Propaganda

"Propaganda" is a 1928 book by Edward Bernays, "the father of public relations" (PR), and a nephew of Sigmund Freud. So it's 90 years old. Some of the ideas seem very quaint - or odious - by today's reckoning, and sometimes you have to remember what was going on 90 years ago to make sense of what he is saying. It was mercifully short, only 175 pages.

I was made aware of Bernays in "Doughnut Economics", by Kate Raworth, where he was identified as "one of the early pioneers of consumerism".

The book has an odd cover: "opaganda" going down the page with each letter starting a blurb. The 1st of these gives what is possibly the main assumption of the book:

Only through the active energy of the intelligent few can the public at large become aware of and act on new ideas.

Can you say, elitism? Elitism upon elitism. as we shall shortly see. And Bernays explains why it has to be that way.

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The Introduction was written in 2004 by Mark Crispin Miller. The book attempted to remove the stigma that had come to be associated with the word "propaganda". It failed, but it was a great advertisment for Bernays, who was the premier PR consultant of his time.

Interesting, Miller states that many of the early propagandists were 'the sons of ministers". Ha ha, they grew up in houselolds where selling "pie in the sky" was how you made your living.

Bernays' hero was Walter Lippman.

Lippmann had arrived at the bleak view that “the democratic El Dorado” is impossible in modern mass society, whose members—by and large incapable of lucid thought or clear perception, driven by herd instincts and mere prejudice, and frequently disoriented by external stimuli—were not equipped to make decisions or engage in rational discourse.

Here's a scary thought re propagandists. Were the seeds of the post-truth era we seem to be struggling to avoid now planted so long ago?

those who do such work are also prone to lose touch with reality; for in their universe the truth is ultimately what the client wants the world to think is true.

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Moving into Chapter I, titled "Organizing Chaos", we start down the elitist path. I'm not going to comment a lot on many of the passages I am including. I think they speak for themselves.

The conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the masses is an important element in democratic society. Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country.

So who gets to decide who "the masses" are? And who elects this invisible government?

In theory, everybody buys the best and cheapest commodities offered him on the market. In practice, if every one went around pricing, and chemically tasting before purchasing, the dozens of soaps or fabrics or brands of bread which are for sale, economic life would be hopelessly jammed. To avoid such confusion, society consents to have its choice narrowed to ideas and objects brought to it attention through propaganda of all kinds. There is consequently a vast and continuous effort going on to capture our minds in the interest of some policy or commodity or idea.

It might be better to have, instead of propaganda and special pleading, committees of wise men who would choose our rulers, dictate our conduct, private and public, and decide upon the best types of clothes for us to wear and the best kinds of food for us to eat. But we have chosen the opposite method, that of open competition. We must find a way to make free competition function with reasonable smoothness. To achieve this society has consented to permit free competition to be organized by leadership and propaganda.

Some of the phenomena of this process are criticized—the manipulation of news, the inflation of personality, and the general ballyhoo by which politicians and commercial products and social ideas are brought to the consciousness of the masses. The instruments by which public opinion is organized and focused may be misused. But such organization and focusing are necessary to orderly life.

As civilization has become more complex, and as the need for invisible government has been increasingly demonstrated, the technical means have been invented and developed by which opinion may be regimented

So, you'll take your propaganda and like it, cause you'd be overwhelmed otherwise.

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Chapter II is titled "The New Propaganda". Wow, 90 years later, and this quote could be about Trumpism right now:

When an Imperial Wizard, sensing what is perhaps hunger for an ideal, offers a picture of a nation all Nordic and nationalistic, the common man of the older American stock, feeling himself elbowed out of his rightful position and prosperity by the newer immigrant stocks, grasps the picture which fits in so neatly with his prejudices, and makes it his own.

You can also watch Scorsese's 2002 movie "Gangs of New York" for the 1863 version.

Ahh, "regimenting the public mind".

It was, of course, the astounding success of propaganda during the war [World War I] that opened the eyes of the intelligent few in all departments of life to the possibilities of regimenting the public mind.

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But clearly it is the intelligent minorities which need to make use of propaganda continuously and systematically. In the active proselytizing minorities in whom selfish interests and public interests coincide lie the progress and development of America. Only through the active energy of the intelligent few can the public at large become aware of and act upon new ideas.

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Chapter III is titled "The New Propagandists". I'm sure this next is true - hah! Well, the book is an apologia for propaganda and propagandists.

The profession of public relations counsel is developing for itself an ethical code which compares favorably with that governing the legal and medical professions.

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Chapter IV is titled "The Psychology of Public Relations". This is probably the meatiest chapter.

The systematic study of mass psychology revealed to students the potentialities of invisible government of society by manipulation of the motives which actuate man in the group. ... the group has mental characteristics distinct from those of the individual, and is motivated by impulses and emotions which cannot be explained on the basis of what we know of individual psychology.

Here's an example of a "blast from the past". Bernays discusses an "international flight" as something to be propagandized. ??? Then you realize, Lindbergh had just performed the 1st solo transatlantic flight from New York to Paris in the prior year, 1927.

Trotter and Le Bon concluded that the group mind does not think in the strict sense of the word. In place of thoughts it has impulses, habits, and emotions. In making up its mind, its first impulse is usually to follow the example of a trusted leader. This is one of the most firmly established principles of mass psychology.

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But when the example of the leader is not at hand and the herd must think for itself, it does so by means of clichés, pat words or images which stand for a whole group of ideas or experiences.

There are so many people mentioned in this book that I had never heard of. You look them up, and apparently they were well known in their day, and maybe for 30-40 years thereafter? But not after 90 years.

Meanwhile, here are some early researchers into herd behavior, which I have mentioned in the past as being hard to find. It's really hard, tho, to want to expend energy into researching old stuff from guys who did not stand the test of time - i.e., nobody remembers them.

Bernays was the nephew of Sigmund Freud, so it is no surprise he gives props to the subconscious (the Freudian Id?):

This general principle, that men are very largely actuated by motives which they conceal from themselves, is as true of mass as of individual psychology. It is evident that the successful propagandist must understand the true motives and not be content to accept the reasons which men give for what they do.

Ha ha, here's a good one. What a great PR campaign! Only in the 1920s! (Or not.)

An example of this is the nationwide competitions for sculpture in Ivory soap, open to school children in certain age groups as well as professional sculptors. A sculptor of national reputation found Ivory soap an excellent medium for sculpture.

The Procter and Gamble Company offered a series of prizes for the best sculpture in white soap. The contest was held under the auspices of the Art Center in New York city, an organization of high standing in the art world.

Apparently, though, the Invisible Hand will occasionally produce good outcomes.

The leaders who lend their authority to any propaganda campaign will do so only if it can be made to touch their own interests. There must be a disinterested aspect of the propagandist’s activities. In other words, it is one of the functions of the public relations counsel to discover at what points his client’s interests coincide with those of other individuals or groups.

Here's the concluding paragraph of the chapter:

I have tried, in these chapters, to explain the place of propaganda in modern American life and something of the methods by which it operates—to tell the why, the what, the who and the how of the invisible government which dictates our thoughts, directs our feelings, and controls our actions. In the following chapters I shall try to show how propaganda functions in specific departments of group activity, to suggest some of the further ways in which it may operate.

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The next 6 chapters deal with the application of propaganda to different domains. Chapter V is "Business and the Public", in which the domain is business.

Twenty or twenty-five years ago, business sought to run its own affairs regardless of the public. The reaction was the muckracking period, in which a multitude of sins were, justly and unjustly, laid to the charge of the interests.

Ha ha, "justly or unjustly", sounds like v0.5 of "fair and balanced".

Wow, I have been following Peter Barnes in "Capitalism 3.0" in stating that we went from an economy of scarcity to an economy of plenty (Capitalism 2.0) in the 1950s. This sounds like Bernays felt it was there in 1928. Of course, the Great Depression, which started the following year, followed by World War II, were quite a setback.

The result is that while, under the handicraft of small-unit system of production was that typical a century ago, demand created the supply, today supply must actively seek to create its corresponding demand. A single factory, potentially capable of supplying a whole continent with its particular product, cannot afford to wait until the public asks for its product; it must maintain constant touch, through advertising and propaganda, with the vast public in order to assure itself the continuous demand which alone will make its costly plant profitable.

One of the odious aspects of the book is of course the blatant sexism. Can you say "double standard"?

Yet the beneficial effect of this branch may be canceled, if the wife of the president is involved in a scandal.

We get a little presaging of Chapter XI, "The Mechanics of Propaganda".

While the concrete recommendations of the public relations counsel may vary infinitely according to individual circumstances, his general plan of work may be reduced to two types, which I might term continuous interpretation and dramatization by high-spotting. The two may be alternative or may be pursued concurrently.

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the principles familiar to the propagandist—the principles of gregariousness, obedience to authority, emulation, and the like.

We are (quaintly) reminded that Bernays was decades before the gnome of Chicago, Milton Friedman, and "a corporation's only concern is to increase profits for itself and for its shareholders".

The responsibilities are of many kinds. There is a responsibility to the stockholders—numbering perhaps five persons or five hundred thousand—who have entrusted their money to the concern and have the right to know how the money is being used. ... It has a responsibility toward the dealer which it may express by inviting him, at its expense, to visit the home factory. It has a responsibility toward the industry as a whole which should restrain it from making exaggerated and unfair selling claims. It has a responsibility toward the retailer, and will see to it that its salesmen express the quality of the product which they have to sell. There is a responsibility toward the consumer, who is pressed by a clean and well managed factory, open to his inspection. And the general public, apart from its function as a potential consumer, is influenced in its attitude toward the concern by what it knows of that concern’s financial dealings, its labor policy, even by the livableness of the houses in which its employees dwell.

I remember reading about the CEO of Dean Dairy, who resisted a huge salary and stock options because he felt they were immoral and would adversely impact inequality. I was reminded of that by this statement about the owner of Beach-Nut Packing Company, and its acquisition by Postum Cereal Company (Post?):

He absolutely controls the business and flatly stated that he would never sell it during his lifetime ‘to any one at any price,’ since it would be disloyal to his friends and fellow workers.

"Disloyal to his friends and fellow workers"??? Who cares! Greed is good! What a maroon!

Another formulation of how propaganda works on the subconscious:

The application of this principle of a common denominator of interest between the object that is sold and the public good-will can be carried to infinite degrees.

Again, here is something that seems really anomalous for 1928 - again, possibly because starting in 1929 came 10 years of the Great Depression and 6 years of WWII. Or maybe it is just pro-business propaganda - always popular.

Public opinion is no longer inclined to be unfavorable to the large business merger. It resents the censorship of business by the Federal Trade Commission. It has broken down the anti-trust laws where it thinks they hinder economic development. It backs great trusts and mergers which it excoriated a decade ago. The government now permits large aggregations of producing and distributing units, as evidenced by mergers among railroads and other public utilities, because representative government reflects public opinion. Public opinion itself fosters the growth of mammoth industrial enterprises. In the opinion of millions of small investors, mergers and trusts are friendly giants and not ogres, because of the economies, mainly due to quantity production, which they have effected, and can pass on to the consumer.

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Chapter VI is titled "Propaganda and Political Leadership".

The voice of the people expresses the mind of the people, and that mind is made up for it by the group leaders in whom it believes and by those persons who understand the manipulation of public opinion. It is composed of inherited prejudices and symbols and clichés and verbal formulas supplied to them by the leaders.

Fortunately, the sincere and gifted politician is able, by the instrument of propaganda, to mold and form the will of the people.

Wow, foreshadowing of the day of Agent Orange and reality TV politics? Agent Orange is definitely a master of drama (if nothing else).

The political apathy of the average voter, of which we hear so much, is undoubtedly due to the fact that the politician does not know how to meet the conditions of the public mind. He cannot dramatize himself and his platform in terms which have real meaning to the public. Acting on the fallacy that the leader must slavishly follow, he deprives his campaign of all dramatic interest. An automaton cannot arouse the public interest. A leader, a fighter, a dictator, can. But, given our present political conditions under which every office seeker must cater to the vote of the masses, the only means by which the born leader can lead is the expert use of propaganda.

More cheerleading for propaganda:

It will be objected, of course, that propaganda will tend to defeat itself as its mechanism becomes obvious to the public. My opinion is that it will not. The only propaganda which will ever tend to weaken itself as the world becomes more sophisticated and intelligent, is propaganda that is untrue or unsocial.

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“When the interval between the intellectual classes and the practical classes is too great,” says the historian Buckle, “the former will possess no influence, the latter will reap no benefits.”

Propaganda bridges this interval in our modern complex civilization.

Concluding the chapter, "clear understanding and intelligent action"? Ha ha, how about "fake news and gaslighting"?

Is this government by propaganda? Call it, if you prefer, government by education. But education, in the academic sense of the word, is not sufficient. It must be enlightened expert propaganda through the creation of circumstances, through the high-spotting of significant events, and the dramatization of important issues. The statesman of the future will thus be enabled to focus the public mind on crucial points of policy and regiment a vast, heterogeneous mass of voters to clear understanding and intelligent action.

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Chapter VII is titled "Women's Activities and Propaganda". The 19th Amendment which gave women the right to vote had just been adopted in 1920. Bernays credits the Women's Suffrage movement with making skillful use of propaganda. He also credits them with the 8 hour workday, something I had not heard before.

Ha ha, "music police, you are under arrest".

A music club can broaden its sphere and be of service to the community by cooperating with the local radio station in arranging better musical programs. Fighting bad music can be as militant a campaign and marshal as varied resources as any political battle.

The chapter concludes with a somewhat condescending endorsement of women in politics. I sure am glad I live in the future.

Just as women supplement men in private life, so they will supplement men in public life by concentrating their organized efforts on those objects which men are likely to ignore. There is a tremendous field for women as active protagonists of new ideas and new methods of political and social housekeeping. When organized and conscious of their power to influence their surroundings, women can use their newly acquired freedom in a great many ways to mold the world into a better place to live.

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Chapter VIII is titled "Propaganda For Education". Kind of an odd chapter. Bernays is all in favor of education, but feels that teachers have a problem with self-image because they are so poorly paid. I'm glad he seems to feel that this is a sad state of affairs.

The public is not cognizant of the real value of education, and does not realize that education as a social force is not receiving the kind of attention it has the right to expect in a democracy.

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In a democracy an educator should, in addition to his academic duties, bear a definite and wholesome relation to the general public.

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The teacher finds himself in a world in which the emphasis is put on those objective goals and those objective attainments which are prized by our American society. He himself is but moderately or poorly paid. Judging himself by the standards in common acceptance, he cannot but feel a sense of inferiority because he finds himself continually being compared, in the minds of his own pupils, with the successful businessman and the successful leader in the outside world. Thus the educator becomes repressed and suppressed in our civilization. As things stand, this condition cannot be changed from the outside unless the general public alters its standards of achievement, which it is not likely to do soon.

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It is possibly, by means of an intelligent appeal predicated upon the actual present composition of the public mind, to modify the general attitude toward the teaching profession. Such a changed attitude will begin by expressing itself in an insistence on the idea of more adequate salaries for the profession.

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Chapter IX is titled "Propaganda In Social Science". Here's the opening paragraph.

The public relations counsel is necessary to social work. And since social service, by its very nature, can continue only by means of the voluntary support of the wealthy, it is obliged to use propaganda continually. The leaders in social service were among the first consciously to utilize propaganda in its modern sense.

Wow, where would be without the wealthy?

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Chapter X is titled "Art and Science". We get examples of the art and fashion world manipulating taste and trends to further the goals of specific industries. He references another figure of the time that I had never heard of - Edgar Brandt - as a "famous French iron worker, the modern Bellini, who makes wonderful art works from iron". Per his Wikipedia page, Brandt was "a French ironworker, prolific weapons designer and head of a company that designed 60mm, 81mm and 120mm mortars that were very widely copied throughout and subsequent to World War II. He also invented discarding-sabot artillery shells, and contributed substantially through his development of HEAT rifle grenades to the development of effective HEAT-warhead weapons for infantry anti-tank use. ... He also was a very fine artist." Who knew?

Bernays feels that the arts should do a better job promoting themselves. Of course, he thinks everyone should do a better job promoting themselves, because that is more business for him and his profession.

Why should not the museum, instead of merely preserving the art treasures which it possesses, quicken their meaning in terms which the general public understands?

On propaganda and science:

Propaganda assists in marketing new inventions. Propaganda, by repeatedly interpreting new scientific ideas and inventions to the public, has made the public more receptive. Propaganda is accustoming the public to change and progress.

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Finally, the last chapter, #XI, "The Mechanics of Propaganda". I pointed out some places earlier where there were some preliminary examples of this. Not really that much more here.

There is no means of human communication which may not also be a means of deliberate propaganda, because propaganda is simply the establishing of reciprocal understanding between an individual and a group.

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Fifty years ago, the public meeting was a propaganda instrument par excellence. Today it is difficult to get more than a handful of people to attend a public meeting unless extraordinary attractions are part of the program. The automobile takes them away from home, the radio keeps them in the home, the successive daily editions of the newspaper bring information to them in office or subway, and also they are sick of the ballyhoo of the rally.

Hmmm, I guess public meetings for commercial propaganda purposes are pretty passé, but town halls and political rallies seem to still be popular.

Bernays draws a distinction between newspapers and magazines: newspapers don't care if an item is propaganda or not, as long as it is news; magazines, on the other hand, are pretty much propaganda organs by design. Other propaganda modes:

The American motion picture is the greatest unconscious carrier of propaganda in the world today. It is a great distributor for ideas and opinions.

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Another instrument of propaganda is the personality. Has the device of the exploited personality been pushed too far?

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Yet the vivid dramatization of personality will always remain one of the functions of the public relations counsel. The public instinctively demands a personality to typify a conspicuous corporation or enterprise.

We almost, but not quite, made it out of the book without another condescending, sexist double standard anecdote.

There is a story that a great financier discharged a partner because he had divorced his wife.

“But what,” asked the partner, “have my private affairs to do with the banking business?”

“If you are not capable of managing your own wife,” was the reply, “the people will certainly believe that you are not capable of managing their money.”

Finally, here is the last paragraph of the book:

Propaganda will never die out. Intelligent men must realize that propaganda is the modern instrument by which they can fight for productive ends and help to bring order out of chaos.

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Well, I guess the main thing I learned from this book is that propaganda is not advertising. Advertising targets the conscious mind, propaganda is targeted much more at the subconscious mind. And I guess I will try to figure out how to better appreciate the invisible government that actually runs the world. [sarcasm]

It's Alive!

The Tuesday night jam at Lynagh's is back! Good to be out playing my rig again! House band is Brent Carter and I on guitar and vocals, Matt Noell on bass and vocals, and Roger Barber on drums.

A little better crowd, but only 2 jammers out. Hopefully we'll get back to the 10-15 musicians we were getting out before. You could tell we hadn't played in 6 weeks. A couple of songs we had pretty well down were flubbed a bit. Did some new stuff all of which went pretty well.

Old Favorites

Back to reading sci-fi, I decided to read the stuff I had by authors who were old favorites.

Oldest was John Varley, whom I have been reading since the late 70's. Not that prolific an author. His latest is "Irontown Blues", 2018, 304 pages. This is set in his "Eight Worlds" universe which was my favorite of his stuff. It heretofore included the great novel "The Ophiuchi Hotline" and a couple of short story collections. This is a story of a wannabee cheap detective ala a film noir.

There was a bit of a curve about 1/4 of the way into the book when a 2nd narrator is introduced: she is a Dog Whisperer communicating with the protagonist's cybernetically enhanced bloodhound. The rest of the book alternates chapters between the detective and his dog. At 1st I thought this was not going to go well, but it turned out to be great! Who knew that cybernetically enhanced canines liked puns? And thought humans were stupid? Some really good stuff too about what it would be like living with a dog's sense of smell. Here's a passage I especially liked:

Irontown smelled like . . .
(I have to interrupt Sherlock at this point. I tried to tell him that most of what he was saying made no sense to me, but he was having none of it. Smells are so important that he spent most of an hour listing them for me. By the time he was done, there had been over two hundred separate and distinct smells. I had names for fewer than fifty of them, and many of those I had to guess at. It was made all the more difficult because many of the smells were new to Sherlock, too. He knew precisely where to file them, to categorize them by similarity to other smells, or by who-knows-what system a dog has of classifying smells. Once more, it’s a case of describing the ten thousand shades of “red” to a color-blind person.—PC)

A quick and enjoyable read, and not too much libertarian/heinlein nonsense.

Next oldest was Walter Jon Williams, whom I have been reading since "Hardwired" in 1986. His latest effort is "The Accidental War", 2018, 496 pages. This is his 6th book in the Dread Empire's Fall (Praxis) series, and starts a new trilogy of novels. An extremely regimented, hierarchical society, lots of military foo, space yacht racing, yada-yada... He does include a financial meltdown, with subsequent social turmoil, that is a well-told accounting of the 2008 meltdown and the Great Recession that followed. He writes well, but, I find the concept of feudal futures depressing. Still, a page-turner, and I will stick with the series.

Finally, Greg Egan, whom I have been reading since "Quarantine" in 1992. His latest is "Dichronauts", 2017, 312 pages. This story is set in a universe with 2 dimensions of space + 2 dimensions of time, rather than 3+1. So just all around weird. The story is about explorers trying a find a place to move their city after a draught makes their current location non-viable. The plotting is good, and some interesting social issues are raised, but still, I really felt that this whole 2+2 dimensions thing would have been much better carried out by an animated movie using intensive CGI. Egan does provide a web page exploring the physics of this universe - a bad sign maybe? Still, a fairly quick and enjoyable read.

Back on the magazine stack, then I think some fantasy.

Music is Life

Music out: the Tuesday jam at Lynagh's died in late July. We were getting decent numbers (10-15) of musicians out, but a minimal crowd. I think a bar 2 blocks from the UK campus is probably the wrong venue for mostly old farts playing blues and rock. So we still have the Blues and Groove Jam at Squires Tavern on Sunday evenings 7:30-10:30. I usually go there after playing with Steve at the Listen Locally Open Mic (formerly Red Barn Radio Open Mic) at Twisted Cork 5:30-9:00. There is also the excellent jam at Backstretch Bar & Grill on the last Sunday of the month 3-7.

Steve & I also play at the LexJam Open Mic the 2nd Saturday of the month at various venues 1-4. There is a female singer who brings her autistic son out to the open mic. He likes to channel Elvis, so I have played and sang "Blue Suede Shoes" a few times with him onstage with a guitar. I added 4 more fast Elvis songs to my book for next time - I'm tired of "Blue Suede Shoes".

Meanwhile, I continue to add any song requested or played by someone else at jams and gigs to the OnSong app on my iPad, plus any song I stumble upon that I like and could possibly play. It generally winds up being 3-6 new songs a week. I'm currently at 580 songs. Man, I love that app.

Steve & Chris played a couple of gigs this month which went pretty well. Our last gig of the year is this Friday at The Cellar 7-10.

Muppet news flash! I just had a text from the guy at The Cellar cancelling the gig. He was not there when we played earlier in the month, but said they had "negative feedback on fit". I asked for details, he was nice enough to respond that they wanted a more "lively, upbeat act". Ha ha, I guess someone noticed we were old farts - curse you, ageism! Oh well, we are indeed old farts. I think I'll call that strike 2.

A person who wishes to remain anonymous, and who I would not have guessed had a lyrical bone in their body, sent me lyrics to 2 songs to see about getting them published. So I wrote music for them and posted them online. Steve & I also performed them.

• "She Cheated With The Preacher", old school country.
• "It Don't Seem Fair To Me", an 8 bar blues shuffle.

My contention that, if you give me lyrics I can crank out a song, seems to be born out. Putting music to these lyrics was easy.

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Music in: Man, it seems like I just did this. Time sure flies by.

• "Summerteeth", Wilco, 1999, 17 tracks (including "23 Seconds Of Silence". Wilco is the favorite band of music aficionado (and GM of J. Render's Southern Table) Josh Brown. He recommended this older album of theirs as one of his favs. Indeed very listenable tunes, 4 stars. Here's "When You Wake Up Feeling Old" (ha ha, I don't yet!)

• I mentioned to Josh I didn't have any Springsteen in my iTunes. He recommended "Nebraska", 1984, 10 tracks. This is a largely acoustic album, I would probably have preferred something with the E Street Band. Well, I want to get some Springsteen into the rotation, so 4 stars. Here's "Atlantic City".

• "God's Favorite Customer", Father John Misty, 2018, 10 tracks. These aren't bad tunes, but I find FJM's pretentiousness to be off-putting. Funny, I like other over-the-top performers - Vic Thrill + The Saturn Missile or Edward Sharpe & The Magnetic Zeros. 3 stars.
• "Apart", "Pete Yorn & Scarlett Johansson", 2018, 5 tracks. I liked their last effort, this also is catchy, poppy tunes. 4 stars. Here's "Iguana Bird".

• "Earthtones", Bahamas, 2018, 11 tracks. Another recommendation from Josh Brown. Bahamas is a 1 man act out of Toronto, Afie Jurvanen. Very tasty tunes, 4 stars. Here's "Opening Act (The Shooby Dooby Song)".

• "Come Tomorrow", Dave Matthews Band, 2018, 14 tracks. I think I read this was their 1st album in 6 years. Dave Matthews doesn't seem to be aging well. When some of his older stuff comes up on shuffle play, my reaction tends to be "meh". I still enjoy playing and singing "#41". But, no catchy tunes in this effort. 3 stars.
• "so sad so sexy", Lykke Li, 2018, 10 tracks. I read a review of this that said she had gone seriously mainstream modern pop and I think I concur. I did not like this nearly as much as her earlier stuff. 3 stars.
• "Lush", Snail Mail, 2018, 10 tracks. I'm not sure where I got this. Plaintive, emo female singer, I am a sucker for this stuff. "Snail Mail is the American indie rock solo project of guitarist and singer-songwriter Lindsey Jordan." per the Wikipedia article. 4 stars. Here's "Let's Find An Out", short and sweet.

• "The Blues Is Alive And Well", Buddy Guy, 2018, 15 tracks. Buddy Guy is the last of the old bluesmen left alive. So, it is required that I keep up on his stuff. Some of the tracks are the required "Yes, I'm still alive and playing" type songs. A good effort, 4 stars. Here's "Cognac", featuring Jeff Beck and Keith Richards.

• "The Broken Instrument", Victory, 2018, 13 tracks. I think my weekly Amazon email recommended this. Apparently she was a busker in NYC who drew attention. Very enjoyable, 4 stars. Here's "Jazz Festival".

• "The Now Now", Gorillaz, 2018, 11 tracks. These guys continue to make tasty tunes with great grooves. 4 stars. Here's the 1st track, "Humility", featuring George Benson.

• "High as Hope", Florence + The Machine, 2018, 10 tracks. I like this one a lot better than her last. Much less bombastic. I was going to go 4 stars, but couldn't find a track I liked enough to include here, so, 3 stars.
• "Uniform Distortion", Jim James, 2018, 11 tracks. Kind of a retro sound, engineered with lots of reverb. It doesn't do much for me. I wonder when My Morning Jacket will have a new album? 3 stars.
• "Songs In The Key Of Life", Stevie Wonder, 1976, 21 tracks. I was surprised I did not have this album. What a great album, with some of Stevie's most popular tunes: "Sir Duke", "I Wish", "Pastime Paradise", "Isn't She Lovely". "As". 4 stars. Here's "As", which he recently performed at Aretha's funeral.

• "Lamp Lit Prose", "Dirty Projectors", 2018, 10 tracks. I think they are still feeling the loss of 1 of their female vocalists. Still, 1 of my favorite new alternative groups. As usual, the orchestration is all over the place. 4 stars. Here's the 1st track, "Right Now", featuring Syd.

• "Back Roads And Abandoned Models", The Jayhawks, 2018, 11 tracks. Very listenable. I don't know how it took me so long to discover this band. 4 stars. Here's "Leaving Detroit".

• Eponymous, Giant Swing, 2018, 6 tracks. The 2nd album of this Local Lexington 3-piece band. Ab fab guitarist Jeff Adams is backed by Logan Lay on bass and Keith Halladay on drums. I have been lucky enough to get to play with all of them. 4 stars. Here's "Circus Murder".

• In The Pines, eponymous, 2016, 5 tracks, and "Mirror of Evolution", 2017, 10 tracks. I saw these guys at Best Friends Bar at the corner of Woodland and Euclid after playing at Lynagh's. A 5 piece band out of Cincinnati. Very good, tight southernish rock. I offered them $10 for a CD, they gave me 2. Well engineered, the lead singer's voice is not very distinctive. Almost 4 stars, but not quite, so 3 stars.

That brings us up to early August. _Unrated playlist has 118 songs, not too bad. So until next time ...

The Darwin Economy

"The Darwin Economy", subtitled "Liberty, Competition, and the Common Good", is a 2011 book by Robert H. Frank, a Cornell economics professor. 272 pages. Frank has published several other books.

I found this book fairly disappointing, for reasons I will detail. So I won't do a Cliff Notes level summary.

Without trepidation, then, I offer the following prediction. One century hence, if a roster of professional economists is asked to identify the intellectual father of their discipline, a majority will name Charles Darwin.

If the same question were posed today, of course, more than 99 percent of my colleagues would name Adam Smith

The main idea of the book is that Adam Smith's Invisible Hand is completely unreliable as a means of assuring good outcomes in economies or societies. Darwin's idea that strategies that benefit the individual quite often harm the species as a whole is a much better way to look at things. Traits that are involved in sexual selection quite often turn into an arms race. For example, the antlers of a male elk have evolved to be larger and larger so that the elk can defeat rivals in battles for access to females for breeding. But the large antlers impede their movement through forests and make them more vulnerable to predators, so they are bad for species survival.

It seems to me that there are then 2 flavors of sexual selection:

1. As in the elk example, development of hardware that allows a male to defeat other males in combat for access to breeding females.
2. What I had thought of as sexual selection before: traits that don't aid species survival, but "chicks dig it": the peacock's tail, language and music in humans.

The 1st chapter of the book "Paralysis", talks about how our paralyzed government is unable to address the ever-increasing problem of wealth inequality. I found this statement, which he repeats later in the book, interesting.

Nor will business investment spark recovery, because most firms already have more than enough capacity to produce what people want to buy.

So maybe, no wonder corporations did nothing with their recent increased profits due to the 2018 tax cuts but stock buybacks - no point in building more factories if they already can produce more than they can sell. Can you say, post-scarcity economy?

Ha ha, here's an interesting new word to describe our current system of government: "ignoramitocracy—a country in which ignorance-driven political paralysis prevents us from grappling with even our most pressing problems".

The book seems to me to go off the rails in that it seems to be written as if the target audience is "rational libertarians" - libertarians who don't believe as a matter of dogma that all government and taxation is a violation of their liberties. From his Wikipedia article, Frank doesn't seem to be a libertarian. And he is clearly in favor of trying to fix the inequality problem. So why does he devote so much of the book with arguing with libertarians, as if they are the keepers of some worthwhile knowledge, rather than just selfish pricks?

I mean, the book's last chapter is titled "The Libertarian's Objections Reconsidered". With John Galt featured as a serious person to be discussed. Seriously? F#ck a bunch of libertarians. They are a fringe group at best, why is Frank so concerned about them?

And I was annoyed when he had the 2 participants in 1 of his thought experiments to be named "Rand" and "Paul". Our junior boy-senator continues to devolve into more and more sleazy behavior, as long as it gets him some attention. I really don't like to be reminded of him.

One principle Frank refers to frequently is that of John Stuart Mill: "preventing harm to others was the only legitimate reason for restricting individual liberty". He expands this principle to include indirect harm.

Frank also references John Kenneth Galbraith:

The late John Kenneth Galbraith, for example, stressed the contrast between the “traditional sequence” envisioned by Adam Smith's modern disciples and a “revised sequence” that Galbraith saw as a more accurate portrayal of the modern marketplace. In the traditional sequence, consumers enter the market with well-formed preferences, and firms struggle to meet their demands as well and cheaply as possible. But in Galbraith's revised sequence, powerful corporations first decide which products would be most convenient and profitable for them to produce, and then hire Madison Avenue hucksters to persuade consumers to want those products.

One good issue that Frank raises is relative vs absolute needs or position.

Reproductive fitness is thus a quintessentially relative concept.

...

Expenditure categories that are more easily observed—such as those for cars, clothing, and jewelry—should also tend to be more positional than those that cannot be observed, such as those for insurance.

...

On balance, then, the prediction is that savings is nonpositional

This reminds me of the old joke, that if you and a companion are being chased by a bear, you don't have to be faster than the bear, you just have to be faster than your companion.

[I was going to put this at the end, I'll go on and do it here. I decided to read this book after it was referenced by this blog post by David Brin, in this passage:

Robert Frank ... asserts that – as one supporter put it - there is a homeomorphism between, on the one hand, natural selection and economic competition for absolute goods, and, on the other hand, sexual selection and economic competition for relative (positional) goods.

I thought this was a great insight. But Frank actually never says this?!?!? In consultation with The Google, I was unable to determine who actually said this. And meanwhile, Brin, who seems to be wanting to found a cult of Adam Smith, takes offense at Frank wanting to displace his hero with Darwin.]

Frank talks about why there are not more worker-owned companies. I don't know that he really concluded anything.

He talks about misguided efforts to shrink government which wind up costing us all more $$$ in the long run.

He talks about "expenditure cascades" - consumerism and conspicuous consumption spreads from the upper income levels of society to lower levels as well.

He proposes to tame positional consumption by replacing income taxes with a progressive consumption tax. This would reward saving, but, so what? The world is already awash in capital. There is no mention of a Piketty/wealth tax.

In general, Frank wants to use taxes rather than regulation to control bad behavior. I'm not sure this is a good idea. This just makes bad behavior - pollution for example - a budget line item. If the bottom line is still in the black, corporations are fine with that, it's just part of the cost of business. Meanwhile, the rest of us get poisoned. As with the lack of jail sentences for Wall Street fraudsters after 2008, hefty fines won't stop corporate bad behavior. You need to attach personal peril, to put people in jail for transgressions. So we need laws and regulations, not just taxes.

Of course, and I think Frank says this, our current oligarch rulers and their GOP flunkies have no use for either regulations or taxes, so, for now, this is a moot point.

This is an interesting point: "opportunities for causing harm to others clearly increase with population density". Hence the need for more regulation and law in cities than in rural areas.

Frank also has a chapter on "Success and Luck", where he notes that luck is probably more important than hard work, creativity, anything, in being breakout successful. I think we have seen this meme before. I personally was the beneficiary of a very lucky business break. Hard work is a given, but it it is still more luck than anything that leads to a significant liquidity event. Studies have shown that there is no correlation between CEO salary and bonuses and CEO performance. Ha ha,

These managers also enjoy remarkably favorable tax treatment, for reasons that no one can seem to explain with a straight face.

Frank also mentions the mythical "Tragedy of the Commons". As we learned here, the Tragedy of the Commons is a myth promulgated by advocates of privatization. Managing a commons is not that hard a thing to do.

From the halfway point on, Frank leans heavily on Ronald Coase - "the world's foremost authority on behavior that causes harm to others". And we then partake in many examples in which all conflicts are resolved by computing how much different solutions will cost the participants, and then implementing the cheapest solution.

I have 3 problems with this:

1. We previously encountered Coase in "Misbehaving", and there found that behavioral economics had shot holes in the Coase theorem.

2. So many of the examples in this part of the books use homo economicus at the peak of his powers:

   the best available metric for assessing the strength of such feelings is the amount they'd be willing to pay for what they want.

   ...

   Talent and temperament are again assumed to be perfectly observable.

   For example, in a thought experiment with a smoker and a non-smoker rooming together, they are able to assign $800 as the value to the smoker to be able to smoke in the shared digs, and $1600 as the value to the non-smoker to be smoke-free. Seriously? This is just silly - the smoker would find another smoker for a roommate, ditto for the non-smoker.

   We learned in "Doughnut Economics" that getting rid of homo economicus was way #3 of 7 in thinking like a 21st century economist. So finding him so prominently featured here was definitely off-putting.

3. Frank says that liberals are offended by using cost-benefit analysis on everything. Yes, for some things that is true for me. Maybe cost-benefit analysis on providing adequate nutrition, education, etc to children who don't have it would show that we should feed, educate, etc all children. But, if it doesn't, then f#ck cost-benefit analysis.

   Meanwhile, as a scientist, I am indeed offended by invoking homo economicus, pulling meaningless numbers out of your ass, computing with them, and then pretending they have even the slightest worth.

In summary, I wish "The Darwin Economy" had had a lot more Darwin, and a lot less Coase, homo economicus, cost-benefit analysis, and libertarians, "rational" or otherwise. But here's a good quote from the last chapter:

We need good government because individual and societal goals are often squarely in conflict. When they are, it's naïve to expect an invisible hand to produce good outcomes.

This was my 1st economics book in almost a year, I'm really sad it was so disappointing - although I did get more out of it than I did "Value and Capital: An Inquiry Into Some Fundamental Principles of Economic Theory", J.R.Hicks, 1939 in 2015. Ha ha, I guess I better go read a bunch of science fiction!

ICYMI, here is the link to the blog post listing all of the economic books I have reviewed/summarized.

3 + 1

The escapism ends - after this post. Seriously, I am on the magazine stack. Sky & Telescope done, reading Scientific American. Technology Review and Wired still to go. Then, on to an economics book! Note, I have switched all my magazine subscriptions over to digital only, and read them on my iPad. My decades of taking old magazines to the Dunbar HS library appear to be over.

So, 1st read "The War Dogs Trilogy" by Greg Bear: "War Dogs", 2014, "Killing Titan", 2015, and "Take Back The Sky", 2016. Greg Bear was one of my fav sci-fi authors for years. I was a little concerned about this being just some militaristic sci-fi, but he got into some other interesting concepts, including several alien races, and some interesting ideas about the dynamics of the solar system. So these were much better than I expected. Note, Bear throws some theism in, as he seems to be wont to do of late :-(

Then, the 35th and final "The Year's Best Science Fiction", edited by Gardner Dozois. The final collection because Dozois died in May. Well, he went out with a bang. The last couple of years I did not enjoy the collection that much. This year, a totally outstanding collection of stories, surprisingly enjoyable. 2 or 3 I had read before in other collections, but there were pretty much no weak stories in the lot.

I liked the story by Tobias S. Bucknell, so I bought a couple of his short story collections on Kobo. He had a novel trilogy, the Xenowealth trilogy, that looked interesting but was no longer available on Kobo. So I went to his website and emailed him, asking if the novels could be made available on Kobo - which I use because my local independent bookstore, Carmichael's, then gets 40% of the proceeds. He emailed me back, said he was changing publishers, and included as attachments epubs of the 3 novels! He was glad I enjoyed his stories! Wow, I love living in the future!

What If?

[I wrote this November, 2017 and did not publish it - I'm guessing because it contains way too much personal financial info. Oh well. Please treat the personal financial info solely as a data point. Some good ideas in this I think.]

Keynes famously speculated that someday, capitalism would have done its job and generated all the capital the world would ever need and could then be retired. I have not read Marx, but he also foretold the end of capitalism.

But let's just focus on Keynes. I retired 5 years ago and have lived off the 6% ROI that my most excellent Merrill Lynch financial advisers have generated via interest on bonds but mostly via dividends and capital gains off of stocks. With CDs returning maybe 1%; savings accounts < 1%; bonds maybe 4-5% (although I see I just had a corporate bond mature that paid 5.6%), increasingly the stock market is the only place to put funds for a reasonable ROI.

Why is the ROI on all other investments so low? What if it is because we have reached Keynes' predicted point where the world has all the capital it needs? Do the low low interest rates on raw capital show that there is more capital than there is need for?

I will theorize: if indeed we have reached the point of capital sufficiency predicted by Keynes, then the stock market will not crash in the foreseeable future, because there is pretty much no where else where you can invest your money and get any ROI. The Fed has no reason to raise interest rates. The economy is not overheated. Unemployment is low - underemployment, who knows? Deflation is much more of a concern than inflation, although you can never convince conservatives of that.

The most recent stock crash in 2008 was caused by financial markets being flooded by fraudulent instruments. I don't think that will happen again real soon - although it would have been better if a lot of the fraudsters on Wall Street did some jail time.

I think I may have mentioned before that 1 side effect of having a world awash in capital is that it might mean that the Fed could fire up the printing presses and fund an aggressive Universal Basic Income program without having to worry about inflation (see below).

Even if they added $5T to the money supply it would represent only 2% of the $250T wealth of the world. (Note, that wealth figure is probably understated by a factor of 2 to 4. Also note, a better calculation might be $3.6T ($12,000 x 300,000,000 US citizens) / $92T wealth of North America = 3.9%) Add that to some Eisenhower era income tax rates (90%) on top earners, and we could maybe make a dent in inequality.

The only downside I see is that increasingly the climate crisis will continue to destroy more and more capital every year. This is yet another reason to address the climate crisis with urgency, and right now.

Inflation: I think inflation is driven only by supply-side shortages, which we haven't seen in quite a while. We moved to capitalism 2.0 in the 1950s, from scarcity to abundance. The only instance of real inflation in my lifetime was after the 1974 OPEC tripling of oil prices. It took more than 10 years for that to ripple through the entire economy. The OPEC monopoly artificially generated a supply-side shortage.

3 More

The hits just keep on coming.

"Suicide Club" is the 1st novel of Rachel Heng, 2018, 352 pages. Set in a near future where the fitness nazis and fitbits have seized power, you can live for 200 years if you toe the line and eat nothing but nutritionally correct smoothies and shakes. No music, it gets the juices stirring too much. And immortality is on the horizon, for those who can afford it. This story revolves around 2 women with complicated relationships with a parent, who become involved with the revolution, aka Suicide Club. Well written, a good read.

Next up, "The Freeze-Frame Revolution", a novella by Peter Watts, 2018, 192 pages. An interesting idea, with a asteroid spaceship circling the galaxy seeding it with warp gates. The humans on board cryo-sleep most of the time, and the supposedly not-too-smart AI named Chimp does most of the heavy lifting. Not as good as some of Watts longer stuff, but this is a guy who gets the concepts of what AI would look like. I was impressed that the book had cover blurbs by, among others, Cory Doctorow, Richard Morgan, Vernor Vinge, Hannu Rajaniemi, and Greg Bear - definitely some of my favorites.

Finally, the 1st book of an Arabian Nights type collection of stories, "The Orphan's Tales: In The Night Garden", by Catheryanne Valente, 2006, 496 pages. 2 main stories are told, but there are tales within tales nested I think 4 deep. There is also some dovetailing between the plots and characters of the 2 stories. Confusing at times, but it still gets you turning the pages.

Writing the post prior to this, looking up the blog posts for Hannu's earlier novels, I was reminded of the 2nd book of The Quantum Thief trilogy, "The Fractal Prince". That also had an Arabian Nights format, but approached much more creatively, as blogged here.

At one point a story that includes one of its figures retelling the same story causes a person infected by the story to go into an infinite recursive loop, presenting to the outside world as catatonic.

Hmmm, I thought this was new but I probably got it as a $1.99 or some such special. The 2nd volume "The Orphan's Tales: In the Cities of Coin and Spice", it looks like came out in 2007. I have just purchased that, I guess is it for this series.

Approaching Escape Velocity?

Well, as Putin's bitch, The Evil Orange One, continues to tweet the destruction of the US-dominated world order established after WWII, I continue to tear through nothing but escapist literature. Escape velocity?

I missed this one last post because I read it in Kindle format, as it was not available from Kobo. "Valence", by Jennifer Koehler Wells, 2017, 456 pages, is the 4th book in her Fluency series, most recently blogged here. Humans make contact with the Galactic Federation. Plenty of plot to deal with. I like that Ms. Wells includes some sex/genetics stuff, with humans being 1 of several species engineered by a progenitor species with different levels of oxytocin vs cortisol and adrenaline - humans being on the aggressive asshole end of the spectrum. Ms. Wells writing continues to improve. And who could not like a series in which some of the protagonists are cephalapods? This is an enjoyable series, she is doing at least as good as James S.A. Corey is with The Expanse.

Back in the Kobo world, I read "Quillifer", by Walter Jon Williams, 2018, 544 pages. I think I have read most of his stuff, he is a very dependable writer. This I have classified as Fantasy, but it is really more Historical Fiction - set on an alternative earth (different continents) with 1 character who is a supernatural being, with 17th-18th century technology. A very enjoyable read, as our protagonist, the title character, winds up being a hero in several circumstances, mostly due to thinking through options and coming up with some creative solutions. We have sea battles, land battles, court intrigue, etc, etc. A real page turner, I look forward to the next.

I also liked that the main character and others made up words, and all the archaic usages, particularly. Who knew that a Mercer is someone who sells fine fabrics like silks?

Next, "Provenance", by Ann Leckie, 2018, 480 pages. This is set in the "Ancillary" universe of her award-winning trilogy, blogged here and here. We are out of the immediate Radch empire although there is a Radch ambassador character. A "coming of age" story of a politician's daughter Forrest Gump'ing her way through several significant events. Indeterminate gender, and most of the main characters wind up hooking up female-female and male-male, as is becoming de riguer for lots of current sci-fi. An easy and enjoyable read.

Then another "Let's Rewrite Greek Mythology" effort from Zachary Mason, "Metamorphica", 2018, 304 pages. Similar to "The Lost Books of the Odessey", blogged here, Mason retells many, many Greek myths. As this is the 2nd time through this approach, I realized that maybe the main thing he is doing is taking myths we have all known for years and retelling them in the 1st person. But he also changes the myth when he thinks it makes a better or more rational story. I liked particularly his retelling of Midas as the person who invented money. I grew up on Greek & Norse mythology, I really enjoy when they are revisited and riffed upon.

Still in Denial

It is hard for me to make myself study Economy of Plenty / Post-Scarcity Utopia with the world descending into fascism. The climate crisis is responsible for a lot of it in Europe, with unlivable temperatures and crop failures driving millions of climate refugees out of the Middle East.

Meanwhile, the Evil Orange One continues to search for yet another manufactured crisis to drive the ratings of "President of the US Apprentice". Ah well, I'm sure the other shoe will fall soon enough, and we will #lockhimup.

But, please, sooner rather than later. So many people are saying the damage is irreparable - here's an example. Well, let's acknowledge that Putin is a genius who was able, via electing and then blackmailing a childish idiot with an incredibly overrated opinion of himself, to destroy the US hegemony which was created after WW II. Dictators of the world unite, you have nothing to lose but your loser populace!

I mentioned I had bought the latest novel of E.J. Swift: "Paris Adrift", 2018, 320 pages. This woman writes really well. I highlighted a dozen or so passages I thought were really evocative, enough that I will leave discovering them as an exercise for the reader. A very enjoyable read, plus it is set in 1 of my fav cities, Paris! I will say though, that the plotting was not the best. Stuff that should have been explained never was, and stuff that seemed to be forbidden later on was A-OK??? There was a small subplot at the end that smelt like something an editor suggested.

Despite my philosophical aversion to dystopias, I did in impulse buy on "The End of the World", subtitled "Stories of the Apocalypse", edited by Martin H. Greenberg, 2010, 328 pages. This short story collection was recommended for me by BookBub. BookBub sends me an email/day with 5 recommended cheap eBooks. I buy maybe 1/month tops, but that is enough that I think the 10 seconds/day to read the email is a worthwhile investment of my time.

This collection had stories dating back to 1950. The last story was the longest, from 1950 by Poul Anderson (a fav author of mine for decades). Haha, a principle of writing sci-fi - never mention real technology by name - seriously, vacuum tubes??? And of course a lot of the societal attitudes are embarrassingly dated.

This collection was definitely slow getting started, but did wind up with some good stories. A few of the older ones had the groaner punchline or deus ex machina ending that in my youth I would have thought was really cool, but now just seems very dated. I did like the subdivisions of the book:

• Bang or Whimper
• The Last Man
• Life After the End
• Dark, Distant Futures
• Witnesses to the End of the World

Next up, a just released fantasy by Hannu Rajaniemi, "Summerland", 2018, 304 pages. This seems to be Hannu's 1st novel after the most excellent "Quantum Thief" trilogy, blogged here, here, and here. I was somewhat surprised he tried a fantasy. Set in 1938 and mostly in England, it is a spy story in a world where the dead and living can communicate, and Queen Victoria still rules the British Empire from the spirit world. There is a lot of action and a somewhat convoluted but satisfactory ending, but, throughout the whole book I kept thinking "Hannu has written a Tim Powers novel". Just before reading this book, I had been thinking about how I greatly preferred Tim Powers to Neil Gaiman for magic realism, so having the new Hannu read pretty much like something Powers would write really threw me off. No kudos to Powers in the book either. Oh well, still an enjoyable read.

Back to science fiction: I read "Dark Lightning", by John Varley, 2014, 352 pages. This is the 4th book of the Thunder and Lightning series, which started in 2003 - it says here I read the 1st 1 "Red Thunder" in 2004. No sign I read the other 2: "Red Lightning" and "Rolling Thunder". Varley was one of my favorite authors in the early 80s.

I guess this is a YA book - the narrators are 18 YO twin sisters. They are on an asteroid ship heading for the New Sun currently traveling at 0.77c when ... plot happens. Nothing particularly inspiring, libertarian overtones, but a page turner. Varley seems to be getting old, he's 70 now. Apparently this whole series is a tribute to Heinlein, oops.

I wonder how I missed the middle 2? Oh well, I don't think it's worth revisiting. Funny, old singer/songwriters seem to keep on keepin' on, old SF authors - Heinlein, Herbert, now Varley, seem to fall prey to DOM (Dirty Old Man) syndrome. It's disappointing, and a cautionary tale for my increasingly aged self.

Science as Art

For my birthday, my oldest daughter gave me the book "Waves Passing In The Night", by Lawrence Weschler, 2017, 176 pages, subtitled "Walter Murch in the Land of the Astrophysicists". She got me both the hardcover and the Kindle versions of the book. I scanned through the hardcover and looked at the pictures and then read the Kindle version so I could annotate passages. The book is a quick and interesting read.

Per Wikipedia, Walter Murch "is an American film editor and sound designer. With a career stretching back to 1969, including work on Apocalypse Now, The Godfather I, II, and III, American Graffiti, The Conversation, and The English Patient, with three Academy Award wins (from nine nominations: six for picture editing and three for sound mixing), he has been referred to as "the most respected film editor and sound designer in the modern cinema."" He is also an amateur astrophysicist, and this book is the story of him trying to get professional astrophysicists interested in revisiting the mostly discredited 18th century Titius-Bode's Law, which predicts the positions of planets' orbits in the solar system. Bode's Law largely was assigned to the dustbin of history when Neptune was discovered in an orbit completely at odds with the law.

Murch seems like a very bright and creative guy. He helped develop the now ubiquitous Dolby 5.1 sound system with George Lucas. He carries a knapsack filled with "fortune cookie fortunes". 9 are given, this was my favorite:

Music is the pleasure the human soul experiences from counting without being aware that it is counting. — GOTTFRIED LEIBNIZ

There is a a lot of interesting material on ancient ideas including the Music of the Spheres. I had never heard of the quadrivium.

From Pythagorean antiquity through the Middle Ages and well into the Renaissance, all learned gentlemen (and they were all mainly gentlemen) were steeped in the fourfold classical curriculum known as the quadrivium, which is to say, arithmetic (pure number), geometry (number in space), music (number in time), and astronomy (number in space and time).

I liked this new word: apophenia - "“The widespread tendency of human beings to see patterns where there are no patterns.”" Ah, Wikipedia says our old friend Confirmation Bias "is a variation of apophenia", and lists another old friend, pareidolia, as its 1st example of apophenia.

There has always been opposition to the acceptance of Bode's Law. Carl Friederich Gauss, the 18th century "Mozart of Mathematics", raised 3 objections, the last 2 being

Gauss observed that, furthermore, Titius and Bode were dealing with just too few “planets” (eight) from which to derive a reliable law— any chance arrangement of a small number of objects (coins tossed on a table, birds singing on a tree branch), he argued, could be accounted for if you allowed yourself, as Bode and Titius had, a sufficient number of arbitrary constants.

Finally, there didn’t appear to be any physical explanation for why this clunky formula might be playing out in the actual physical world.

But Murch still forges ahead. He feels like his expertise with sound gave him insight into something that maybe was a resonance-based phenomenon, like musical harmony is. He applies Bode's law to Jupiter and Saturn's moons, and to some of the data on the new non-solar planetary systems being discovered by observatories like the Kepler satellite.

But, there are so many exceptions that the acrobatics required to try to make things work reminded me of the epicycles of earth-centric theories of the solar system. Munch theorizes the existence of some form of standing wave around gravitational bodies. This is evocative, but as 1 of the astrophysicists who reluctantly engages with Munch points out, if there were such standing waves in the metric, they would have to throw off all satellite communications, both nearby such as GPS, and far away, such as our spacecraft exploring the outer solar system. But then Munch finds an article saying that there are some discrepancies in GPS signals, so off we go again.

Several of the astrophysicists with whom Munch does succeed in engaging seem sympathetic, but, in the end, rightfully dismissive. Here is the conclusion of Lee Smolin of the Perimeter Institute of Toronto, who seemed to be very sympathetic to Munch and his efforts.

My sense is that Walter has done just about as well as any lay person could do, without the tools and discipline instilled by succeeding in a Ph.D program. The main thing a professional life in science teaches is that almost every idea is wrong. [my bold] All of us who work in science have seen most or all of our cherished, beautiful ideas fail. This is the tragic element of a life in science. Few are immune. What a life in science teaches one is that science is really, really, really hard to do right.

The main mistake Walter is making is to stay in love with his first idea. Only when you have seen your first 20 or 50 ideas die do you begin to appreciate what it means to have a good scientific idea. This is why laypeople like Walter never succeed in contributing to science— they cannot give up their first ideas.

The second mistake Walter is making is to underestimate the likelihood that a flexible theory can be invented and adjusted to fit random data, even when it is based on wrong ideas. This, unfortunately, happens all the time in medical science. If one has 100 factors to try to correlate with a disease, and one requires 95% probability for a match to be taken as a result, then at least five of them will appear to fit, just by chance. The literature of science and medicine is full of ideas that had some success at a 95% or even 99% level, but on further examination were found to be wrong.

Every year we see “discoveries” of new particles in experiments at the 95% or 99% level, which is to say better than Bode’s law does, which go away when larger data sets are taken. This is why the standard for discovery in particle physics is five sigma (one chance in 3 million of arising by chance). Even so, last year there was a five sigma “discovery” in cosmology that got lots of attention before it was shown that the effect could be explained by reflection off of dust in our own galaxy.

Bode’s law has if I understand right three free parameters. There were initially six known planets. The right question to ask is how likely is it someone could have invented a rule with three free parameters that fit six numbers. The answer is that given that there are a vast number of simple patterns with three parameters, the probability that something like Bode’s law could have been found to match random planetary orbits is close to one. And given Neptune, and the 50% success rate with some systems and the 5% success rate with other systems, the law has done about as poorly as could be expected were it an accidental fit, fine tuned to a small data set.

When a hypothesis works in half the new cases, or when it has a five percent success rate against a new data set, the right conclusion to draw is that the hypothesis is wrong. We must throw such ideas away if science is to be a source of reliable knowledge, and progress.

Note that Smolin has been critical of science becoming too inbred. In 2006 he published a book titled "The Trouble With Physics", which was critical of string theory. Weschler references these objections, and recalls how at the start of the Enlightenment, a lot of scientists were amateurs.

But, that was 250 years ago, we have moved beyond that now. Towards the end of the book, I found myself getting a little annoyed with the degree to which Weschler seems to have drunk Munch's kool-aid.

This brings me to the title of this post. Maybe we need something new to call what Munch is doing. It's not science - he simply doesn't have the training or math. But it is interesting and pretty. Who doesn't love a good pattern, even if there is nothing particularly fundamental underlying it?

So, maybe "science-art"? Googling "science as art" brings up shows and competitions for the prettiest pictures generated by science via microscopes, etc. "Science-fiction" and "science-fantasy" are already spoken for. There must be a good word for this. Maybe Aimee Mann can inspire us ...

A quick and enjoyable read, with several FFTKAT. Thanks Erica!

Music

With this post, I think I'm going to get mostly caught up on music in. _Unrated smart playlist in iTunes is only at 111 songs.

But 1st, a music out update. From June 1 to June 5 I played 3 paying gigs: with Steve & Chris at J. Render's Friday, filling in in the house band for Dane Sadler at the Squires Tavern Sunday jam, and in the house band at the Tuesday's Sherman House Blues Jam at Lynagh's. I have been 2nd guitarist of record st the Tuesday Jam for a few weeks now, with Brent Carter on the other guitar, Matt Noell (whose gig it is) on bass, and Roger Barber on drums.

So, we did Purple Rain last week and everybody seemed to like it. I figured we'd close out the night with it again. We get like 4 lines in & the bar owner, our patroness Amy, walks up to me and says "I love you guys to death, but no Purple Rain". So we stopped ?!?!? Really kind of freaked me out. A mental blow of some sort - plus I suspect that this songus interruptus is going to leave "Purple Rain" stuck in my head for days. And what about 1A?

I just had a birthday, I'm 67 now, at some point I'm assuming I will be too old to keep going out and playing blues and rock in bars - this made me think maybe it's time to quit - or maybe to quit playing at Lynagh's. I think it's at least 1 strike.

Music in, let's see what we got. I have determined that in general it takes a max of 4 listens to rate an album.

• "Soul of a Woman", Sharon Jones & The Dap-Kings, 2017. Is the 1st posthumous album I've rated? Ms. Jones death was untimely. This album is as good as her others - open up a can of funk. 4 stars. Here's "Searching for a New Day".

• "Diamonds", JOHNNYSWIM, 2014. Not sure where I found this. A male/female singing duo out of LA. Very listenable. I had this as 4 stars, but I couldn't find a track I liked enough to include here, so, 3 stars
• "Utopia", Björk, 2017. The world's greatest living composer. She has recently done themes for albums: all brass, all voices. This one has lots of woodwinds, but also songs without them. Like this one, "Arisen My Senses". What a weird-ass video. Wow, this woman is such a genius. 4 stars.

• "The Greatest Gift", Sufjan Stevens, 2017. This album has both remixes and new material. Several of the remixes are some of my fav of his songs, so 4 stars, because I really enjoy his music. He was raised in some sort of christian cult, sometimes he seems to be carrying some of it with him. Several of his songs reference "the cross". Here's the short title tune.

• "Tribute To 2", Jim James, 2017. Mr. James is the leader of the most successful band in KY history, My Morning Jacket, out of Louisville. I was confused. I thought this was a "tribute to" 2 artists. But, no, he earlier released "Tribute To", a general "old standards" type album, this was the 2nd edition of that concept. None of the songs really work much for me. 3 stars.
• "How To Solve Our Human Problems (Part 1)", Belle & Sebastian, 2017. Only 5 tracks. 4 stars. Since they upped their energy level a little while back, I have liked their stuff a lot more. Here's "We Were Beautifil".

• "I can feel you creep into my private life", Tune-Yards, 2018. 4 stars. Still not as good as her 1st album but better than the last. Here's the 1st track, "Heart Attack".

• "My Life in the Bush of Ghosts", Brian Eno/David Byrne, 2006. Byrne describes this album almost as a sound-effect-making effort in his book "How Music Works", reviewed/summarized here. It is odd to listen too, but its 17 tracks will be something different when they come up individually on shuffle play. 3 stars.
• "Always Ascending", Franz Ferdinand, 2018. A good album, but they are a bit brash for me at this state. 3 stars. However I did like the song "Huck and Jim": "We're coming to america, we're going to tell them about the NHS."
• "Everything Was Beautiful, and Nothing Hurt", Moby, 2018. Moby writes such beautiful stuff. 4 stars. Here's "Like a Motherless Child".

• "Nudes", Lucius & guests, 2018. 4 stars. I still like their songs best when the guys get to sing too. They do a cover of "Right Down The Line". Here's "Tempest".

• "Yellow House", Grizzly Bear, 2006. 4 stars. I mentioned to my drummer nephew Max how Grizzly Bear was probably my favorite "new" band. He questioned the "new" - well, new to me anyway. He referenced this early Grizzly Bear album as one he listened to a lot Back In The Day - thanks Max. A lot of this sounds more like Department of Eagles than Grizzly Bear - that offshoot continues to be a source of confusion to me. Here's "Lullabye".

• "Valleys of Neptune", Jimi Hendrix, 2010. 4 stars. In March "Both Sides of the Sky", a posthumous album of unreleased recordings came out to generally good reviews. I learned that this was the 3rd album like this that had been produced. So I decided to go back to the 1st 1, "Valleys of Neptune" and work up to the latest. I liked a version of "Sunshine of Your Love". Here's the title track.

• "American Utopia", David Byrne, 2018. 4 stars. Byrne continues to produce great albums. Here's "Every Day Is A Miracle".

• "The First Sip", Whilk & Misky, 2014. 4 stars. 4 tracks. The Goddess of YouTube decided I should see the 1st track of this album after something else I had requested. What a great tune! Plus I love the mouth trumpet. Steve & Chris has added this song to our book. The band is a duo of white guys out of London. Here's that 1st track, "Clap Your Hands". This is a great video too.

• "My Round", Whilk & Misky, 2017, 4 stars. Those 4 tracks weren't enough, this album has 6 more. Here's "Oh Brother (featuring Nia Wyn)".

• "Clean", Soccer Mommy, 2018. 4 stars. I bought this album by mistake. Soccer Mommy was playing at The Burl and I really enjoyed the 1st act, Madeline Kenney (see below). So I went to the table and brought a CD - for the headliner. Regardless, I have enjoyed it. Very laid back indy rock type stuff. Here's "Last Girl".

• "Sex & Food", Unknown Mortal Orchestra, 2018. I think I got referred to this album because I liked Tame Impala - basically a 1-man Austraiian band - and UMO is a 1 man New Zealand band. 4 stars. Very creative, particularly on the orchestration. Here's "Hunnybee", with a tasty opening guitar lick followed by a disco beat.

• "The Cloud And The Clearing", My Brother's Keeper, 2017. I saw these guys at the Twisted Cork open mic and at Willie's Locally Known. Very tight and clean 3-piece bluegrass. Got the album and, listening, found every song to be pushing serious theist propaganda. Ugh. 2 stars.
• "Let's Make Love", Brazilian Girls, 2018. 4 stars. 13 tracks. Better than their last couple of efforts. Wow, it's been 10 years since their last album. Great dance music. Here's the 1st track, "Pirates".

• "Treasures from the Temple", Thievery Corporation, 2018. 4 stars. 12 tracks. What a great mix of influences these guys put together, particularly the reggae. Here's "Water Under The Bridge (featuring Natalia Clavier)".

• "Night Night At The First Landing", Madeline Kenney, 2017. 4 stars except for 1 track I didn't like. This the woman who opened for Soccer Mommy (see above). After I figured out I hadn't bought her album, I found it online and downloaded it. She was playing a Strat largely on the low strings, with a female drummer and a male bass player. Some really unique sounds, in a fairly laid back indy rock framework. Here's "Rita".

• "Dirty Computer", Janelle Monáe. 2018. 4 stars. 14 tracks. She has such great concepts, but I don't think the tunes on this album are as catchy as some of her prior work. Here's a nice dance number, "Make Me Feel".

• "Last Man Standing", Willie Nelson, 2018. 4 stars. This got good reviews, and us old guys got to stick together. Damn, Willie is 85. I will buy all his albums from here on out. I like the lyrics to the title track: "I don't want to be the last man standing. But, wait a minute, maybe I do."

• "7", Beach House, 2018. 3 stars. A review of this said "Finally an album you can listen to with other people rather than just by yourself". Still seemed a little too laid back for me.
• Eponymous, Rage Against The Machine, 1992. 4 stars. My FL friend Joe Fink (drummer) posted a cover of "Wake Up" by Brass Against The Machine. What a strong video. This is the music from the end of the 1st Matrix movie, when Neo flies off into the sunset. Strong female singer, good guitar player, drummer, horn section of sousaphone, bari sax, 2 trombones, 2 trumpets. I really seem to hear a bass guitar, but can't spot a bass player in the video. The Rage Against The Machine album is a lot brasher than I usually listen too, but it is great stuff.

  The message of this song is so topical now. But this song originally came 26 years ago. So the line at the end "How long? Not long!" has not played out. A little discouraging. But, still, we gots to keep on keepin' on, and fight the old lizards.

Wow, 26 albums, and we are current through the end of May! FTW!

This Time For Sure

Posted as a comment to this article:

Look. Capitalism has worked. The world is awash in capital. We used to have tons of nature & not much capital, now we have tons of capital but a rapidly diminishing amount of nature.

Since the 1950s we have been in a post scarcity economy - else the marketing industry would not be spending $$$B to convince people to buy things they don't need.

There's plenty to go around, for the whole world. We just need to thank capitalism for the great job it did accumulating capital and then adopt an accounting system that changes our score keeping algorithms to where everyone wins, not just the .01%.

The filthy rich will still be filthy rich. We may not even need to go to the punitive 95% tax levels of the 1950s - the greatest decade ever, right, old white people?

Money is software. We can literally say "OK, everyone is rich now!" and make it work. Everybody won't get a McMansion. but, we can have universal health care; universal education, academic or trades, to whatever level you are capable of; universal basic income; universal capital access; and NO HUNGRY CHILDREN WITH STUNTED BRAIN GROWTH.

I've said this so many times, I think I keep on doing it periodically because I hope that at some point I will state it perfectly and it will go viral and everyone will say "Yes! That's easy! Let's change our post-scarcity economy into a post-scarcity utopia!"

You know though, the biggest problem may be the need that some people seem to have, that there be people that they can look down on. Come on, folks, can't we get past that?!?!?

7 Down, 34 To Go

My Unread shelf in the Kobo eBook app on my iPad was up to 41 books, so I decided binge some science fiction.

1st up, "Overclocked", by Cory Doctorow, 2016, 388 pages. 8 most excellent stories mostly dealing with computing and artificial intelligence, which Doctorow totally gets. I particularly liked a couple of stories that feature robots who were programmed to obey Asimov's 3 Laws of Robotics and robots who weren't. "The Man Who Sold The Moon", I had already read in the excellent "Heiroglyph" collection, blogged here. I didn't reread it.

Next up, "Null States", by Malka Older, 2017, 432 pages. The sequel to "Infomocracy", blogged here. So the system of micro-democracy proposed in "Infomocracy" may not be working out. Plus ninjas. Almost all the major characters are women, plus it has the same international feel as "Infomacracy". All in all a page turner.

Next up, "Head On", by John Scalzi, 2818, 336 pages. The sequel to "Lock In", blogged here. People with consciousness locked into their bodies (Hayden syndrome) who escape into VR and robot bodies. The same characters as "Lock In", the Hayden FBI agent and his bad-cop-from-hell partner. A snappy police procedural, definitely a page turner.

Next, 3 short pieces by Scalzi. He sells these for $0.99 or occassionally $1.99, which is more than you would pay for them in a short story collection. It's probably a nice supplemental income for Scalzi, and they are usually pretty amusing. They were:

• "The Tale of the Wicked": a space opera with AI thrown in;
• "How I Proposed to My Wife: An Alien Sex Story": an amusing story of human/alien interactions;
• "Judge Sn Goes Golfing": another humorous story featuring an alien judge who is the world's worst golfer and biggest asshole.

Finally, "Infinity Wars", edited by Jonathan Strahan, 2017, 356 pages. Apparently Strahan has done a number of collections with "Infinity" in the title. This is 15 short stories set in the future concerning war. I was around 1/2 way through before there started being some interesting stories. The 1 that really stood out was "Weather Girl", by E.J. Swift, about US info-warriors using cyber-warfare to hide climate crisis induced weather events from their future victims so as to maximize the damage. Horrifying and cynical to a level reminiscent of Frederick Pohl. I have ordered Ms. Swift's latest novel, "Paris Adrift".

It looks like the 35th Year's Best Science Fiction will be the last. Gardner Dozois died May 27, 2018. Reading that collection has been an annual ritual for ... 35 years. I'm not sure if I'll pick a new annual collection to read or not.

I'm on the magazine stack for June now. I think more sci-fi up next, still need to get that Unread shelf down to size.