instance, I didn't consider "fixing" my lead vocals. It would've felt like lying, even though I fashioned the finished vocals from several takes, and so wasn't presenting a genuine performance. I can't objectively justify the line I draw between editing and retuning. Maybe I should've studied harder in philosophy class. But I won't use retuning, ever (with the robotic-vocal exception), no matter how much it might benefit the track to most people's ears. Yet I can't fault people who do. They probably have the same goal I have: to make the recording as close to perfect as possible. We just differ on the tools we're comfortable applying, and what we feel we owe listeners.

(I feel I have to mention this: Kunkel writes midway through the column, "If our last election showed us anything, it’s that we as a society are trying to face the truth." I admire and envy Kunkel's skill in the studio, but that's the most fatuous one-sentence summary of Obama's victory I've seen.)

Kunkel notes that an article by Sasha Frere-Jones in The New Yorker started "[t]his public airing of the music business’s dirty little secret." You can also hear an mp3 of Frere-Jones being Auto-Tuned. It's a remarkably effective piece of software.

(Note: I've edited this post for clarity several times since it first appeared.)

This one likes boxes.

This one gets too close.

(Both links via BuzzFeed.)

We are not going to measure the strength of great countries only by their material resources. We think that the supremacy and the predominance of our country depends upon the maintenance of the vigour and health of its population, just as its true glory will always be found in the happiness of its cottage homes.

(p. 82)

John Derbyshire:

The besetting sin of intellectuals is their assumption that everyone else is intellectual, or wishes to be. This is not the case.

(I'd add to the end of the first sentence: "or should wish to be.")

The Hunt For Gollum:

The script is adapted from elements of the appendices of The Lord of the Rings. The story follows the Heir of Isildur; the "greatest huntsman and traveller in Middle Earth" as he sets out to find the creature Gollum. The creature must be found to discover the truth about the Ring, and to protect the future Ringbearer.

Disclaimer
The Hunt For Gollum is an unofficial non-profit film being made for private use, and is not intended for sales of any sort. No money is being made from this film, and no one was paid to make it. It is in no way sponsored or approved by Tolkien Enterprises, the Tolkien Estate, Peter Jackson, New Line Cinema or any affiliates. . . . This work is produced solely for the personal, uncompensated enjoyment of ourselves and other Tolkien fans. No money is being made and no copyright or trademark infringement is intended.

Watch the trailers. In an era of snark, I find this sort of devoted tribute stirring.

(Via MetaFilter, many of whose commenters indulge in the kind of sniping that this film defies.)

Thomas Sowell, as he often does, makes a distinction that never occurred to me and that seems both obvious and crucial now that I see it:

Those who think in terms of talking points, instead of trying to understand realities, make much of the fact that some countries with government-controlled medical care have longer life expectancies than that in the United States.

That is where the difference between health care and medical care comes in. Medical care is what doctors can do for you. Health care includes what you do for yourself — such as diet, exercise, and lifestyle. . . .

Americans tend to be more obese, consume more drugs, and have more homicides. None of that is going to change with “universal health care” because it isn’t health care. It is medical care.

When it comes to things where medical care itself makes the biggest difference — cancer survival rates, for example — Americans do much better than people in most other countries.

No one who compares medical care in this country with medical care in other countries is likely to want to switch. But those who cannot be bothered with the facts may help destroy the best medical care in the world by falling for political rhetoric.

John Podhoretz, following on a post by David Frum:

A few years ago, when Scooter Libby was indicted . . . it occurred to [me] that a Rubicon really had been crossed. To wit: You should have your head examined if you go work in a senior job in the executive branch of the United States government.

Since the Reagan years, every administration has had senior officials hauled before special prosecutors, prosecutors, and Congressional committees. It would appear, based on these records, that there is a measurable risk that if you take a job, you will at the very least be pursued by someone who wishes to charge you with a crime or get you to nail someone else who they think has committed a crime. That risk is somewhere between 10 and 20 percent, and rises the closer you get to the president.

Now, think of what this means. Forget being indicted or convicted — obviously, those are horrifying possibilities. Just think about getting called before a Senate investigating committee. Or a grand jury. Every time a question is asked, a lawyer needs to be engaged. Every time a lawyer is involved, a bill is generated. Maggie Williams, who was Hillary Clinton’s chief of staff when Mrs. Clinton was First Lady, found herself saddled with hundreds of thousands of dollars in legal fees owing to investigations of Whitewater. She is not a wealthy woman. She went to work as a public servant at a very respectable but hardly rich-person’s salary, and found herself poverty-stricken by a political investigation of which she was not even the focus. . . .

If this [prosecuting Bush officials] goes forward, and I mean this seriously, anyone reading this blog post who is a friend of or a relative of someone working in high precincts in the Obama administration had better strongly advise their loved one to quit and get the hell out of Washington. Because it won’t end here. Because it is all political, in the end. Because one day, they will be caught in the vise just as surely.

Abe Greenwald:

[T]he effectiveness of interrogations has now itself become a negative, according to anti-Bush cultists. This is from an Andrew Sullivan reader whom Andrew saw fit to publish in rebuttal to my defense of CIA interrogations:

What bothers me about this viewpoint is that if these techniques are so harmless, then how do they even work?

If a face slap is not big deal, then how does it result in information? If putting an insect in a cage with a prisoner is something to laugh about, why are they insisting that it works? Do they really imagine that enemy prisoners with incredible, ticking time-bomb information fold so easily?

So, you see, anything that works is now torture. That is, of course, where all the unserious criticism was always leading.

This is good too, from Greenwald: "Anything to which Christopher Hitchens is willing to submit himself in pursuit of a Vanity Fair article is not torture."

Michael Scherer at Swampland, a Time.com blog:

President Obama has an ability to issue coherent, Op-Ed-length answers during press conferences that is currently unmatched on the American political stage. Today, at a press conference in Trinidad, NBC's Chuck Todd asked Obama to describe the "Obama doctrine" for foreign policy. At first Obama joked that it would be up to the press to write the "definitive statement on Obamism." But then he said the following, which reads to me as just about the clearest, most succinct statement yet of Obama's diplomatic approach (with a little editing).

Obama's answer is well-constructed, grammatically solid and nicely varied as to language. It's also close to pure blather. At Contentions, Peter Wehner gives a far more accurate (if entirely impolitic) definition:

The Obama Doctrine means criticizing past presidents, Democratic and Republican; apologizing for past American sins, real and imagined, to both allies and enemies of the United States, on domestic and, preferably, foreign soil — in the hope that doing so allows Obama to speak with greater moral force and clarity. The overriding goal of the Obama Doctrine is to make the person it is named after look good, rather than, and if necessary at the expense of, the nation he was elected to represent.

Jennifer Rubin:

Really, at this point any CEO who agrees to do business with the government should be fired.

Intellectual corruption personified. With apologies to Mark Hemingway, I think Begala knows exactly what he's talking about. No one should ever again take him seriously.

Later: Begala responds, and Hemingway responds in turn, again convincingly (while acknowledging errors in his earlier post). I remain sure that Begala is lying rather than mistaken.

The fake synth sounds are great. Actually, it's all great.

(Via BuzzFeed.)

Astounding to me, anyway.

(Via BuzzFeed.)

From Debra Craine's review of the new Star Trek movie, in the Times of London:

Gone is the gloom of the last Star Trek film, Nemesis (2002), which seemed cast in the depressing shadow of George Bush’s post-9/11 America.

And it's far from pretty.

How much weight will Democrats give military experience as a qualification for the presidency in 2012? Let's look for guidance at some recent elections:

There's a pattern here, but I can't quite discern it.

I just sent this to Jonah Goldberg, in reference to a post on torture:

Mr. Goldberg,

Sorry to quibble, but what a few of our troops did at Abu Ghraib wasn't an "atrocity." A disgrace, a fiasco, a public-relations disaster, yes to all those, but not an atrocity. Abu Ghraib under Saddam — that was an atrocity.

Best,

Michael Greenspan

Later: Goldberg responded, "Fair point. I was using atrocity in a more colloquial sense."

One reason I continue, regretfully, to oppose it. Mark Steyn:

Five years ago, proponents of same-sex marriage went into full you-cannot-be-serious eye-rolling mode when naysayers warned that polygamy would be next. As I wrote [then]:

“Gay marriage, they assure us, is the merest amendment to traditional marriage, and once we’ve done that we’ll pull up the drawbridge.”

Claire L’Heureux-Dubé, the former Supreme Court justice, remains confident the drawbridge is firmly up. “Marriage is a union of two people, period,” she said in Quebec the other day. But it used to be a union of one man and one woman, period. And, if that period got kicked down the page to accommodate a comma and a subordinate clause, why shouldn’t it get kicked again? If the sex of the participants is no longer relevant, why should the number be? . . .

If you check in with, ahem, certain cultural communities in Canada, you will find polygamy not just “accepted” but government funded. It was confirmed last year that in the province of Ontario thousands of polygamous men receive welfare payments for each of their wives. There are many more takers for polygamy than there ever will be for gay marriage. . . .

A couple of years back, the Toronto Star quoted Martha Bailey advocating polygamy on economic grounds: “Stressing ‘the multicultural nature of Canadian society,’ Bailey claims that Canada has an urgent practical need for more Muslim immigrants. If Canada can just ‘expand the pool of applicants,’ says Bailey, it just may win ‘the global competition for highly skilled immigrants.’ ”

. . . Madame L’Heureux-Dubé and her fellow progressives think that women’s rights and gay rights are like the internal combustion engine or the jet plane—that once you’ve invented them they can’t be un-invented. Yet tides rise, and then ebb. Forty years ago Nigeria lived under English common law. Now half of it lives under sharia, and the other half’s feeling the heat. Go back to Martha Bailey’s pitch for immigrants: how many highly skilled polygamists and their legions of wives have to emigrate to Canada before “the rising tide of cultural acceptance for gays” begins to ebb?

Thomas Sowell:

When you call something a “stimulus” package, that does not mean that it actually stimulates. The way individuals, banks, and businesses in general are hanging onto their money suggests that “sedative” package might be more accurate.

This is not a new phenomenon, peculiar to this administration. President Bush’s “stimulus”[ ]package did not stimulate either. The same was true back in the days of Franklin D. Roosevelt’s “pump-priming” by spending government money to get private money flowing. . . .

Some of our biggest political fallacies come from accepting words as evidence of realities. “Rent control” laws do not control rent and “gun control” laws do not control guns.

From 2007, a very funny Onion sketch on celebrity posturing about Darfur.

ScienceDaily:

For the first time, scientists have isolated the parasite Nosema ceranae (Microsporidia) from professional apiaries suffering from honey bee colony depopulation syndrome. They then went on to treat the infection with complete success.

(Via MetaFilter.)

Theodore Dalrymple, prompted by an article about the younger son of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg:

Whether standing firm for one’s convictions is a good or bad thing depends on what those convictions are. A monstrous cause is not any the less monstrous because people are ready to die for it; if the history of the twentieth century should have taught us anything, it’s that.

Walter Williams looks at their "abhorrence for democracy and majority rule," their conviction that "government posed the gravest threat to liberty," and their "deep distrust and suspicion of Congress."

William Tucker explains why the decision against placing spent fuel rods at Yucca Mountain is good for the nuclear-power industry. Much interesting information, including this detail:

France, which completely reprocesses its recyclable material, stores all the unused remains -- from 30 years of generating 75% of its electricity from nuclear energy -- beneath the floor of a single room at La Hague.

Mark Steyn on the danger of unelected bureaucracies.

From his show on XM Satellite Radio, Bob Dylan pokes affectionate fun at Clarence Clemons of The E Street Band, and perhaps just a bit at The Boss himself.

(Clip hosted by Posterous, about which see the preceding.)

Posterous. Be sure to read the FAQs, which give examples of the site's user-friendliness.

(Via the free TechBite newsletter.)

That's the subject line of the following, which I just emailed to Rich Lowry, editor of National Review:

Mr. Lowry,

 

By appearing on Stephen Colbert's show you've disserved yourself, conservatism, and all of us who adhere to conservative principles. What were you trying to accomplish? To sell more books? Put aside the venality of that motive: I'd be surprised if you moved an extra ten copies. To do battle with the loathsome Colbert? Pointless, as you should well know -- it's his studio, his audience, his production team. To show his viewers the true face of conservatism rather than the leftist caricature they're used to (and that they love)? I'll type here the same thing I wrote David Frum and Jonah Goldberg after their respective appearances, and probably to as little effect: I can name no Daily Show or Colbert Report viewer who's been prompted to move the least bit rightward by a conservative who appeared there.

 

Jay Nordlinger describes Jon Stewart as "toxic." The word applies to Colbert as well. By acting as his guest you've given your sanction, and by extension that of NR/NRO, to one of the most corrosive leftists in the country. Nice work.

 

I'm not calling for a conservative boycott of the two shows and their kin (e.g. SNL). No boycott should be necessary. Any honorable conservative should eschew such shows as simply and instinctively as he'd avoid crawling headfirst into a mound of pig dirt.

 

The shameful acts I've committed populate a long and ever-growing list. I'm sure that you, as a thoughtful man, could compile a similar (albeit shorter) list of your own disgraces. Add your appearance on Colbert's show to it, at or near the top.

 

Sincerely and with respect, though somewhat less respect than I felt a couple of weeks ago,
Michael Greenspan

NR subscriber and (meager) donor
Bronx, NY

Jonah Goldberg:

There’s a fresh effort under way, particularly from the left wing of the Democratic party, to lift the U.S. embargo against Cuba. . . . The funny thing is, if you made the exact same arguments about South Africa in the 1980s, many of the same people would call you not merely an ideologue but a racist for not supporting sanctions. Indeed, today the anti-Israeli sanctions movement is infested with people who claim we must lift the embargo on Cuba.

I like "infested."

I'm unequipped to judge their validity, but they make sense to me:
 
What caused the recession? High oil prices.
 
How to reduce the number of uninsured? 1) In place of the tax break for employer-provided health insurance, establish a tax credit for health insurance wherever purchased; 2) end state insurance mandates.

There must be a better way.

Of all economic systems, the free market has been by far the most successful in improving man's quality of life. But even in the freest-market society, some are poor, so . . . there must be a better way.

Negotiation and diplomacy didn't stop Hitler, or Hussein, or al-Qaeda. Only all-out war did. But many died, and the fighting was hugely destructive and expensive, so . . . there must be a better way.

Etc.

According to Christopher Badeaux of The New Ledger, it's this:

Great powers cannot be neutral arbiters between India and Pakistan.

On his NYTimes.com blog Talk Show, Dick Cavett recollects the master known as Slydini. Part one (containing—prepare to be shocked—a wholly gratuitous dig at the Bush administration), part two. The first post includes amazing video of Slydini in action. Cavett's awe at the performer and affection for the man are plain, and winning.

Those academics sure love themselves, even more than they despise the military.

Later: Penn State has removed the video and apologized for posting it.

A four-year-old drummer. Later: This is great too, though too long (not the kid's fault—it's a long song). At four I'd have wanted to be Keith Moon rather than Stewart Copeland. Best moments: first minute-and-a-quarter, anticipation and re-entry starting at about 7:00, and the end.
 
A talkative cat. The video's title describes him as "senile," but I think he simply has a lot to say and feels strongly about it.
 
Like Heroes but more believable (sort of), and sweeter.
 
Craig Ferguson on Sean Connery (free mp3, some profanity).
 
(First three links via BuzzFeed.)

Piano Lessons

Billy Collins, The Art Of Drowning (1995)

1

My teacher lies on the floor with a bad back
off to the side of the piano.
I sit up straight on the stool.
He begins by telling me that every key
is like a different room
and I am a blind man who must learn
to walk through all twelve of them
without hitting the furniture.
I feel myself reach for the first doorknob.

2

He tells me that every scale has a shape
and I have to learn how to hold
each one in my hands.
At home I practice with my eyes closed.
C is an open book.
D is a vase with two handles.
G flat is a black boot.
E has the legs of a bird.

3

He says the scale is the mother of the chords.
I can see her pacing the bedroom floor
waiting for her children to come home.
They are out at nightclubs shading and lighting
all the songs while couples dance slowly
or stare at one another across tables.
This is the way it must be. After all,
just the right chord can bring you to tears
but no one listens to the scales,
no one listens to their mother.

4

I am doing my scales,
the familiar anthems of childhood.
My fingers climb the ladder of notes
and come back down without turning around.
Anyone walking under this open window
would picture a girl of about ten
sitting at the keyboard with perfect posture,
not me slumped over in my bathrobe, disheveled,
like a white Horace Silver.

5

I am learning to play
"It Might As Well Be Spring"
but my left hand would rather be jingling
the change in the darkness of my pocket
or taking a nap on an armrest.
I have to drag him into the music
like a difficult and neglected child.
This is the revenge of the one who never gets
to hold the pen or wave good-bye,
and now, who never gets to play the melody.

6

Even when I am not playing, I think about the piano.
It is the largest, heaviest,
and most beautiful object in this house.
I pause in the doorway just to take it all in.
And late at night I picture it downstairs,
this hallucination standing on three legs,
this curious beast with its enormous moonlit smile.

Very droll. Yes, "droll," dammit.

(Via about:blank.)

From Charles Krauthammer's column today as it appears at WashingtonPost.com:

France, pop. 64 million, will take one prisoner. One! (Sadly, he'll have to leave his bridge partner behind.)

From the same column at Townhall.com:

France, pop. 64 million, will take one prisoner. One! (Sadly, he'll have to leave his swim buddy behind.)

(Emphasis added.) I wonder which phrase was Krauthammer's and who made the edit.

Peter Wehner, 4/9/09:

During his maiden trip overseas, we learned many things about President Obama. Among the most troublesome, I think, was the ease and eagerness with which he criticized the country he represents. . . .

What leaves me with a queasy feeling . . . is the growing sense that Obama is willing to denigrate America in order to boost his own personal popularity in other countries. . . .

As one might expect, President Obama is executing his game with panache and skill; he is far too smooth and politically smart to lacerate America in a manner that would come across as clumsy and obviously offensive. He would rather speak in an elliptical manner, with a wink and a nod to a knowing audience, to communicate in sub-text as well as through text. But the goal is the same: to elevate himself at the expense of his country, to say (in so many words) that he is better than it. This isn't the worst thing a President can do, but it is bad enough.

Fifty-three issues of Playboy online.
 
A free image-capture program (Windows only).

(Via Steve Bass's newsletter TechBite, which is consistently interesting and always SFW, even if its links occasionally aren't.)

That's Jim Geraghty on Recovery.gov. I'm guessing "No."

(One incorrect detail in the article Geraghty links: the site has a search function. Too bad everything it turns up is so uninformative. Look at this page, for instance. Ahh, lovely pastels.)

Tina Brown loves Michelle Obama

This post (via Instapundit) reminded me how much the whole "nucular" thing annoyed me. Not Bush's pronunciation, but the snobby contempt it provoked. (About "Tahleebahn," who's surprised to hear it from Obama? It's exactly the kind of multiculti phonemic grovel to expect from someone of his educational and social pedigree.)

Two groups mock "nucular." The first disdain everyone who doesn't talk like an Ivy Leaguer, or an Oxbridge graduate. Such parochialism isn't worth commenting on. The second take "nucular" as evidence of mental torpidity: no matter that tens of millions pronounce it that way, just look at the word—can't they read?

Okay, fine. I'll accept that argument as defensible (though wrong) once you who advance it complete certain tasks. First, stop by a lab-o-ra-to-ry, perhaps on a Wed-nes-day, to learn the proper tem-per-a-ture at which to store veg-e-ta-bles. Then give some choc-o-late to a niece or nephew still in el-e-ment-a-ry school. Finally, make sure your bus-i-ness is solvent, and if you see a col-o-nel, thank him for his service.

Until then, get over yourselves, you pretentious weenies.

Poor Neville Chamberlain believed he could trust Hitler. He was wrong, but I don't think I'm wrong about Stalin.

(Editor Richard Langworth comments, "Events proved otherwise.")

(p. 374)

Jack Dunphy on the man who murdered four Oakland policemen.