March | 2024 | Bob Schwartz

March 30, 2024

Gaza is more and more Biden’s Vietnam

Rhetoric doesn’t end war and save lives. Whatever the rhetoric he and his administration announce, Biden continues to arm a nation pursuing a questionable war strategy that is killing thousands. Reported just yesterday:

US reportedly approves transfer to Israel of bombs and jets worth billions
Sources say weapons package authorized even as Washington expresses public concern over anticipated offensive in Rafah
Friday, March 29, 2024

The US in recent days authorized the transfer of billions of dollars worth of bombs and fighter jets to Israel, two sources familiar with the effort said on Friday, even as Washington publicly expresses concerns about an anticipated Israeli military offensive in Rafah.

The new arms packages include more than 1,800 MK-84 2,000lb bombs and 500 MK-82 500lb bombs, said the sources, who confirmed a report in the Washington Post.

Whether you lived through the Vietnam War or know it only as history, this is seeming oppressively and depressingly familiar, not just as an unnecessary tragedy, but as a political nightmare.

LBJ accomplished a lot of important things for America, but his stubborn support of the war in Vietnam doomed his reelection in 1968, leading him to drop out of the race, and leading to the horrors of the Nixon White House.

Biden has also accomplished a lot of important things for America. But he already goes into the 2024 election with widespread questions about his age. Now added to that is his stubborn support, despite his rhetoric, for a war that is already tragic and a situation that will not look better by the time of the election.

The analogy isn’t perfect. But as the saying goes, history may not repeat itself, but it rhymes. This is looking a lot like Biden’s Vietnam. And as terrible as the Nixon presidency was, the Trump regime would be more evil and dangerous. Is there still time for Biden to do more than talk, to stand up and use American military support as leverage? Even if he does, is it too late to make a difference in what is almost certainly a toss-up election, with Biden in the eyes of some voters—especially some Democratic voters—a villain?

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March 30, 2024

Jolene: Dolly Parton or Miley Cyrus or Beyonce?

You know or should that Dolly Parton has written and recorded many great country and pop songs, including Jolene:

Jolene please don’t take my man
Jolene please don’t take him just because you can

You know or should that Miley Cyrus, another talented artist, is Dolly’s goddaughter, who has performed a number of her godmother’s songs, including Jolene.

You may guess that Beyonce is not related in that way, but did just release her version of Jolene.

How do they compare? You be the judge. Just for the record, my order of preference is: Dolly, Miley and Beyonce. Your results may vary.

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March 29, 2024

Listen without prejudice: While we try to get past identity, can we get past musical genre too?

There are now as many musical genres and sub-genres as stars in the sky.

Speaking of stars, we cannot escape learning that Beyonce has a new album that is identified by many as country music. Her PR folks are stressing that it isn’t a country album, it’s a Beyonce album, all the while stirring the genre pot for maximum coverage.

The best and most creative pop music frequently crosses genres. The individual Beatles grew up loving to listen to everything—music hall, R&B, Little Richard, rockabilly, country, rock, etc.—and turned that love into a lasting catalog of ever-listenable songs. (If you want pure country, listen to the Beatle’s I Don’t Want to Spoil the Party below.) Years later, Kurt Cobain put his love of the Beatles into the strangely melodic sound of grunge.

George Michael had something else in mind when he titled his 1990 album Listen Without Prejudice. But that message also applies to musical silos, or for that matter cultural silos of all kinds. When you listen, or read, or watch, pay less attention to the tags and more attention to the actual work and its qualities for you. It isn’t a crime to love a particular track or artist. It isn’t a crime to not love a particular track or artist. Just listen to it on its own terms, whatever it’s called. Otherwise you might miss something.

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March 28, 2024

Music: Listening to Phil Spector’s wall of sound on a phone

I listen to music on speakers or earbuds. Occasionally on a four-speaker tablet. Rarely on a phone speaker.

When Phil Spector created his “wall of sound” recordings in the 1960s, they were intended to be played by AM stations broadcasting to transistor or car radios. The definition of lo-fi. He believed that the right kind of layered big production could overcome these limitations. He is legendary for that music.

These days, it is the limitations of Spector’s productions that show up on high-tech equipment. And yet…

To simulate what it was like to hear the records on a tiny radio speaker, I played the tracks on a phone speaker. Do you know what? The sound is rough around the edges. But what Spector wanted was to give a new generation of pop music listeners an experience they never had before. It works. Try it. Turn it up.

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March 28, 2024

Claude AI (aka Bucky) helps us become great generalists

R. Buckminster Fuller (1895-1983)—widely known as Bucky—was a world-changing architect, systems theorist, writer, designer, inventor, philosopher, and futurist. He was a genius and prophet of generalism. He believed that over-specialization narrows us and stands in the way of solving problems and envisioning the future.

When Stewart Brand began publishing the Whole Earth Catalog in the 1960s, he put Fuller’s books on the very first page. “The insights of Buckminster Fuller initiated this catalog,” he wrote. As a mission for the holistic all-encompassing general reach of the catalog Brand said, “We are as gods and might as well get good at it.”

Fuller attributed his big-picture holistic perspective to his service as a naval officer in the early 20th century. At the time, and in some ways still, ships at sea were almost entirely self-sufficient. Those on board had to know about everything and be able to do anything. That is reflected in one of his most famous books, Operating Manual for Spaceship Earth.

Claude and other AI resources can help us become better generalists. The World Wide Web (thank you Tim Berners-Lee) was a major step in that direction. AI is the next step. It is not that Claude can access trillions of words while even the best of us only know thousands. It is that when we are motivated to know more about lots of things—which as gods we should want—we have a new resource to help us be the generalists that we need to be. Now more than ever.

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March 22, 2024

Crumbs

Crumbs are wheat and water
A meal for a bird
Or starving man
Untidy for the well-fed
A trail of clues
To a way out
The loaf is whole again
In water and wheat

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March 22, 2024

Haman in Gaza (Purim 5784)

“There is a certain people. They do not keep the king’s laws, so that it is not appropriate for the king to tolerate them. Let a decree be issued for their destruction.”
Esther 3:8

Haman is in Gaza
God is not
in Esther

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March 20, 2024

The cost and danger of earnest equivocation

And to the angel of the church in Laodicea write: The words of the Amen, the faithful and true witness, the origin of God’s creation:
I know your works; you are neither cold nor hot. I wish that you were either cold or hot. So, because you are lukewarm, and neither cold nor hot, I am about to spit you out of my mouth.
Book of Revelation 3:14-16 (NRSV)

There are two kinds of equivocation. One is the careless “oh well” or “whatever”. The other is a concerned and studied “on the one hand, on the other hand”.

There can be value in a subtle and nuanced analysis that leads to an equivocal conclusion and solution. It can be a corrective to a stubborn, thoughtless or selfish attachment to one argument or one side.

But circumstances and situations don’t stand still. If and when one side goes from inconvenient and troubling outcomes to dangerous and tragic ones, what then for an equivocal position? It is possible to claim that changed circumstances now change the equivalence. But we can’t pretend that the delayed rebalancing, the belated abandonment of equivalence, has not had a cost and irretrievable loss.

It may be late to choose non-equivocation. Late to choose cold or hot. Late for those who would otherwise be alive and thriving. But never too late.

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March 18, 2024

Bring me the rhinoceros fan

I began today listening to birds:

If birds sing in the morning
Why not me
Why not we

I quickly turned to a rhinoceros.* There is a famous Zen koan that has nothing to do with birds. Also everything to do with birds, even if they are not mentioned.

I thought of writing about the koan here. Funny that I haven’t before. I thought of sending friends the koan, found at Blue Cliff Record 92, without explanation or commentary. What would they think? What do you think?

Yanguan (750-843) called to his attendant, saying, “Bring me the rhinoceros fan**.”
The attendant said, “It’s broken.”
Yanguan said, “If the fan is broken, then bring me the rhinoceros.”
The attendant didn’t answer.

*I didn’t intend for that sentence to be multi-layered, but it could be. I wrote “turned to” to mean changing the subject. One of the great absurdist plays by Eugene Ionesco is Rhinoceros, in which the people of a town one-by-one turn into a rhinoceros. It is sometimes interpreted as a parable about people turning into Nazis during World War II.

**Likely an expensive item, made of rhinoceros horn or picturing a rhinoceros. Not someone who is fanatical about rhinoceros.

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March 17, 2024

Critical mass: Truth/nonsense ratio in public life

Note: Originally I used the word “bullshit” instead of “nonsense”. Even if many of us use the word regularly, it does have a harsh ring. Feel free, when you read “nonsense” to make the substitution.

I am not an expert on the impact of truth and nonsense in public life. I am, however, familiar with both.

For this purpose, I define truth as reasonable, rational, well-informed and even-handed discussion of actuality. Nonsense is discussion that is untruthful, ill-informed, illogical and driven by ideology. Of course many things don’t and can’t neatly fit into those categories. But for this purpose, they will serve.

The premise is that there is always a ratio of the two. Society, the nation, the world are more livable and workable when that ratio is at a certain point. If the ratio of truth to nonsense gets too low—say one part truth to two or three parts nonsense—trouble is on the way, or has already arrived.

That ratio has reached a critically low point in American public life. It shouldn’t be necessary to list the many examples. One election and one major public figure should be enough.

When nonsense overwhelms truth, rather than it just being an unavoidable and unhelpful element, the consequences can be dire and unpredictable. People who value truth grow discouraged and demoralized. People begin to wonder whether truth is achievable or worthwhile pursuing. People begin to think that nonsense in public life isn’t as bad as some say. In fact, for them nonsense may be the most expedient way to reach certain goals.

History is filled with times the truth/nonsense ratio has hit dangerously low levels, sometimes with truth practically disappearing. The outcomes have been tragic.

Is there a rebalancing remedy? I am a sworn optimist. But we can’t ignore that the former president was found to have told more than 10,000 lies during four years in office. That’s an average of about ten lies a day. He’s kept up the pace after leaving office, even under oath. And he’s running again, talking nonsense and having powerful people talk nonsense for him.

What can you do? Speak truth (reasonable, rational, well-informed, even-handed). Encourage and praise truth and truth telling. Discourage, uncover, dispute, politely criticize, aggressively condemn (as appropriate) nonsense, whoever and wherever.

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Month: March, 2024