Michael Blowhard writes:

Dear Blowhards --

A cool new cultureform -- the YouTube dance-off: challenge, response, response-to-response. Lots of mischievous choreography, sharp-witted direction, cute kids, and astounding hiphop acrobatics. (And that Lacey Schwimmer is one racey Mormon. Vavavoom!) Lots of work for chiropracters and surgeons around five years from now too, I'm guessing.

Hey, has anyone else been following Bravo's "Step It Up and Dance"? God, I do love watching dancers. I managed to get through an episode and half -- a new reality-TV-watching record for me. Here's a funny spoof of that Miley Cyrus / Vanity Fair photoshoot.

Best,

Michael

at May 9, 2008 | perma-link | (1) comments

Michael Blowhard writes:

Dear Blowhards --

Nearly twenty five percent of Los Angeles County’s welfare and food stamp benefits goes directly to the children of illegal aliens, at a cost of $36 million a month. (My emphasis.)

Source.

Best,

Michael

at May 9, 2008 | perma-link | (6) comments

Michael Blowhard writes:

Dear Blowhards --

On an interesting thread over at GNXP, Thursday issued a challenge. I'd been goofing around, writing that "novels themselves were quite disreputable at the outset -- the reality TV and tabloid-TV of their day. It was only in the second half of the 19th century that some novelists started putting on airs."

Here's Thursday:

Bullshit. No less a "serious" personage than Jean-Jacques Rousseau wrote a novel and a very good one too. Novelists like Richardson, Fielding, and Burney were considered serious writers right from the beginning. Haven't you read Boswell's life of Johnson. I have a hard time believing Jane Austen didn't take her meticulously planned and written books as high art. Tom Jones is planned to classical perfection. Critics like Hazlitt and Coleridge took the novelists like Richardson, Smollett, Sterne and Fielding seriously right from the start. Stop trying to rewrite literary history as if no-one had any clue what was high art and what wasn't.

OK then: Time to get serious myself. Here's my response to Thursday:

You're making a basic mistake. You're projecting current-day critical rankings back onto past eras. You're assuming that what we now consider great was self-evidently Great at the time. No.

Look, what a work's reputation is today often has zip to do with how it was taken (and what it represented) when it was produced. What we now consider great was often taken for granted at the time, or looked-down-on. Defoe's novels are just one example. At the time they were published they weren't taken to be novels in our current sense. They were made-up fantasies that pretended to be works of reportage -- in other words, they were aesthetically and morally dubious productions akin to today's scandal sheets and reality TV, or maybe even to those books that turn up every few years about alien encounters in Australia. It took more than a century before many people started wondering if maybe "Robinson Crusoe" wasn't a pretty good novel. Works often become "literature" in hindsight, not at the time of their production.

No matter how great we recognize "Tom Jones" to be today -- and I'm a big fan myself -- the early British novel was a scrappy and aesthetically scorned form, far more akin in its time to what journalism and TV are these days than to today's "literary fiction." The early English novel was a middle-class market phenomenon, not a serious or intellectual or literary one. We've learned to see structure, complexity, grandeur, and depth in these books only in retrospect.

From Wikipedia's "literature" entry: "Early novels in Europe did not, at the time, count as significant literature, perhaps because 'mere' prose writing seemed easy and unimportant."

From an online resource about Jane Austen: "In Jane Austen's era, novels were often depreciated as trash ... In Jane Austen's day, novels actually had something of the same reputation that mass-market romances do today."

No matter what your opinion of Austen's books these days, and no matter how seriously Austen took herself, in other words, novels at the time were taken to be a lowclass medium.

More from that same page: "Though she always had her admirers, Jane Austen was not the most popular or most highly-praised novelist of her era (none of her novels were reprinted in English between 1818 and 1831), and she was not generally considered a great novelist until the late nineteenth century."

None of this is a big secret, btw. Here's a passage from the NYTimes critic A.O. Scott:

"Since its beginnings in the 18th century, the Western novel was a bastard form, the chaotic hybrid of art and commerce as likely to offend norms of high literature as to uphold them. The 'high-art literary tradition' was, in Augustan England, the preserve of Spenser, Shakespeare, Milton and the great figures of antiquity, in contrast to whom the popular novelists of the day -- a redundancy, since no other kind existed -- were hawkers of morally dubious entertainment."

A few other facts to take into account:

• "Art history" in our modern "critical" sense didn't begin until the mid 1700s, with Winckelmann.

• Public museums and concert halls didn't arise in numbers until the 19th century.

• The term "high culture" didn't come into use until the mid-late 1800s -- around the same time that some Anglo-and-American authors, like Henry James and George Eliot, started making more serious and elevated aesthetic-moral claims for their work than had generally been made for novels before.

• The terms "aesthetics" in the modern sense was invented in the 18th century.
  

In other words, the whole sifting-and-sorting- and-canon-making thing that you seem to take for granted didn't in fact begin as a semi-organized, respectable cultural activity until the mid-1700s, and didn't hit its stride until well into the 1800s. People just weren't thinking that way until fairly recently.

This doesn't mean that people didn't read or revere works from the past. But it does mean that the particular story that profs and critics tell us today about the history of something called "literature" and "serious writing" is one that we've made up fairly recently.

Look, we have plenty of examples of this kind of process going on right around us. Think of the Italian "giallo" thrillers of the 1960s and 1970s, for instance. At the time they were made they were considered crap, or at best stylish crap. Serious critics sneered at 'em, and the audiences for 'em weren't art-house sophisticates. The real film art was Antonioni, Bellochio, etc. Yet today the giallo movies are thriving on DVD, and are probably more influential than "La Notte" is. It could well be that in 20 years Antonioni will be a footnote, and Dario Argento will be recognized as a giant.

Here's Thursday, back at me:

Indisputable fact #1: Rousseau, Johnson, Hazlitt were prominent public intellectuals and recognized as such.

Indisputable fact #2: They took novels, or at least certain novels, very seriously.

You can't dismiss that. That _most_ novels were taken to be trash is neither here nor there. Its analagous to films now. Its widely acknowledged that most movies are just trashy entertainment. That doesn't mean that Martin Scorsese and Steven Spielberg aren't recognized as great artists in their own lifetimes. There isn't any contradiction here. Both can be true at the same time.

BTW have you actually read Johnson, Hazlitt etc? How come the only novelists discussed by Johnson in Boswell's life are Richardson, Fielding, Burney and Sterne? Geez, those are exactly the same novelists from that era with the highest reputations now. Ever wonder why? Have you actually read Hazlitt's Lectures on the English Comic Writers? The novels he picks to discuss there are all the exact same ones from his era we think of as important now. Geez, coincidence again. Why _do_ these great critics _only_ choose to discuss the same novelists, contemporary with them, that anyone still cares about today? How come they have such an uncanny ability to only discuss winners? Why not just take the next step and acknowledge that Johnson and Hazlitt, great critics that they were, could recognize that these were the only novelists worth discussing?

Remember, just because _you_, Michael Blowhard, cannot recognize what will and will not last does not mean that people of the intelligence and sensitivity of Hazlitt and Johnson cannot. Great artists and critics can pick each other out, because geniuses see the patterns before everybody else. Just because you and most other people cannot is irrelevant.

And my final response:

You're living in a fantasy world, one where responsible serious people -- whose seriousness and eminence are recognizable at the very instant they're working, by, presumably, other trustworthy and serious people (hahahahaha) -- make trustworthy judgments that endure for centuries.

I'm sorry to be the one to break it to you, but that isn't the way the actual cultural world works. Reputations come and go. Periods (and individuals, and schools) interpret the past to suit themselves. Ensuing periods then reinterpret the past to suit them. Talented work and artists get overlooked and forgotten. Everyone has a career they're looking out for.

Work that no respectable person championed (giallo films, or Gold Medal Books, for instance) turns out to have more of a lifespan than the work that all the serious, responsible people thought would be enduring.

It looks like some people's judgments were freakily prescient (aka "wise") only because we're looking back at them.

Out of this free-for-all, something called "an artistic tradition" has emerged. But no one has control of it. It's an emergent phenomenon in the evo-bio sense -- no one's in charge, and we're all part of the bewildering churning process. Perhaps we have a few microseconds now and then when we seem to have a bit of perspective on it all -- but then we're submerged in the tumult once again.

There are probably some general rules to be deduced from the meta-ebby-flowiness -- but what are they? And do they function as any kind of guide to the future? Because there's always the possibility, after all, that the things we think of as trustworthy general rules have embedded in them a kind of telomere-like sell-by date. We may think we understand the game, we may feel certain that we've gotten to the very heart of it -- and then the game itself may change. Can you trustworthily predict in what way it's likely to evolve? Can anyone?

Besides, since "art history" and "literary history" as we know them didn't really get started until the 18th century, they may well come to an end. They had a birth, after all -- why shouldn't they also die? It isn't entirely unlikely that in 350 years, art history and literary history will expire. No one will care about the art of the past. The reason this isn't a totally unlikely scenario is that that's pretty much how people lived for most of human history. Our little stretch may prove to be a little blip of an exception to some far more major and fundamental General Rule.

Incidentally, yes of course I've read Johnson, Hazlitt, etc. The 18th century was my academic specialty. Once I left school, though, and got a look at the way the real cultural world works, I had to go back, dig in, take a fresh look at it, and finally revise nearly everything my teachers taught me. Have you read "New Grub Street," or the first half of "Lost Illusions"? If you want accurate representations of how the writing-and-publishing worlds work, you could do worse.

A small correction to one of your points: Early novels weren't like movies today. Today nobody disputes that movies are (or at least can be) an art form. There are cinema-studies departments in most colleges; professional academics and critics; festivals and grant-making institutions ...

The world of early novels wasn't like that. No writing schools, no PhDs, no well-trod career tracks, no established business procedures ... Copyright wasn't even well-established at the time. Have you read much about the history of copyright? It's one of those things (like the history of publishing) that English majors really ought to be exposed to.

The world of early novels was like the world of early movies. And almost no one, at the dawn of movies, saw what was coming.

Please, please point out the wise, objective person who looked at early movies and predicted that they would be one of the premier art forms of the 20th century, let alone that (for example) Buster Keaton would be widely recognized as a towering genius.

To my knowledge, the observer who came closest to this was Vachel Lindsay. (Whose writing I like a lot, btw.) But at the time Vachel Lindsay was just one person among millions of people watching movies and gabbing about them. Would you have known -- at the time -- that he was right? Would you even have known of his existence? Vachel Lindsay is known these days as a prescient person (and he has a place on the essential cinema studies reading list) because we can look back and see that he proved to be prescient. But no one at the time knew that he was on his way into the cinema-history Permanent Collection. How could they have? No one at the time even had a clue that such a thing as Cinema Studies -- let alone a Cinema Studies Permanent Collection -- would ever exist.

Anyway, early novels were roughly like early movies: commercial, looked-down-on, scrappy, and nothing that 99.9% of people thought of as "art."

And a quick comment I left to Oran Kelly, who I think thought that I was overdoing the irreverence towards contempo "literary fiction":

Of course I'm simplifying, and of course you can poke around and find exceptions. But there's some virtue in blocking in the big picture and getting it straight, no?

The "literary fiction" thing ... Well, it's one of those questions that confuses a lot of people simply because of the word, or the name, or whatever you want to call it.

It's like "art" in that way. Is "art" simply something some people do? Or is it a quality judgment? Is a given painting "art" simply because it got made? Or does it not qualify as "art" until a bunch of trustworthy eminences whose judgements will hold for all eternity (hahahahahaha) have proclaimed it art?

People wind up having fistfights because they don't pause to straighten out what they mean by "art." So it's worth straightening out definitions and meanings.

Contempo "literary fiction" is simply a category of fiction. It's the category of fiction that considers itself to be serious; that claims that it is the true literature of today; and that would be offended it you referred to it as a category. But practically speaking, there you have it -- it's just one category of fiction among many. You might pick up a romance, or a space opera, or a manga, or a crime novel, or a lit-fict title. They're all categories.

"Literature" on the other hand is, I guess, "writing that has lasted," or something like that.

The key thing to grasp: Despite the similarity in the names, there is no necessary connection between today's "literary fiction" and "literature." After all, the writing of today that will still be alive in 200 years -- if any of it is -- may or may not come from the shelves of titles that are published as today's "literary fiction." Do you feel certain that the contempo lit-fict writer David Foster Wallace will be revered in the year 2208, while the crime writer Joseph Wambaugh won't be?

Anyway, the separating-off of contempo lit-fict from the rest of contempo fiction is something that has occurred partly because of writing schools, the '60s, etc. But it's also partly because of the computerizing of inventories. Books are now all entered into computers, and each title has to be entered into the database. So in many ways the database rules. By the way, these database categories aren't really organic categories, like poetic forms or literary genres. They're categories that sorta seem to suit what people are looking for, that may have a little something to do with traditional meanings, but that mainly suit the way the database works. And the database exists to suit the needs of wholesalers, warehousers, retailers, etc -- not the needs of lit-history.

(UPDATE: I'd argue in all seriousness that whoever it was who first computerized a bookstore's inventory has had much more impact on contempo fiction than has, say, a revered intellectual like Harold Bloom.)

Today, it's all chopped-up. In the past ... There used to be a continuum from grotty fiction through middlebrow to lofty. But, in a bookstore in 1940, new fiction was generally shelved all together (with some underground stuff -- violent, porno -- kept under the counter). These days that isn't the case. Fiction is split up (database-wise as well as physically) into numerous different categories. You're either one thing (sci-fi, say) or you're another (lit-fict, for instance).

I'm giving myself the last word because I can, and because it's my blog. But Thursday and Oran may respond again, so please check the GNXP thread to see where they take the discussion.

It's always a pleasure to yak with Thursday -- who, when he blogs, blogs here. Alias Clio had some thoughts about Razib's posting too.

Semi-related: I wrote about Gold Medal Books; about the "literary fiction" thang; about 17th and 18th century England's coffee-house culture; and about the art-historical ups and downs of Piero Della Francesca's reputation. In a humorous vein, I tried my hand at predicting which culture-things from our time will live for the ages.

Best,

Michael

at May 9, 2008 | perma-link | (5) comments

Michael Blowhard writes:

Dear Blowhards --

Shouting Thomas goes public with his new CD. Down and dirty cover-band music, baby -- let the party begin.

Best,

Michael

at May 8, 2008 | perma-link | (1) comments

Michael Blowhard writes:

Dear Blowhards --

PatrickH and Benjamin Hemric are raving about the new place that painter / filmmaker Julian Schnabel has created in New York City's West Village. Thanks to Benjamin for turning up this page of info and pix. I haven't visited yet, but from the photos Schnabel's place looks like overripe decadent boho bliss of a very high order.

(FWIW, I don't care for Schnabel's paintings, which I find bombastic and silly. But I think he's a very talented filmmaker. Start with his biopic "Basquiat," which features a great performance by Jeffrey Wright, and which does a peerless job of conveying the intoxicating / nightmarish quality that life in the NYC visual-arts world can have.)

One non-fan has this to say about Schnabel's new place, though: "He's obviously trying to pretend that this looks somehow Florentine or Venetian, when, really, it looks like a Malibu Barbie house that exploded."

Best,

Michael

at May 8, 2008 | perma-link | (6) comments

Michael Blowhard writes:

Dear Blowhards --

* Polly Frost confesses that she's just a "genre slut."

* As though it wasn't bad enough to get cancer at age 33, the cancer that star Chicago chef Grant Achatz developed was on his tongue. Can you say "Beethoven" and "deafness"? Jennifer Tanaka has the story.

* Did Roman gladiators eat too many carbs?

* An excellent collection of interviews -- audio and transcripts both -- with James Kunstler.

* Tyler Cowen volunteers a list of his country music faves. Commenters leap in with many more suggestions.

* Daniel McCarthy takes stock of the Ron Paul campaign.

* Is drinking fruit juice really all that healthy?

* Jock Sturges: highbrow pornographer, or upholder of classical standards of beauty?

* Lester Hunt watches Leni Riefenstahl's "Triumph of the Will."

* Does the Russian ballet establishment abuse its female charges?

* Dark Party Review interviews Glenn Mercer, frontman for the legendary early-'80s punk band The Feelies.

* A fabulously sexy NSFW link prompts a a not-bad question.

* MBlowhard Rewind: I tried to make some sense of how best to approach the word "intellectual."

Best,

Michael

at May 8, 2008 | perma-link | (3) comments

Donald Pittenger writes:

Dear Blowhards --

During the weeks leading up to Tuesday's presidential primaries in North Carolina and Indiana, there was scattered commentary that Hillary Clinton had been battered by the competition process into being a better grounded, more likable candidate. No links here 'cause I'm writing this in my Chicago hotel room and will need some sleep soon. In any case the true, or even perceived, persona of H.R. Clinton isn't the focus of this post.

But let's begin by assuming that Hillary was indeed changed by her confrontation of reality on the campaign trail. The question is, would such a change be permanent? That is, if she got to be President, would she be the "old" Hillary we know and love from the Clinton White House years or the "new" Hillary that is actually even more lovable.

I think we would have the old Hillary.

That's because short-term stress in most cases isn't strong enough to create large-scale, fairly permanent personality changes. Especially if the subject returns to his comfortable pre-stress environment. Living in the pampered White House environment of servants and yes-men seems to be an excellent means of personality regression. Perhaps some of the campaign-induced changes might stick, but by "some" I mean "almost none."

Here is an example from my past. When I was a frat-rat in college we ran Hell Week initiation rites. On a few occasions we had doubts about some of the pledges who might be initiated. Do we black-ball them or let them become members? One argument for letting them participate in Hell Week was that the experience would "shape them up."

So through Hell Week they went. And for a few weeks or a month thereafter, they had indeed "shaped up." Then they regressed. By the end of the school term they were their own not-so smooth selves.

This is not to say that hardship can have an effect. It can. But it probably needs to be exceedingly severe (short -term) or else a lengthy process. And the previous environment also needs to have been altered enough that regression is harder to do.

Or so I think. What do you think?

Later,

Donald

at May 7, 2008 | perma-link | (2) comments

Michael Blowhard writes:

Dear Blowhards --

Steve is asking all kinds of Sailer-esque, so-basic-they're-dangerous questions about art and art history.

Best,

Michael

at May 7, 2008 | perma-link | (4) comments

Michael Blowhard writes:

Dear Blowhards --

A little fun with comparing-and-contrasting.

In our first pairing, the theme is outlines and shapes.

The top building, the traditional one: Check out the variety and quantity of shapes. Trace the outline of the building with your finger -- takes some concentration and time, no? Incidentally: You may or may not know the names and histories of all the architectural elements playing roles in this composition. It really doesn't matter, unless you're (shudder) a scholar or a pedant. The important thing is to sense that they're embedded in western art history. And how is it possible not to do that?

The bottom cluster of modernist buildings: a buncha shoeboxes covered with graph paper. One of them has been given a twist -- that's what too-often qualifies as "architectural creativity" these days. Trace these outlines with a finger -- it's fast, easy, and majorly boring. We're in a world of simple geometry and dumb abstraction, in other words, with no connection to anything of substance or depth, especially pre-1900 western art history.

An analogy. Traditional architecture is to modernist architecture as traditional handmade art is to Adobe Illustrator images. In a handmade image ...

... you feel the presence of a person. There's subtlety, texture, depth.

In many Adobe Illutrator images ... Well, they certainly pop.

This image is what people in the media biz might call "a quick read" -- it's all edges, planes, gradient fills, and color swatches. But -- despite the whirliness and effects -- one glance at this image and you're done with it. Like the modernist buildings in the photo above, the Illustrator image has all the personality and lovableness of a bureaucracy. (Small aside: Doesn't it often seem that everything in our culture is doing its best to turn into spinning TV graphics?)

Our next theme is color, scale, and texture:

Top image: Warm colors. A structure that relates to your scale as a physical being, and that coexists easily with nature. Imagine reaching out and touching the stucco, the red tiles of the roof, the canvas of the awnings (awnings are architecture too): Nubbliness, weight, age ... It all makes me want to settle in, sip wine, and enjoy the day.

Bottom image: So far as colors go, it's all neutrals. So far as scale goes: a kind of ballooning overwhelmingness. Put a tree in the midst of that scene and it'd look pathetic -- this world is a completely paved-over one. As for the materials ... Well, imagine reaching out and giving these surfaces a touch: slick and cold glass and metal; post-industrial surfaces made of god only knows what. To me, the scene resembles a loading dock full of computers and keyboards cast off by giants. It's one of the last places where I'd be tempted to take my ease.

Hey, another analogy:

The adobe-and-red-tile-roof building is like this pot: unmistakably hand-made, and redolent of character and culture. (In the case of this pot, Native American.) It's something you might make use of, but also something you might simply take pleasure in. It's definitely something you're likely to grow old with. If it were to be demolished, you might well feel some pain.

The modernist cluster is like these speakers. The shapes aren't completely unattractive; a little time has clearly been invested in giving them a soupcon of chic. But they're unavoidably industrial: plastic, all neutrals. You may want or need them; you may enjoy what they do for you. But you're unlikely to develop much of a relationship with them. If the speakers were to break, who would care? You were expecting to replace them in five years anyway. Same with the modernist neighborhood: If you were to bulldoze one of those buildings, would anyone go into mourning?

Our next theme is stability and solidity. The trad structure is a SoHo cast-iron building. The modernist one is a reworking of that Downtown theme in glitzy-decadent contempo terms.

In this case, the contrast isn't between hand-made and industrial-functional. The contrast is between the high style of one era vs. the high style of our own.

One quick impression: The cast-iron building isn't monotonous, while the glassy remake certainly is. That's partly because the cast-iron building is divided into the traditional three-part structure: base, middle stretch, and top part. The glassy building is just a repetitious buncha shapes.

Another impression: The SoHo building, for all its style, doesn't blind you with flash. It's unquestionably a building, something intended to take its place in city life. You know what its scale and its purpose is. As for the remake ... Well, it might be a building. But it might also be a perfume counter, or it might be a computer program's opening screen.

Question for the day: Is "transparency" always a virtue?

The SoHo building is easy to comprehend as well as approachable, while the flashy new building is messin' with your mind in a twinkly, is-it-real-or-is-it-virtual-reality sort of way. That may be a nifty game for conceptual artists or videogame-creators to play. But is it really something that we want our buildings doing?

Next: neighborhoods. First up in this comparison is a typical downtown-Manhattan block. It's followed by a modernist block.

Trad: Take in the way a loose regularity is crossed with exuberant diversity. The buildings all front the street in the same way; they all play by similar rules. These buildings orient themselves by reference to cultural history and norms, and to basic human scale. Yet the details, textures, and motifs vary wildly. You could, in fact, spend weeks examining and enjoying what these buildings offer, as well as how they interact. This block is an edge-of-chaos Mandelbrot set; it's a symphony composed by God; it's a deeply satisfying image of social life. Cooperation is coexisting with individuality in a really wonderful way.

Modernist: A repellant, rationalist, and Kafka-esque hell, populated by anxious people whose minds are elsewhere and who'd rather be anyplace else.

Two main things to take note of, it seems to me: surfaces, and light-and-shadow. The surfaces in the trad block leave you in no doubt about the weight and substance of those buildings. They were here yesterday, and they'll be here tomorrow. Meanwhile, the surfaces in the modernist block look here-today / gone-tomorrow, and paper-thin.

As for the question of light-and-shadow ... Well, look at that trad block again: It's a living, dancing thing, a Rembrandt pen-and-ink drawing that sunlight brings to sparkling life. The modernist block? Where light-and-shadow goes, it doesn't even give you a way of knowing whether the day is a sunny one or not. Nature has been rendered inaccessible. Light-wise, this space is as dead, dead, dead as a dentist's office.

A final reflection: I can see a case being made that participation in the modern economy demands that we put up with a certain number of soulless birdcages, spaces, and blocks. I don't know whether this is really true, by the way. But I can see the case being made. I can also agree that some soulless birdcages are snazzier-lookin' than others, and I assume that designers and architects deserve credit for that.

What I struggle with is this: the notion that these creations shouldn't be just tolerated but praised, let alone valued above traditional pleasures. After all, they're the equivalent of agri-business packaged foods, while trad buildings and blocks represent nourishment that's fresh and handmade. The modernist structures are synthesizer Muzak, while trad buildings and blocks are jazz combos and string quartets.

So it's funny, isn't it, that the critics, the committees, and the architecture schools reserve their enthusiasm and their big claims for the inhuman, plastic crap? Wouldn't we prefer to have an architecture class that's devoted to beauty, class, and pleasure?

Semi-related: I marveled over the way banks have begun to resemble brochures for themselves. Back here, I celebrated Addison Mizner, popularizer of the Mediterranean Revival style. Mizner showed one satisfying way to be modern without being modernist.

Best,

Michael

at May 7, 2008 | perma-link | (17) comments

Donald Pittenger writes:

Dear Blowhards --

Do you pack some work or even semi-work along when you go on vacation?

I do, and I'm not sure why. That's because I almost never actually work on the work stuff I bring. Which is silly, because all I'm doing is dragging around an increment of needless weight.

My "work" can take several forms. For instance, I usually bring some sketchbooks and possible reference material for planning paintings. Other times I'm likely to toss in a book that I think I Really Ought To Read. And for our 7-17 May trip to the Midwest (by the way, thanks for the travel tips, readers), I copied a book project file from my desktop computer to my laptop in the far-fetched hope that I might do a little writing or editing.

Why don't I follow through on my intentions? I can't rule out laziness. Or to put it another way, Laziness Rules!! Besides that, travel is a busy time that's also costly. Given the investment, it seems foolish to hole up in a motel room and do stuff that can more easily be done at home; so why not actually sightsee and experience such exotic places as Springfield, Illinois and Dayton, Ohio. Moreover, travel can get tiring when one is in his geezerhood. That boils down to being too ground down to do much more than indulge in light reading in the evening.

That's my sad story. Are any of you realistic enough to know that work and vacations don't mix and therefore leave work stuff at home? Or are you a stalwart who actually manages blending work and vacationing?

As a parting shot, I really, truly, positively plan to blog while on this trip provided I don't have computer or other trouble. Honest.

[Uncrosses fingers]

Later,

Donald

at May 6, 2008 | perma-link | (3) comments

Michael Blowhard writes:

Dear Blowhards --

John McCain, setting out to appeal to a certain much-coveted voting bloc, says: "Everything about our Hispanic voters is tailor-made to the Republican message … I know their patriotism, I know the respect for the family, the advocacy for pro-life, I know the small business aspect of our Hispanic voters.”

Vdare's Marcus Epstein takes a look at the actual facts:

* Only 34% of Hispanics eligible for US citizenship choose to take the necessary steps to take it -- less than any other immigrant group. Of that group, only a third of Hispanics who are American citizens consider themselves Americans first.

* Respect for the Family: Half of Hispanic births in the US are out of wedlock.

* Pro Life: Hispanics are 2.7 times more likely to have an abortion than whites.

* Small Business: Hispanics make up 15% of the population and only 6.6 percent of all businesses.

Best,

Michael

at May 6, 2008 | perma-link | (28) comments

Michael Blowhard writes:

Dear Blowhards --

Raw milk: telltale issue of our time? (Link thanks to visitor Steve.)

Best,

Michael

at May 6, 2008 | perma-link | (0) comments

Michael Blowhard writes:

Dear Blowhards --

* The Rawness shares a hilarious quick dog video.

* Thinking of adopting a retired racing Greyhound? Here's an informative, 19-part guide. I wonder what Gil Roth -- who recently adopted a retired racer -- thinks of the advice.

* Patrick Burns writes that dog owners don't need to haul their pets to the vet as often as they're being told to.

Best,

Michael

at May 6, 2008 | perma-link | (2) comments

Michael Blowhard writes:

Dear Blowhards --

* The embassy that the U.S. is currently constructing in Baghdad covers 104 acres and consists of 21 buildings. It's the largest U.S. embassy in the world. When complete, it will have cost $740 million. It'll cost $1 billion a year to run. Just a hunch, but it sounds to me like we aren't in Iraq for a short visit. (Link thanks to Randall Parker.)

* What could you buy for the cost of the Iraq War?

Best,

Michael

at May 6, 2008 | perma-link | (11) comments

Michael Blowhard writes:

Dear Blowhards --

* Pres. Bush's Reading First program: a big bust that has had zero impact on kids' reading scores. The cost? A mere billion a year.

* Since 1986, the price of public education has been rising faster than the price of gasoline.

* Busing may be coming to an end in Milwaukee. It has accomplished little, and at a cost of $57 million a year, according to officials.

* Charles Murray and Steve Sailer point out a basic fact that educators seem to have a hard time grasping: Half of all kids are sub-average in academic terms. Me, I think that Americans over-obsess about college, and under-acknowledge the value of vocational training.

* MBlowhard Rewind: I argued that writing teachers make too much of the "show, don't tell" command.

Best,

Michael

UPDATE: Mike -- whose wife works in special ed -- comments.

at May 5, 2008 | perma-link | (29) comments

Donald Pittenger writes:

Dear Blowhards --

Among my many failings is an imperfect command of the English language. But I won't let that small detail stop me from calling attention to failings and odd usage by others. Here goes ...

* The local Presbyterian Church celebrated its 100th anniversary this past weekend. As part of the Morning Worship bulletin, the pastor included snippets from the 6 May 1908 minutes of the session that established the church.

According to the minutes, the founding group of commissioners from the Puget Sound Presbytery met "for the purpose of affecting such organization..."

Uh oh. That's effecting, not affecting. These were probably educated men, but those two words, often confused today, were clearly being confused a century ago.

* No doubt you've heard and read the term "underdog." What is the term for its opposite? I contend that it is "top dog." But occasionally I see the word "overdog." I suppose that's logical, but I'm pretty sure that it's mostly used by people who can't call up "top dog" while they're scribbling or keyboarding away.

No matter the source, "overdog" always annoys me when I come across it.

Later,

Donald

at May 5, 2008 | perma-link | (9) comments

Michael Blowhard writes:

Dear Blowhards --

More studies ought to be done of how we inhabit our offices. My own contribution to this field is the observation: Certain kinds of stuff seems to accumulate.

But perhaps I'm just a big ol' packrat.

What piles up in your own office? I mean, besides work.

Best,

Michael

at May 5, 2008 | perma-link | (6) comments

Michael Blowhard writes:

Dear Blowhards --

Alice Walker: lousy mom? “My mother is very ideologically based, and her ideology is much more important in many ways than her personal relationships,” says daughter Rebecca Walker, who is no longer in touch with Alice. Another nice passage from Rebecca:

Her circle were questioning power relationships and whether a mother had any more knowledge than a child. Some friends of hers were living on communes. I know those kids and they’re totally screwed up.

Some were sexually abused, all kinds of bad stuff happened, but even those who survived intact don’t want to create communes for their children. They didn’t want to be raised by 10 different parents — again, it was this ideological thing trumping the maternal instinct ...

I keep telling people feminism is an experiment. And just like in science, you have to assess the outcome of the experiment and adjust according to your results, but my mother and her friends, they see it as truth; they don’t see it as an experiment.

So that creates quite a problem. You’ve got young women saying, ‘That didn’t really work for me’ and the older ones saying, ‘Tough, because that’s how it should be’.

Best,

Michael

at May 5, 2008 | perma-link | (22) comments

Michael Blowhard writes:

Dear Blowhards --

Is political correctness hobbling the fight against AIDS in Africa? Fact for the day: "In Africa, the incidence of HIV infection is highest in the richest households and the richest countries." More.

Best,

Michael

at May 5, 2008 | perma-link | (2) comments

Donald Pittenger writes:

Dear Blowhards --

In the very real world of engineering, you can't optimize everything. Putting it another way, engineering is a realm of trade-offs, compromises.

For example, instead of text in that comic-strip balloon above your head, we see a glowing light bulb, and your mind is exploding with the word "Eureka!" You suddenly realized that one way to improve gas mileage of automobiles is to streamline the car's body. That comes from reading that aerodynamic resistance, at speed, is a function of a car's frontal area (the number of square feet/meters at the vehicle's largest cross-sectional point) and the coefficient of drag. For a given frontal area, the resistance can be reduced by improving the coefficient of drag by streamlining the car's body.

A brilliant insight, but not exactly new. For example, Paul Jaray was investigating automotive streamlining in the 1920s and took out several patents. The Ill-fated 1934 Chrysler Airflow made use of wind-tunnel tested streamlining in an effort to reduce drag.

One of the ways to cut drag is by eliminating or controlling sources of air turbulence. For instance, projections from the car's body such a rear-view mirrors can create turbulence. Since mirrors are essential to driving safety and cannot easily be eliminated, they are now housed in streamlined shields; when I was a lad, they were the shape of a dentist's mirror, presenting a nearly flat surface to the wind.

Another source of turbulence is holes or gaps in the body surface. The largest such gaps are the wheel wells. Therefore, when engineers and stylists began to think seriously about streamlining in the 1930s, they set about eliminating wheels wells, both front and rear. Let's take at look:

Gallery

Boeing P-26 "Peashooter"
Reducing drag of wheels was nothing new in the field of aviation. The P-26 fighter, first flown in 1932, was one of many designs that featured streamlined "spats" over the wheels and landing gear struts. This was a compromise. The spats improved streamlining over open struts and wheels, but a better aerodynamic solution was retractable landing gear. But retractable gear were heavy and complicated. So spats were acceptable for P-26s that had a top speed of a little more than 200 mph, but weren't the best solution four years later when Curtiss Hawk 75s could hit 300 mph. Most 75s had retractable gear, but the 75Ns that were sold to Thailand had spats.

Norman Bel Geddes model, 1934
Pioneer industrial designer Norman Bel Geddes created several aerodynamic car designs in the 1930s. The copper model shown above has eight (!!) wheels and a body whose interior might have been a akin to todays' minivans. Note that both the front and rear wheels are covered by fenders.

Panhard "Dynamic" 140 coupe, 1937
If you look closely, you can see that there are three windshield panes, a large one and small curved ones at each side. Panhard called this primitive wrap-around system panoramique; General Motors mass-produced single-pane wrap-arounds starting in 1953-54. What can't be seen due to reflections on the windshield is that the steering wheel was positioned at the center and not on the right or left. And the wheel wells are skirted, though the bottom edges have nice French curves.

Delahaye 165 M - 1939 - body by Figoni & Falaschi

Delahaye 165 S - 1949 - body by Saoutchik
Another pre-war French approach to streamlining (yes, the Saoutchik version was built after the war, but that doesn't matter, as you can see). Probably more style that aerodynamic substance, but note that there are no open wheel wells.

Chrysler Thunderbolt - 1941
A few of these Alex Tremulis-designed show cars were built. Thunderbolts had a metal top that retracted by simply pivoting into a compartment behind the seat. Again, no open wheel wells. The Thunderbolt is noteworthy because it exemplifies the "car of the future" according to conventional wisdom in the late 30s and early 40s. The only missing detail from the typical CW dream car sketch of the times would be a clear, plastic top.

Nash, 1950
The nearest thing to a pre-war "car of the future" to make it into production in America was the 1949-51 Nash. The car is bulky, but an honest attempt was made to streamline it. Front and rear wheels are mostly covered, but not as much as they could be; the skirting does not extent as low as the lowest part of the body below the doors.

Ford Probe V experimental car - 1985
Ford built a series of experimental cars in the late 70s and early 80s to see how low they could drive the coefficient of drag on a workable automobile. The fifth version, shown above, attained a coefficient of 0.137. To put that in perspective, a typical post-World War 2 American sedan had a coefficient of around 0.5 and a well-streamlined car of today might boast 0.3. Again, the wheel wells are covered.

So if you want to reduce aerodynamic drag on an automobile, a nice thing to do is get rid of open wheel wells. But then, why was the Nash one of the few production cars to have all wheels skirted? Why don't Toyota Priuses and all other cars in showrooms today have fully skirted wheels?

The answer is that covering the wheels creates a number of disadvantages -- apparently enough that any aerodynamic benefits are more than canceled out. One disadvantage is that skirted wheels are difficult to work on. Changing tires and putting on snow chains is troublesome enough without having to deal with a small wheel well opening. Another problem is that snow or mud can be more easily trapped in the wheel well if it is enclosed. Perhaps the most important problem is related to the fact that front wheels need to pivot for steering. Covered front wheels normally result in a wide turning radius -- a great inconvenience at times. Today's cars have a "wide track" stance, where the wheels are closely aligned with the sides of the body. This lessens the chance for roll-over, an important safety consideration. Covered wheel wells would require either a narrower track or side bulges over the front wheels; neither solution is a happy one.

Oh, and there's the aesthetic point that wheels are nice, functional objects and deserve to be shown.

I'll close by suggesting that an extremely tough future government-imposed gas mileage regulation might force car makers to cover wheel wells regardless of their disadvantages.

Later,

Donald

at May 3, 2008 | perma-link | (6) comments

Michael Blowhard writes:

Dear Blowhards --

* Lynn is turning 50. Youngster!

* Hey, baldness can be studly: Chris White points out the funny and informative Take It From the Head, self-described as "The Gallery of Shaved Head Musicians." Photos and info about tons of musical cueballs to be enjoyed.

* Stuff Asian People Like explains that whole badminton thing.

* Roissy turns up a study that reaches some depressing conclusions about marriage and sex.

* David Chute confesses that he has a taste for melodrama.

* Steve and commenters have a lot of shrewd hunches about why our lawgivers think insane immigration rates are such a great thing.

* Dark Party Review picks 10 great teenflicks from the 1980s. Hmm: Cute as Molly Ringwald was, I could never really stand John Hughes' work ... So I guess my fave of the bunch is "Valley Girl." Or maybe "Fast Times at Ridgemont High." (UPDATE: Here's a 2004 interview with Molly Ringwald.)

* Part of Thursday's translation of Ecclesiastes is going to be published.

* Katie Hutchison celebrates some beautiful carriage-house doors.

* How are dogs and children similar? How are they different?

* Pants for geeks. (Link thanks to the Communicatrix.)

* A great line from Baldilocks: "Grown folks expect criticism; children in adult bodies mistake criticism for being dictated to."

* Rick Darby speaks up in praise of the wonderfully eccentric jazz pianist Erroll Garner.

* MBlowhard Rewind: In this posting I wrote about all kindsashit. The really interesting bit, though, is about the history of the director. Did you know that until the 19th century plays didn't have directors? To quote m'self: "The Greeks, Shakespeare, Mozart's operas, etc -- all were performed without a director."

Best,

Michael

at May 2, 2008 | perma-link | (9) comments

Michael Blowhard writes:

Dear Blowhards --

Daniel Flynn snarls at Ticketmasters' absurd "service charges." Daniel is the author of the new "A Conservative History of the American Left." He's interviewed by FrontPage magazine's Jamie Glazov here.

Best,

Michael

at May 2, 2008 | perma-link | (1) comments

Michael Blowhard writes:

Dear Blowhards --

The top 50 hedge fund managers earned a combined $29 billion in 2007.

Source.

Michael

at May 2, 2008 | perma-link | (0) comments

Michael Blowhard writes:

Dear Blowhards --

Razib asks a lot of good questions about guys and contemporary fiction. Tyler Cowen picks up the thread. Many commenters run with it. Yours truly contributes this little bit:

A couple of additional things y'all may get a kick out of chewing on:

• When you're talking about contempo fiction, most of you seem to be thinking about contempo "literary fiction." Literary fiction generally sucks. It's wimpy, depressive, and fussy. It's also an artificial construct. Literary fiction as we currently know it is an invention of the '60s and '70s, something in arts terms akin to the Great Society programs of the era. Fitzgerald, Hemingway, O'Hara ... There were higher and lower forms of fiction being written in those days, but it was all part of a continuum. They wrote for popular magazines, after all; they had bestsellers. More about this here.

• One of the reasons contempo fiction seems weak to many people is that ... well, to be frank, book publishing is one of the most feminized industries around. Back in, say, 1970, the editorial side of book publishing was probably 80% male, and many of them were hetero. These days, the editorial side of book publishing is probably 75% female, and many of the guys are gay. Good for them, of course, and they bring many virtues. Unfortunately, the ol' rampaging-male-stallion energy is not one of them. Book publishing is a bit like Vassar or Smith these days. Guys sense this, and they avoid the field -- red-blooded yet arty types tend to go into music, or TV, or movies instead. Same holds for creative types. The more outgoing, dynamic creative guys are writing TV these days, or creating webseries, not trying to put their thing across in book publishing.

• Despite all this, there's some awfully good new and newish fiction out there, even for the tastes of people who prefer action to contemplation. The reason you may not know this is that you're being ill-served by the reviewers and the press. They're anxious, striving, Ivy wimps, generally, eager to impress each other with their fussy taste. (Or, worse, wannabes. Imagine that: wuss wannabes.) A couple of suggestions: try more crime and western fiction -- Westlake, Richard S. Wheeler, Leonard, Gorman, Hillerman, Crais and many more in America ... Ruth Rendell, Peter Dickinson in England ... And have any of you read Steven Pressman's "Gates of Fire," about the Spartans' defence at Thermopylae? That's a really amazing, stirring novel. This is high-quality fiction. But a lot of it is flying under the radar.
  

Best,

Michael

at May 2, 2008 | perma-link | (10) comments

Michael Blowhard writes:

Dear Blowhards --

Websurfing virtuoso Charlton Griffin keeps turning up gems:

* Learn about the legendary American landscape photographer Ansel Adams. Don't miss the slide show.

* Maybe a few lines and wrinkles aren't such bad things. Interesting fact: "Of the 11.8 million cosmetic procedures performed in the U.S. in 2007, less than 10 percent were done on men."

* As if the Marimba Queens aren't enough to make your eyes and ears pop, check out that slap bass player.

* Also worth a listen / watch: the Wilford Brimley diabetes dance remix.

* Here's a delicious true-crime story about new-style identity fraud, young-and-shallow edition. Here's a page of photos and details that will enhance your reading pleasure. Some more pix.

* Thank god for a little truth in college advertising.

* The worst of the worst -- and when the topic is musicals, that's saying a lot.

* Penis snatching in West Africa is back. Be especially wary around taxi drivers wearing gold rings.

*Japanese misuses of English can be a riot, can't they? Those with a taste for the raunchy will want to click here too.

* The gas that will turn a grown man into a slacker.

* What did Leonardo Da Vinci look like?

* Pat Condell isn't a man you can hold back. Here he blasts Scientology.

* 18th century England's working classes dressed nattily.

Thanks to Charlton. As you may know, I'm a big fan of Charlton's work as an audiobook producer and reader. Help yourself to his new version of "Crime and Punishment" here.

Best,

Michael

at May 2, 2008 | perma-link | (2) comments

Michael Blowhard writes:

Dear Blowhards --

Global population is expected to rise 33% in the next 40 years.

Source.

Semi-related: I marveled at the way that population growth has been forgotten as a political-ecological-sociological-whatever concern: here, here, here. Patrick Burns puts together a couple of population-growth animations that show that the human race isn't in any immediate danger of going extinct. In fact, if I live to be a hundred, I'll have watched world population rise by 350%, and the U.S.'s population go from 150 million to over 400 million.

Best,

Michael

at May 2, 2008 | perma-link | (6) comments

Donald Pittenger writes:

Dear Blowhards --

Long-time readers might recall that Michael has this, er, thing regarding typographical brackets in advertisements, editorial layouts and so forth. Like [this] {sort} (of) stuff. His first salvo on the subject can be found here.

Ah, but now the bar has been raised. Behold the following snippet from an advertisement for EliteJets, a business jet chartering firm:

Over to you, Michael.

Later,

Donald

at May 2, 2008 | perma-link | (3) comments