The Adventures of Steanso

State of the Union

2012-01-25T12:05:00.000-08:00

Okay, word of warning here. I'm going to do a little bit of political rambling. If this kind of thing annoys you, this might be a good time to change the channel. I give this warning because lately I can't even handle watching most of the political coverage on TV (I'm just tired of the punditry and bickeing and the fact that everyone is talking, but no one is listening). On the other hand, I just sort of wanted to document how I feel as we head into the 2012 presidential election season. For posterity. For me.
Skip this if you want...

I didn't watch Obama's State of the Union Address last night, but I read a copy of it online.
I think he had some good points. Some of his ideas will be controversial, but that shouldn't be surprising. The wealthiest, most powerful people in our country have had a really good run of things for at least a decade, and some of Obama's ideas are likely to be seen as a threat to their continuing high level of good fortune. But some changes may be necessary because some of the same policies that are making our wealthiest citizens richer may be simultaneously, unnecessarily making some of our middle and working class citizens poorer.
I agree that we need to reduce current laws that provide tax breaks for companies that are outsourcing jobs overseas. I agree with the idea that taxes should be used to support companies that create job opportunities in America (and I believe, in general, that government can actually take actions that affect the private sector business world for the better- the revitalization of America's automotive industry being a prime example- but that such action should be taken infrequently and with caution).
I also strongly agree that we need to focus on educational and vocational training for our students so that we have a workforce that remains on the cutting edge of innovation and development. We may not be able to consistently underbid other countries in terms of providing cheap labor (which is pretty hard when you're competing with third world countries), but we can continue to be known as a country that comes up with some of the best products in the world and which has a workforce that manufactures goods of superior quality. In order to have a workforce that fulfills these ideals we need a strong educational system.
The education system needs strong funding. It also needs cost controls.
The president said that we need to support our effective teachers and give teachers more lattitude to pursue lessons and curriculum without having to spend so much time on preparation for standardized tests. I was also in agreement when he said that we need to be able to fire teachers who are proven to be ineffective (not really a liberal sentiment- the unions balk at this sort of talk), and we need to be able to tie taxpayer funding for higher education to an institution's ability to keep costs down and efficiently graduate students in a reasonable amount of time (this idea shouldn't be limited to colleges, but to trade and vocational schools as well).
I also think, though, that students need to be given the opportunity to receive financial aid and/or take part in loan programs that have reasonable interest rates.  Our financial sector shouldn't be looking at college loans as an area where they can gouge customers who are desparate to build a foundation for their futures. The flip side of that equation (which Obama didn't take on) is that students shouldn't be taking out massive amounts of debt in order to pursue fields of study that will never pay them back. Our country is short on students who are studying math, science, engineering, and certain other fields. We should implement a system that specifically rewards students with loan incentives if they're going to pursue particular fields of study that will ultimately benefit the American economy. This might sound a little brutal, but education reform won't help the economy if all of our students take advantage of subsidized loans and scholarships in order to study poetry and art (fine fields of study, but maybe taxpayers shouldn't be expected to foot the bill).
I'm also in agreement with Obama that we need some tax reform. When wealthy people who make their money off investments instead of wages end up paying a considerably smaller percentage of their income than middle class, salaried workers, the laws definitely begin to seem... well, unfair (Mitt Romney paid less than 14% on $42.6 million in income over the last two years, lower than tax rates paid by many middle class Americans). I know that people feel differently about the whole idea of progressive taxes in general, but I'm still one of those crazy hippies who tends to think that the people who benefit the most from living in our society (and from the efforts of the lower paid employees who help generate the wealth) can probably afford to pay a little more in taxes. After all, when jobs are being outsourced to other countries and companies are polluting our air and water so they can make more money, the greatest financial benefits tend to flow to the investors and people at the top of these companies. They rely on our educational system to give them better workers. Their trucks use our roads. They rely on our military and coast guard to protect the companies themelves. They can afford to pay their fair share in taxes to help support the country that's making their financial success possible.  Profits don't occur in a vacuum, and the only way to continue to make America the sort of place where companies want to do business is to ask the people who profit the most to reinvest in our country.
We need to slow down the gap that's been widening between rich and poor. Some people don't see it coming, but I really do believe that we could become a country in serious decline if we don't continue to reinvest in education, infrastructure, health care, and other areas that support the American middle class.
I was also kind of surprised and happy to hear the president touch on the need to fight intellectual property infringement, trade in counterfeit goods, and piracy.  If America's future is to be found in securing a position for itself as a worl leader in creativity, innovation, and design, then we need to be able to safeguard our ideas against theft from foreign and domestic individuals and companies. If we can't underbid other countries in order to compete in manufacturing, we need to be able to produce higher quality products and protect them against trademark infringement (i.e., we don't need fake, ripoff American products being sold overseas and destroying the market for American exports). Similarly, we don't need our intellectual property to be devalued by having it stolen and sold by those who would copy it (e.g., pirated copies of movies, music, software, etc.). Obama spoke of a Trade Enforcement Unit, and I think that's a great plan, so long as such an organization has some genuine ability to take enforcement action.
I also liked the fact that the president wants to hold bankers and other lenders responsible for fraudulent loan and investment schemes, and I support the idea of stronger prosecution of true crime in those areas. Equally important, though, and perhaps unaddressed, is the fact that many Americans are getting themselves into complex financial situations with very little or no knowledge of exactly how various loans and investments work. The culpability for bad lending practices undoubtedly comes from some predatory action on the part of lenders, but also some really bad judgment on the part of borrowers. Lenders shouldn't be allowed to be misleading, but I also feel sort of weird about telling bankers when they can lend money or telling responsible adults how much money the should be allowed to borrow or how they can invest. I'm not sure exactly how to remedy this except to perhaps require certain high risk borrowers to prove a certain minimal level of understanding on certain loans before we allow the person to finalize their decision. Maybe some sort of short test or something? Is that lame? Probably, but we ask people to take tests before we give them a driver's license. Now that we know the impact that bad loans can have upon an entire community, maybe it wouldn't be so bad to require people to have a basic level of financial knowledge before making loan and investment decisions. I'm not sure...
Anyway, overall, I thought the State of the Union Address wasn't bad. The state of our actual union is a little rough, given the economy and all, but there are some reasons for optimism, and I'm hoping (fingers crossed) that we're moving into a period of time when, with the right leadership, we can really turn thing around.
I feel a whole lot better about things than I did a year ago.
Hope I feel even better on the one year anniversary of this post.

Everybody take care. Now back to your regularly scheduled program.

The Weekend

2012-01-23T08:36:00.000-08:00

The weekend was good. Friday night Amy and I went to dinner with Jamie. We had a chance to go out with her and spend some quality time since my brother is off on a trip, terrorizing the west coast and watching a pile of film noir flicks. We had a nice time with Jamie.

On Saturday we mostly ran errands and stuff during the day. Amy worked on some homework, and I did a bit of reading and got a little exercise. Saturday night I went out with Amy and some of her iSchool friends (and friends of friends) for Geeks Who Drink trivia at Opal Divine's. I had a really good time. We split up into two teams, men's and women's, because we had a large group. I'm proud to say that our men's team came in like 5th place out of like 30 teams! The women did pretty well, too, but they didn't do quite as well as the men because the questions totally had a gender bias. Totally. Unquestionably.

(our Battle of the Sexes-Men! team)

(Amy with Battle of the Sexes- Women!)

So, we did trivia on Saturday night and on Sunday we got up and I went to church with Amy (Central Presbyterian downtown. Nice church). Amy cooked and did school work and we did chores. Not the most exciting day, but a nice one. Amy made some really good chicken chili with white beans and green peppers. Very good stuff. And we had frozen yogurt. Because that is our tradition.
We went to bed sort of early. I've been tired a lot lately. I just feel tired at night and have a hard time getting up in the morning. I'm pretty sure it's my body fighting cedar and winter allergies.
But we had a really nice weekend.
Hope you guys did, too!

By the way, happy belated birthday wishes to Eric, Reed, and Amy's dad, Greg! All of them had their birthday on the 20th (Friday), so I hope they all had a nice weekend!

The Punch Brothers

2012-01-20T07:58:00.001-08:00

Amy and I saw these guys open for Paul Simon, and they were really great. They combine bluegrass with everything from classical to jazz to indie rock. Really, really good musicians.Here's one of their songs that I really like...And here they are covering Radiohead (to maybe draw the interest of a few of my friends who might be initially turned off by bluegrass...)Enjoy! Happy Friday!

The Internet Goes Dark

2012-01-18T08:19:00.000-08:00

Okay, the title of this post is an exaggeration, but a number of prominent sites have basically shut themselves down today (e.g., Wikipedia, Wired.com, Reddit, I Can Has Cheezburger) in protest of the SOPA (Stop Online Piracy Act) and PIPA (Protect Intellectual Property Act) bills that are currently before Congress.
I'm certainly not an expert on either intellectual property or the internet, and I'm not exactly sure how I feel about these two bills, but, at the very least, I think they're important enough that people ought to be paying attention to them and keeping an eye on what our legislators are doing as they set up some new rules and laws that govern cyberspace.
I've already had some discussions with people about SOPA, and I've already come to realize that the issues presented by these bills are fairly complex and not nearly as straightforward as some of the propaganda surrounding them would have you believe.
At their heart, I think SOPA and PIPA probably have good intentions. They strive to protect the intellectual property rights of content creators who really do need some legal protections for the products that they're creating if they're going to be able to continue to make a living by creating and distributing content. People can't financially sustain themselves by writing, taking photographs, making art, recording music, etc. if their products are subject to being stolen and distributed freely the moment that they appear online. I've heard some extremely idealistic thinkers try to argue otherwise, claiming that we should live in some sort utopia where all content is free, but this just isn't realistic. If people can't make a living generating content, the content itself is going to suffer. I don't really want to live in a society where all artists, writers, musicians, etc. have to pursue their work in a part time, amateur fashion because there's no way to support themselves by making any real money off of their work. Obviously there are many exceptions to this rule, but I think there's truly something to be said for the quality of work that can be done by people who are doing it full time and focusing on it as their sole profession.
On the other hand (and this is where the debate begins in earnest) it's far from clear that SOPA is the best way to police the distribution of intellectual property on the internet.
The current wording of SOPA seems to require (at least according to the bill's critics) website hosts to police and monitor all content that their users are putting up on their site or face a potential shtudown of the entire site. This means online website hosts for sites that have thousands and thousands of users (like the site that hosts this blog) are going to be responsible for the content put up by all of their users. Also, the burden of proof in refuting an allegation after an infringement accusation would fall upon the service provider, with no possibility of recovering damages from the accuser if a false allegation is made (unless proof could be made that the accusation was made for an intentionally fraudulent purpose). Sites could be shut down very quickly and remain offline while the matter was sorted out, so loss of viewers (i.e., revenue) would be incurred by the hosting site, even if the claim ultimately proved groundless.
Critics of SOPA claim that this might have a huge chilling effect on the internet. Hosts for blogging sites, for example, might not be willing to continue to host blogs because the work produced by their individual users might subject them to damages (and, the hosts claim, the costs of internally policing the content of users might be too high to make the continued operation of such sites feasible). Sites like Youtube would likely suffer from similar problems with the video content being posted by their users.
Soooo.... people don't want the chilling effect of making host sites responsible for the intellectual property of user content. Critics of SOPA have tried to protray this as a fight of the little guy versus big, wealthy publishing firms, movie studios, and recording companies, but it's not quite that simple. Large firms like Google, Youtube, and other web publishers definitely, of course, have a dog in the fight, too. They don't want to face the prospect of their sites being shut down whenever there's a violation by one of their users (and they rely on their users to generate their product). Also, they don't want to have to bear the substantial cost of internally policing all of the content that goes up on their sites.
That second point is a slightly less sympathetic argument, though, if you're a content producer or distributor who's trying to make a living off of intellectual property that you legally own. Why, exactly, should sites like Youtube or Blogger get to draw an audience and/or readers for their site when some of their audience might be drawn to the site in the first place by pirated content that the site hosts don't legally won? If you're spending a lot of money to publish literary material, record songs, or make movies and you're trying to get a return on your investment, it's going to be pretty annoying to see the people over at Youtube making a whole lot of cash off their site while you're material (appearing illegally on their site) racks up thousands of hits. So Google and Youtube, after all, are wealthy companies that are making a lot of money off of the content on their sites. Why shouldn't they be responsible the material that they're publishing, regardless of which particular user publishes it? After all, if the host provider isn't the one responsible for monitoring the content (even though that content is helping them make money), then the person responsible for policing violations becomes the property owner, and they end up being the ones bearing the cost of watchdogging the internet and protecting their property from theft. This doesn't sound entirely fair, either, especially when you're talking about significant amounts of pirated content.
Anyway, the issues are complicated, and this has definitely been a quick and dirty discussion of the whole thing. There are a bunch of other areas of SOPA that are also controversial (some involving offshore websites and copyright infringement, others involving technical issues about the mechanics of tracking copyrighted material in digital formats).
As I said at the beginning, I'm not an expert on this area of the law or the internet itself, but I just thought I'd see if I could interest people enough to look up more about SOPA on their own. It really does seem important.
Personally, I just want them to get it sorted in a way that allows little guys like me to continue to post a blog. I'm not sure SOPA's the best way to get these issues sorted out, but I'm also cognizant of the fact that any solution to these intellectual property issues is going to have strengths and weaknesses and, therefore, strong critics.

The Weekend; Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy

2012-01-16T17:02:00.000-08:00

My weekend was pretty good. On Friday night I played a gig with Mono Ensemble at The Carousel Lounge. It was fun. My parents came out to see us as well as some of my friends from work and a number of Amy's friends from the iSchool. Our music sounded decent, and people seemed to enjoy themselves, so I was happy.
On Saturday night Amy and I went to the Violet Crown Cinema to see Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy. I'd never been to The Violet Crown before, and it turned out to be a pretty cool place. For those who haven't been, it's a sort of arthouse movie theater down on 2nd Street. It's located up on the second floor, and the lobby area of the theater has a small restaurant and bar. You can buy food and drinks to take into the movie, although the theater itself doesn't have a waitstaff or service (which can be a bit of a drawback- the seating is a little cramped for eating meals, and you're sort of stuck with your plates once you're done eating). On the whole, though, I'd recommend the theater. They have good seats, nice, small theaters, and it's nice to be able to get a beer, drink, or glass of wine and carry it into the movie with you.
And Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy turned out to be a good film. I'd heard from several people that the plot was sort of difficult to follow, so I put myself on high alert and paid close attention to the unfolding of the cold war espionage tale. I found it to be an interesting movie with an engaging story, and the acting was really strong. Gary Oldman did a great job of portraying the subtle nuances of a character who is, both by nature and by training, disinclined to strong, overt displays of emotion. Colin Firth, Benedict Cumberbatch, Tom Hardy, Mark Strong and others filled out a cast of supporting actors that put in extremely realistic, compelling performances, and Tomas Alfredson, as director, created a tense, suspense-filled spy film without ever really asking the audience to strain themselves in completely suspending their disbelief (a fact that was sort of on my mind in light of my recent viewing of one of the last Mission Impossible movies).
Anyway, I liked TTSS. I liked The Violet Crown. Amy and I had a good time.
After the movie we went to Opal Divine's to do some trivia with Heidi and Jaci. We didn't quite win this time, but I continue to think of us as winners! It was fun! Hot drinks on the patio!!
Yesterday we went to church with my mom and dad, and afterward we went out to lunch. It was good to have a chance to hang out with them!

Well, I guess that's it. I had today off, too, but Amy and I mostly just ran errands.
Amy's cooking now, so I have to go!!
Hope you guys had a good weekend, too!

Ready Player One

2012-01-16T09:31:00.000-08:00

So last night I finished reading Ready Player One, a book that came out last year, written by Austin's own Ernest Cline.
Jean and Greg, Amy's folks, gave me the book (thank you!), and it sat on my shelf for a while before I got around to it. To be honest, when I first got the book, I was a little uncertain. The only previous work that I knew of from Cline was his screenwriting for Fanboys, a 2008 movie about, well, fanboys, and it got mediocre reviews from both audiences and critics (I've never seen it). On top of that, the one or two articles that I read about the book spoke almost exclusively to the 80's pop culture references in the novel without really mentioning anything about characters or plot. Between these two things, I was a little turned off. I'm not really that into fanboy culture, and I wasn't sure I was interested in reading a book that might turn out to be more of trivia contest than an actual story. I initially suspected that the book might just turn out to be an exercise in trying to remember 80's pop culture references, and the whole thing sounded sort of gimmicky.
But my concerns ended up being unfounded.
True to what I'd heard, the book was, in fact, filled with lots of references to an amazing trove of games, TV shows, toys, video games, movies, and music from my youth, but Cline's far more impressive trick came from managing to incorporate all of these elements into an engaging story in a meaningful way. Ready Player One, at its heart, is a sort of latter day Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (which is, itself, referenced in the novel). The novel involves a teenage orphan, Wade Watts, as he struggles to win a game in a virtual reality computer system called the OASIS in 2044. The game is a sort of quest left behind by OASIS creator James Halliday following his death, and by being the first person to successfully complete the game, the winner stands to inherit the incredibly vast fortune he had amassed (almost every person on earth uses the OASIS for one purpose or another- work, school, entertainment, etc., and social interactions are all carried out in its online reality).
Ready Player One might not ultimately appeal to everyone. It's basically an adventure tale, and it's not the sort of "literature" that readers will immediately relate to as similar to their own day to day experiences. On the other hand, although the book is primarily fun science fiction, it's also extremely well conceived and executed, with some interesting character development and a fair bit of social commentary lying beneath it's fun, glittery surface (the 2044 earth of RPO has descended into stagnation, recession, and entropy as humanity has retreated into its computers, and the last, great battles are waged in cyberspace over corporate control of virtual reality). The dialogue can border on cheesy at times, but even this, I think, is part of Cline's homage to 1980's culture (if you have doubts, go back and watch any number of the movies referenced by Cline in RPO and pay close attention to the buddy banter flying back and forth between the young protagonists. I challenge you to make it through Goonies or Explorers without tasting a little Velveeta in your mouth).
At any rate, I ended up really enjoying Ready Player One. I certainly recommend it for any of the people in my age bracket who had a slightly geeky childhood, but I think almost anyone could enjoy the story (Cline has good descriptions of his key references, and most of the stuff from that time period has somehow stuck with us through the subsequent decades, anyway). It would be cool to see RPO become a movie, but, man, there would be an awful lot of licensing issues to work out before it could happen.
That's really all that I have. Good novel! I recommend!
Annnnyway, thanks to Jean and Greg for the book! It was really good!

Friday the 13th at The Carousel Lounge

2012-01-14T09:13:00.000-08:00

Well, the gig last night went pretty well! Thanks a lot to everyone who came out to see us! You guys make everything a lot of fun! Thanks to Venus Fixer for playing with us!

Mono Ensemble Show Tonight!!!

2012-01-13T08:45:00.000-08:00

So my band, Mono Ensemble, is playing tonight at The Carousel Lounge at 9:00 p.m. in beautiful Austin, Texas! Given the holidays the new year, and an injury or two to our drummer, we haven't had a whole lot of practice time for tonight's gig, so the whole enterprise is likely to be a bit of an adventure. Even I'm not sure what to expect!
But at The Carousel the cover is free, the beer is cheap, and the company is friendly.
Come on out and join us! The ride may have a few bumps, but we'll work hard to keep it interesting!

Update

2012-01-09T08:56:00.000-08:00

The weekend was pretty good. Friday night I went with the Steans clan to go see Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol at the IMAX with my family. I think Ryan didn't like the movie, largely because he thought it was formulaic, improbable, and filled with stereotypes, while Dad liked it a lot because it was a good, old fashioned, high octane action movie. So, in the end, they largely had completely opposite reactions to exactly the same qualities in the movie. Dad sort of enjoys the feeling of knowing what to expect from a certain kind of movie, whereas Ryan, I think, was annoyed by it.
Personally, I had a good time. I'm glad that every movie that comes along isn't Mission Impossible (it was, in the end, cheesy, escapist entertainment), but I really enjoyed the stunts and action sequences and the overall experience. In any case, the movie was very similar to some of the other Mission Impossible movies, so, if nothing else, it stayed true to the feel of the other movies in the series. I haven't been seeing nearly as many big ol' action movies as I used to, and maybe the fact that I watch them less frequently helps me enjoy them more when I end up catching one. I dunno. Liked.
Saturday I did a few chores/errands (goodbye Christmas lights!) and picked up Amy from the airport. So good to have her back! :-) We went out to eat at Tarka and just hung out (we're still watching Six Feet Under). Sunday there was exercise and Cassidy walking and some shopping and then band practice. Mono practice was important since we have a gig at the Carousel Lounge on Friday night (at 9:00).  It felt good to play some music with the guys. It had been a while.
After practice Amy made dinner. We had chicken tacos with onions and poblano peppers, and they were really, really good.
Did I mention that it was really good to have Amy back?  ;-)
Well, I guess that's it.
It's cold and raining here today in Austin, so everyone stay warm, dry, and safe!

Starting a New Year in Arizona

2012-01-05T16:52:00.000-08:00

Well, I flew out to Arizona on the Friday before New Year's, and I flew back on the following Tuesday. It was a good time to go because Amy had already been gone to Arizona for a week on Christmas break, and I missed her a lot.
I flew in Sunday night, and on Saturday morning we got up (by "we", I mean Amy, myself, and Amy's parents, Jean and Greg), hopped in the car, and drove up to Flagstaff. Along the way we stopped off at Montezuma's Castle, which is a cliff dwelling made by the Sinagua people around 700 A.D.. Montezuma's Castle was pretty darn impressive. If I'm correct, it might also be the single oldest human structure that I've ever seen in the U.S. (I saw some Mexican pyramids once down in Tulum that might have been from 500 or 600 A.D., but in the U.S. Montezuma's Castle has to be the oldest human structure I've seen). After visiting the National Park we drove up to Flagstaff. Along the way we drove through an area (Munds Park? Amy can correct me if I'm wrong) where the Davis family used to have a cabin when Amy was younger (I got to see Amy's old treehouse!). Apparently there's talk in the family of getting a cabin up there again, and I can certainly see why. It's a lovely area. Pine trees, snow, and a feeling of wilderness.
Then we went to Flagstaff. I'd never been that far north before in Arizona, and the difference between the Phoenix area and the area near Flagstaff was startlingly different in terms of vegetation, altitude, climate (there was snow on the ground in Flagstaff, but in Phoenix people were wearing shorts), etc.. We only spent a very short amount of time in Flagstaff, but it looked like a pretty cool place. It had a sort of small, college town feel (it's home to Northern Arizona University), but it was large enough to explore, with some interesting restaurants, businesses, etc..
Occupy Flagstaff had gathered, en masse, outside of Flagstaff City Hall, but they'd only mustered four people that were dissatisfied enough with the state of the world to protest, so I figured that Flagstaff must be, on the whole, a pretty happy place.
After Flagstaff we drove down to Sedona. True to what I'd heard, Sedona turned out to be beautiful. The red rock canyons, pine trees, and blue skies were pretty amazing. We visited Holy Cross Chapel, which was a really cool building in a beautiful setting, wandered through Tlaquepaque to look at the shops and art, watched the last sunset of 2011 from a scenic overlook near the airport, and had a very tasty Italian New Year's Eve dinner at a place called Dahl & Di Luca. Sedona was really cool, and I'd definitely like to head back at some point when I have more time.
On Sunday I mostly hung out with Amy and her family over at her house. They hosted a really nice fish cookout with really good food and excellent company. It was good to get to hang out with the whole family and see them in action together.
On Monday I went for a hike in the White Tank Mountain Regional Park with Amy, her mother, and her grandfather. It was a fun hike. The view from the mountain trails let you see for 50 miles or more, with views into downtown Phoenix and the mountains surrounding the Valley of the Sun.
The trip was really good, and it was an excellent way to bring in 2012. Thank you so much to the Davis family for being such excellent hosts, and also to the Koffel family and the Sinex family for making me feel welcome! I appreciate your willingness to share the holiday weekend with me!

Amy and I at Montezuma's Castle

Amy and her grandfather, Jerry, on a trail in the White Tanks

A great way to watch the last sunset of the year

Beautiful things along Highway 89A

Me, Amy, and Amy's dad, Greg, near Montezuma's Castle

Jean, Amy's mom, with Amy watching the sun set over Sedona

2011 Evidence that We're Getting Dumber

2012-01-03T15:28:00.000-08:00

I wrote this back before the end of the year, and I never got around to posting it. I hope it doesn't sound too negative. I started out writing it with the intention to make it humrous, but I'll let you make your own determination as to how that played out.  Anyway, I will say that as I look at this list now, I realize that it's as much a criticism of the media- their choices in what to cover it and how to tell the story- than about the events themselves.

Here's a list of some of the top headlines from 2011 along with an explanation as to why I think that a number of them are pretty strong evidence that our population might be doing some evolutionary backsliding:

Steve Jobs died (October 5): Here's the thing.  In the wake of his death, people have been comparing Jobs to every major inventer and innovator since Thomas Edison, but in actuality, he didn't really invent anything. He didn't invent the smartphone, the MP3 player, the laptop, or even the tablet computer. All of the prototypes and fundamental designs for those things preceded Jobs by years. The real talent that Jobs possessed was in design- more specifically, he modified gadgets so that our lazy consumer culture wouldn't have to learn any new skills or develop any new talents in order to take advantage of advances in technology. Buttons were replaced with wheels and touch screens. Software was made so accessible that even children could stumble their way through it . Online shoppers were corralled into idiot-simple iTunes stores where they could download items into formats that were easily digestible on their Apple hardware. The software, hardware, and online shopping provided by Jobs weren't always the most effective, efficient, or cheapest options available, but Apple made sure that their products were so easy to use that even the least tech savvy person out there wouldn't face many challenging obstacles while figuring out how to use Apple products. We could be really slow to learn, but thanks to Apple, we could still do really cool stuff with our tech. As a result, I've recorded a bunch of music on Garageband and I'm writing this post on a MacBook Pro!

Occupy Wall Street (September): It was the kind of protest that a bunch of angry preteens might come up with. I'm not saying that there weren't/aren't any real issues that Occupy Wall Street protesters have been addressing, but for many of us, the lack of common purpose, the disorganization, and the inability to effectively communicate any sort of cogent message was every bit as discouraging as the problems that OWS were addressing in the first place. It's true that there's far too much corporate influence in government. It's true that income inequality is, at least in part, the result of some strange legal inequities, (especially when you consider that when some of the same people who contributed to the economic collapse have continued to receive huge salaries and have received taxpayer bailouts, getting richer while the employees who work in the trenches get laid off and/or remain unemployed). It's true that loopholes often leave some of the wealthiest members of our society paying proportionately much less in taxes than the middle class workers who provide the power behind wealthy corporate machines.
People have some legitimate reasons to be fed up.
But Occupy Wall Street seemed to fail again and again when it came to articulating the reasons why they're angry. Over and over again they sounded like a disorganized mob, filled with divergent interests, who just couldn't get their act together. They prided themselves on the fact that they didn't have a leader (claiming that they were a grass roots, popular movement that didn't need a singular figurehead), but in the end they lacked vision, direction, and unity. They sounded angry that they were poor, but without a clear message about the inherent unfairness in the job market/tax system/government subsidies/etc.... well, the protesters appeared to many outsiders to be a bunch of entitled misfits who would rather camp out, commiserate, and complain than look for a job. They produced some interesting imagery and seized the public's imagination for a period of time (pictures of police casually spraying tear gas into the face of protesters is always compelling), but they failed to capitalize on their moment in the spotlight by fully explaining what they truly wanted.
So there were and are real issues to be addressed by OWS, but the execution... the execution felt sort of dumb.

Charlie Sheen Publicly Melts Down (March?): Charlie Sheen gets fired from Two and a Half Men, which (and this is already evidence of our dumbness) is one of the top rated shows in America at the time. Sheen has some sort of mental health/drug induced breakdown, posting internet rants about the studio that fired him while simultaneously bragging about the tiger blood in his veins, his warlock nature, and the majesty of.... well, himself. Much of the rest of the world is focused on Libya as rebel forces move against Qaddafi, or Japan, which has been devastated by earthquakes, tsunamis, and nuclear meltdowns. Much of America, however, is infatuated with the Charlie Sheen story- captivated by the ravings of a clearly unhinged millionaire celebrity who's holed up in an L.A. mansion with some underwear models and his (undoubtedly very confused) small children. This is the kind of story that just snowballed once it came into contact with American dumbness because the gawking audience helped to feed the megalomania that was the story itself. (yeah, I know it's probably not fashionable, but I'm willing to just go ahead and call our society's mindless fascination with celebrity sort of dumb) There are probably thousands of manic, bipolar (or possibly drugged) people out there at any given time, but thanks to the desire of the American public to gawk at a celebrity meltdown like rubberneckers at a traffic accident, Charlie Sheen happened to be one of the few egomaniacs who turned his delusions of grandeur into reality.  Between his own awful behavior and our fascination with it, he really was the center of the universe for a moment. Lord help that man's therapist.

Casey Anthony Acquitted in Murder of Daughter (July 5):  So on July 5th a jury in Florida found Casey Anthony not guilty of murdering her daughter, Caylee. This was after the police found evidence of decomposition in the trunk of the defendant's abandoned car, after months of the defendant denying that she knew anything regarding the whereabouts of her daughter (and after lies about some sort of nanny abduction), after the police found evidence that internet searches had been performed on the defendant's computer regarding the use of chloroform, after the defendant lied about her employment, after the child's body was found only a short distance from the family's home, and after the family had been caught telling lies on the defendant's behalf.  This was the sort of case that could only be lost in the face of a jury that had learned about justice through the fictional TV world of CSI (and other police procedurals) in which every single case contains a smoking gun if the detectives just look hard enough. This jury represented a section of the public (perhaps a disturbingly large section) which has come to believe that facts presented by the government are always inherently untrustworthy (because the government, we've learned, is almost always out to presecute inncoent people), and that hidden conspiracies are more believable than any simple simple logical inferences- mostly because the application of simple logic just doesn't feed our imaginations the same way that wild conjecture typically might. This was a jury who believed it was their job to abandon common sense and sound reasoning at the courtroom door- a jury who wanted to hold prosecutors to unrealistically high standards, forgetting that if the evidence was perfect every time, we really probably wouldn't need juries in the first place (if there's airtight evidence in every case and conviction is little more than the application of a simple, logical formula, do we really need juries at all? A computer program might suffice...).
Over time, many a murderer has been convicted without a body ever having even been recovered. Historically, organized crime and serial killer prosecutions have been full of such cases. The Casey Anthony case involved more than enough evidence to convict this woman for murder if the jury had possessed the will to do so.
The prosecutors might have overreached a bit by trying to insist upon the death penalty in this case, but it was the jury, in the end, who ignored the facts and set a child killer free. The case wasn't the sort of neatly wrapped package that the public has come to expect from cop shows on TV, so Caylee Anthony walked. That was pretty dumb. Next, this woman will probably write some sort of memoir, and America will have the chance to prove itself even dumber as copies fly off the shelves...

Penn State Sex Abuse Scandal (November)- This fall Penn State made the news when allegations came to light that Jerry Sandusky, a former defensive coordinator for the school's football team, had been sexually abusing a number of boys (ten or more, according to charges) over a fifteen year period. The allegations of abuse were bad enough, but even more alarming have been the reports that numerous members of the Penn State administration and athletic department knew of, suspected, or had reason to know of Sandusky's abuse but did nothing to report it. Athletic directors, university presidents and vice presidents, and even Joe Paterno, an 84 year old coach and college football icon, were caught up in the scandal in a wave of suspensions and firings.
What's dumb about this scandal? Well, it's not the fact that this sort of abuse is a serious crime. In fact, it's pretty much the opposite. How the heck did this thing go on as long as it did with so many people apparently knowing about it or suspecting it without anyone reporting the abuse to the authorities?
Right or wrong, when this sort of thing happened in the Catholic church I found it easier to understand that people were confused about what to do and how to handle the disturbing situation. The church, after all, has historically served as a moral compass and a reference point for the personal ethics of a lot of people, so when something very bad happened within its ranks, I guess I found it easier to see how people could be confused, uncertain, and maybe even a little scared. I sort of chalked up a good deal of the uncertainty and slow response in the Catholic abuse scandal to the disorientation that believers felt when they found evil at the heart of something that had formed the bedrock of an institution that had always been meant to serve as a paragon of good.
But protecting a defensive coordinator for a college football team? What the hell? Do people really feel the same need to close ranks and protect a college football program in the same way that they might protect their religious institutions?
Keep in mind that if anyone had taken this thing on earlier and simply reported it to the authorities, the department could have just replaced Sandusky as a single problematic piece in a larger, successful college football program. There would have been a little media attention and a little embarrassment, but the whole program wouldn't have been put at risk.
What makes the Penn State case so troubling is that people weren't ignoring the problem because of a desire to keep faith in an institution that had served as a center of their spiritual and moral well being- or if that's what was happening people really are insanely dumb. I know that there's a lot of money involved, but in the end the case of the Sandusky scandal was about people turning a blind eye in order to safeguard their good feelings about a college program where a bunch of young men compete to move an inflated piece of leather 100 yards down a field of dirt and grass.
Protect college football at the expense of abusing kids? So there's some dumbness involved.

The Debt Ceiling Debate/Downgrade of U.S. Credit Rating (July and August)- Congress, The White House and the Senate reached an impasse on the debt ceiling when Tea Party members of Congress refused to agree to increased taxes, and Democrats dug their heels in on budget slashing for certain key programs. There was a heck of a lot of brinksmanship involved, very little compromise, and in the end, the whole mess basically demonstrated to the world that our government (and perhaps our populace) is fractured, obstinate, and dysfunctional. As a result of Washington's inability to efficiently and effectively negotiate a fairly straightforward compromise on what should have been a relatively routine matter (the debt ceiling has already been raised more than 70 times since 1940), Standard and Poor downgraded the credit rating of the United Staes for the first time in history, moving the rating from AAA to AA+. S&P pointed to the skepticism of Congressional members about the seriousness of the consequences stemming from a default as one key reason why the downgrade took place. Apparently the Tea Party rhetoric about letting the government collapse instead of negotiating with Democrats was actually taken seriously by some people- mostly the people who have a lot of money invested in our government. Various American politicians and pundits expressed outrage over the downgrade, but S&P stood firm, apparently standing behind the radical belief that in order to have a really good credit rating, governments and their leaders need to seem serious about not wanting to stiff their creditors.
This wasn't the only time that our elected leaders cut off their respective noses to spite their faces this year, but it was an example where the negative consequences were immediate and clearly felt.
Even children are taught how to share and play nice.
So... I would say that this whole debacle was pretty dumb.

Anyway, I hope 2012 goes well! I hope we can all find a way to stand up for what we believe in while still remaining open minded, flexible, and open to compromise. It's a tough balance, but an important one, and I feel like I have to work a little harder at it each year (of course, if everyone would just acknowledge that I'm always right, that would work, too! ;-)).

Christmas 2011

2011-12-25T22:06:00.000-08:00

It was a good Christmas! Here are a few photos. The crowns are a tradition that my parents picked up from some English friends. I've Googled the meaning behind the crowns, but it seems like there are a lot of different explanations for them, and I can't seem to find a consensus on which one is correct (maybe English royalty presiding over celebrations? maybe symbols of the birth of Christ the king? maybe just a marketing gimmick created by the makers of the Christmas crackers that the crowns come in?)
Anyway, Dia de los Muertos in October. Crowns and crackers for Christmas.
It's been a good year for some very cool new traditions.
Thanks to Mom and Dad for hosting!

Merry Christmas, Guys!

2011-12-21T07:47:00.000-08:00

Thanks to Amy for sending me this! Very cool!

The Weekend

2011-12-19T02:00:00.000-08:00

The weekend was a good one!
On Thursday evening I had Veterans Court, and afterward I met up with Amy and a few friends at Polvo's for a few drinks and some food.
On Friday I took the day off, and Amy and I went to San Antonio for a short weekend trip. We drove down on Friday morning and came back on Saturday evening. On Friday we went over to Trinity (my old alma mater) so Amy could see the campus. There's a lot of construction going on at Trinity, but the campus mostly looks the same. It's a nice place, and Amy seemed genuinely interested in seeing it, so it was fun to show it to her. In the evening we went over and had dinner at Mi Tierra in El Mercado. I hadn't been there in many years, and the food was good! After dinner we went and had drinks on the Riverwalk. We stayed at the Menger Hotel. It's a really cool, historic hotel. I had recently read All the Pretty Horses, which included a reference or two to The Menger, and there are some cool, old pictures of Babe Ruth and other notable figures who've stayed there hanging up in the place. Teddy Roosevelt recruited some of the Roughriders in the Menger's bar, which, as it turns out, is still a pretty cool place to have a beverage.
On Saturday we got up and ate a bagel before heading to El Mercado for a little bit of shopping (we bought a spoon holder. Yes, thanks to Amy's influence there's now an attractive item in my house that holds spoons). After the market we went to the McNay, which is a really cool art museum that's built in a mansion (or at least one wing of it is a mansion) in Alamo Heights. The McNay is a really cool place, both in terms of its art as well as the building and the grounds that surround it. After the McNay we visited Mission San Jose on the south side before grabbing a sandwich and heading out.

Things lighting up around The Menger

Strangely, trees always light up for Amy when she
walks by

Here I am feeling grateful that I never had to live
in a mission

It was a very nice trip. Only a couple of days, but it felt longer to me.
Thanks to Amy for going!

Yesterday we went to see a production of the Nutcracker. Reed's daughter was in it, and it was really fun (I'm not printing her name here because aren't you supposed to avoid mentioning the names of little kids in public pages on the internet?). Anyway, she was a mouse and an angel and did a good job! It was a nice production.
Last night I had Mono Ensemble practice. Which was good.

So that's it! Hope everyone is doing well!
Hang in there. Be good. Santa's watching. ;-)

Update

2011-12-12T12:30:00.000-08:00

Well, the past week has been pretty good.
On Tuesday Amy and I joined a couple of her friends from the School of Information for a screening of The Ice Storm at The Blanton. The event was a charity function for The Bat Cave, an Austin program aimed at mentoring young writers. Rick Moody, the writer of the novel upon which Ang Lee's film was based, was in attendance. It was a really nice evening. I had never seen the film before, and I enjoyed it quite a bit - the experience undoubtedly enhanced by having Moody around to explain some themes and nuances of the story and to field some pretty thoughtful questions from the audience.
On Wednesday Amy and I had dinner with Ryan and Jamie at 1st Wok, a pretty good Chinese place on Stassney that holds some real promise in terms of becoming one of the regular spots on our South Austin rotation. It's always nice to find a good place near the house that we can get to with minimal hassle.
Friday I went to an iSchool Christmas party with Amy where I met a few more iSchool folks, including both students and professors. They seemed like a very likeable, amiable group. We rocked to the sounds of The Banned Books (get it? Band Books? Nothing like librarian humor!) and had a drink or two.
Saturday I ran a few errands, and that night, after going out to dinner with Amy, I went to Ryan and Jamie's holiday party. It was a nice evening. Caught up with some folks that I hadn't seen in a while, and met a few new people. It was a nice, festive evening, and the elves were merry.
Sunday involved some Christmas shopping (Amy and I went together- it's a whole different experience when you go with someone who actually likes to shop!), and then a whole lot of just cozying up at the house.

Anyway, that's the update, more or less. It's been a good week! Hope everyone is doing okay!

Bloodbuzz Ohio

2011-12-07T10:08:00.001-08:00

The concert was Sunday night, but I've still got The National ringing in my ears...

Weekend; Dad's Retirement Party; The National

2011-12-05T12:23:00.000-08:00

Well, our weekend was pretty good. I already posted about the Wilco show on Thursday night (which was really, really good). On Friday night we just stayed home and relaxed. We're watching Six Feet Under (neither one of us had ever seen it), and we've both been really enjoying it.

On Saturday we went to Houston for my dad's retirement party (my dad is Rick Steans, for any readers who might not be in the know). It was a really nice event. Over three decades at Cameron! We had dinner at Morton's Steakhouse near the Galleria, and a number of my dad's friends and coworkers from over the years were in attendance, along with their significant others, to give Dad a final, friendly send off.
My dad has worked with a number of these people for many years, having travelled with them, attended social functions with them, and having gotten to know their families. My mom is good friends with most all of them as well, having also travelled with them, attended events with the group, and having invited many of them over to my parents' home for gatherings.

(here Dad receives the ceremonial retirement
from his friend, Kevin Fleming)

(here Ryan surprises Dad with the news
that he also plans to retire soon!)

At any rate, it was obvious that my dad counts his coworkers among his good friends, and it was nice to see that his career has been about personal relationships and friendships as much as anything else over the years. I will consider myself very lucky if I find myself retiring after working with a group of people who enjoy each other's company so much and who have such a strong sense of camaraderie. I know that Dad is going to miss the people at Cameron quite a bit as he transitions into life in retirement. Hopefully he can stay in touch with those friends and continue to see some of those folks periodically. They've been an important part of his life for a long time.

We spent the night at a hotel right down near the restaurant before getting up and driving back to Austin in the morning. Amy made some really good tortilla soup. Come to think of it, she also made some really great stuffed peppers last week. I'm really winning out with the Amy food!

(The National)

After dinner we braved a bit of chilly, damp weather and went to see The National at Austin Music Hall. The place was packed, and it wasn't exactly easy to see everything from our spot in the balcony, but the music sounded pretty good (not as great as Wilco, but pretty good), and the crowd was really into it. I like The National. Good mix of rockin' and mellow.

(here's Amy, happy, but ready for the
show to start!)

Anyway, Local Natives opened. I'd never really listened to them before, but they were pretty good. Nice harmonies, in particular. They had a couple of songs of their own that I really liked, and they did an interesting version of Warning Sign by The Talking Heads.

I didn't really mention it in my earlier post, but Nick Lowe opened for Wilco the other night, and that was really good, too. I really enjoyed him. He did a really cool version of What's So Funny About Peace, Love, & Understanding. The Mono Ensemble has covered that song for a long time, and it was cool to see the man himself performing it. I felt like Nick Lowe was definitely head and shoulders above your typical opening act.

Anyway, that's it. I'm a little tired today after this weekend, but it was all worth it. Congrats again to my Dad! Thanks to Amy for making the trip to Houston with me. :-)

Peace.

Wilco at ACL Live

2011-12-02T08:43:00.001-08:00

We went to see Wilco last night at the new ACL Live theater. It was a really great show. I've seen Wilco before, but they played really well last night. The crowd was really into the show, and, probably even more importantly, the sound last night was the best I've heard at any show in years. The people who built that new ACL venure really knew what they were doing when it came to putting together a place with great sound and great acoustics (and it seems like they must have had great people on the soundboards as well). You could hear all of the instruments and vocals very clearly, and the sound was really well balanced (in stark contrast to the Phantogram show at the Mohawk where everything was drowned out by the drums and low end).
So just a really great show. There were definitely a couple of goosebump moments (listening to the audience sing along with the chorus on "Misunderstood"comes to mind). Wilco is probably one of the best rock acts playing live shows right now, and they were at the height of their powers last night.
Thanks to Amy for going with me!
Wilco, may you continue to rock for many years to come!

UT/A&M Game

2011-11-25T13:56:00.001-08:00

Well, Thanksgiving was good. I went to Mom and Dad's house for Turkey Day dinner (which was very nice- thanks Mom and Dad!).
After dinner I went to College Station to attend the UT/A&M game with Reed and his brother-in-law, Brian.
It was an ugly game, but a surprisingly good one in terms being an entertaining contest. Neither team played particularly well, but they both fought pretty hard. UT's offense, once again, had some significant problems, and A&M made some tough mistakes (especially in the second half) that UT was really able to capitalize on. It was a fun game. I know that it's easier to say that as a UT fan when the Horns walked away with a last second victory at Kyle Field, but it was a powerful experience, I think, no matter how you look at it. The fans at Kyle Field were extremely energetic and loud, and given the uncertainty about if and when this matchup will happen again (because of the A&M move to the SEC), there was a sense of something special happening before the game even started.
And I swear that even if Tucker had choked that last second field goal, I would have been very happy with that game because it just symbolized so many of the things that we've come to expect in a Texas-Texas A&M matchup:

Both teams have had sort of disappointing seasons, and both hoped to sort of relieve some of the pressure with their fan base by winning this crucial game.

The game was sort of ugly, and there were serious mistakes made by both sides, probably as a result of both nerves and the roar of the Aggie crowd during the game (A&M had turnover issues, but UT had a number of false starts, late hits, horse collars, and other damaging penalties).

The fans were way into the game. The jumbotron at Kyle Field reported that there were something like 88,000 people in attendance (I think it was their second highest attendance ever), and they were extremely enthusiastic. The student section cheers constantly- even through timeouts. Whenever UT had the ball, especially in the second half, the crowd was deafening.

The rivalry was fierce, but there was a certain undercurrent of affection and poignancy, I think, as well. The UT band spelled out a thank you message to A&M on the field during halftime, and the A&M band created the image of a longhorn- before promptly cutting the horns off of it. The A&M fans who sat around us were friendly with us, and after the game one of them even came up to Brian and I urge us to encourage all of our UT friends to try to help keep the rivalry alive.

Thanks A&M!

The Aggie band tries- really tries- to be nice to the Horns in return

And it's just sort of impossible to imagine this rivalry coming to an end. UT has other rivalries, for sure, but the UT/A&M game is definitely family affair. Half of my high school went to A&M and half went to UT. Many, many families in Texas (including Reed's) have one kid who went to one school and another kid who went to the other. Lots of Longhorns are married to Aggies. UT teases A&M a lot, and it seems like almost every yell, chant, or song that A&M uses contains some sort of shot at UT in it, but when the bonfire tragedy happened in 1999, UT students were one of the first groups outside of College Station to set up prayer vigils and look for ways to help out. UT has other big rivalries, but I'm not sure I know three people who went to OU.

Anyway, I just think it would be a terrible shame if the fans got lost in the mix as big business college football (mostly meaning a bunch of politicians and bazillionaires) kill the rivalry with squabbles over television rights, conference memberships, ego, and money, money, money. Yeah, I know you can't get away from the money issue, and I know it's probably naive to think that these people can rise above their own pettiness, but the flip side of the equation is this: if the government were to outlaw college football and athletic scholarships tomorrow, if they made it so that college football couldn't be on TV, if they halted ticket sales, ended merchandising rights, and dismantled all of the athletic conferences... if all of these things happened tomorrow I still think that a couple of interested athletes from UT and a bunch of interested jocks from A&M would probably pick up a couple of footballs and go find themselves an empty field to play in so they could prove to one another who was best. And I think the first set of interested fans would show up about ten minutes after that.

Maybe a dysfunctional family, but still a family

Happy Thanksgiving!

2011-11-24T06:13:00.000-08:00

Happy Thanksgiving!

It's been a good year, and I have a lot to be thankful for.

(Somehow we worked our way from this to parade floats on 7th Avenue and lots of good football)

Here's the short list of stuff I'm most thankful for in 2011:

I'm very thankful to have Amy in my life. She's a smart, funny, beautiful, fun person, and she's made my life better in so many, many ways. I'm extremely thankful to be sharing my life with her. I love you, Amy.

I'm very thankful for my job this year. There are a lot of people out there who are struggling and suffering painfully during our economic downturn, and I'm very thankful to have a job that I both find find satisfying and which pays the bills. I've liked my job for quite a while now, but the current economy makes me appreciate it even more.

I'm thankful for my friends and family. Another couple of friends of mine, Laura Bennett Hague and Debra Goodlett, passed away this year. I was extremely saddened to lose each of them, but, as with all deaths, it reminded me not to take any of the relationships and friendships in my life for granted. It's fun to buy stuff and gratifying to achieve professional or personal successes, but our relationships with the important people in our life ultimately make us happy or unhappy, I believe.

I'm thankful for the people I make music with. Yup, I said it. I don't care if it makes me a wuss. As I've gotten older I've realized more and more that the opportunities to do what you really enjoy can be rare, and those chances can be even more infrequent when it takes a group effort to pull them off. As of this year, the guys in Mono Ensemble have been playing for about twenty years together, and I've been playing with them for about twelve. I've been playing with Crack for at least six. Every time I play with either one of these bands I walk away from the experience just feeling in a better mood. Music does many things for me, but at its base it provides an emotional release, and when you can pull off a tune in a satisfying way with a group of other people it just makes you feel good. So thanks to the guys in Crack and Mono E, mi hermanos and musical teammates. I hope we all keep making music together until we're old and gray and even more ridiculous.

I'm also thankful for Cassidy, who helps remind me that true happiness can always be found in the simple things.

That's it for now, I guess. I'm thankful for other stuff, too, for sure, but this is a good start, and I should probably wrap it up while I'm ahead.

I hope everyone has a good Thanksgiving! No matter how you celebrate it, take a moment out to be thankful for the good things in your life! Peace!!

Update; Steanso Freaks Out About Mind Reading

2011-11-21T13:00:00.000-08:00

Just a quick word to say hi. The weekend was good.
Friday night I had Crack practice with Andy and Sig while Amy went out to look at art, drink wine, and otherwise hang out with her friends. At Cracktice we drank cheap beer, made cheap art, and hung out with each other.
Saturday we ran some errands, worked out, and went out for a nice dinner.
Sunday was a trip to Red Bud with Cassidy, Amy studying/Jason reading, exercise, and Mono E practice.
A nice, quiet weekend before the Thanksgiving holiday.

Not too much else going on.

Here's something I read recently. I'm not sure how seriously to take it, although it sounds sort of intriguing and a little disturbing. Paul Root Wolpe recently had a piece on CNN about advances in neuroscience which may soon make it possible for the government (or maybe any other organization with the proper equipment?) to employ brain imaging technology in a way that lets other people detect our thoughts.
I'm not exactly sure why, but I find this, on a visceral level, to be intensely creepy.
I can't say exactly why it bothers me so much. Of course, on one level the mind immediately conjures a future where such devices could be used surreptitiously against a person. In addition to obvious crime interrogation applications, one can imagine scenarios where clandestine technology is used for applications ranging from business negotiations, to the detection of honesty in a romantic partner, to parenting (wouldn't it be nice to just know whether your kids were being honest with you?).
Of course, in reality I'm guessing that the most immediate use of any sort of brain scan thought detection technology would involve fairly large machines and a more or less clinical, controlled environment. I envision an interrogation facility where something like a CAT scan or MRI is used by law enforcement or military intelligence professionals to find out what a person is thinking or whether they're telling the truth.
This sort of secenario bothers me, also, but I'm not sure why. After all, as a part of the war on terrorism the government has already admitted to engaging in "enhanced interrogation" techniques which, by many estimations, constitute a form of torture. Can a brain scan be any worse?
Shouldn't I be more satisfied if our military can extract information from unwilling subjects without having to inflict serious pain or injury?
But for some reason I'm not.
I guess my hesitation occurs, of course, when I imagine the roles being flipped, and I imagine one of our own soldiers (or even myself) being subjected to an interrogation system in which ideas, feelings, or concepts are pulled from a person's head against their will. Maybe even more than being forced to give up information, there's something disturbing about the idea that thoughts could be stolen from you. It's something that's sort of horrifying to imagine in a military interrogation scenario (picture a POW's fellow soldiers being hunted down after their location has been extracted from his head), and perhaps even more disconcerting to picture in the less likely scenario in which a person might be clandestinely scanned (e.g., military or government personnel having tactical or security information stolen out of their heads without even knowing that they've given it up).
Another part of my unease undoubtedly is just a certain discombobulation that comes with the very idea that mind reading might be something that we have to deal with in the actual, foreseeable future. How do you adjust your worldview to accommodate the notion that your thoughts may no longer be privately your own? What does it mean to be an individual when your thoughts are no longer certain to be protected as separate and apart from the rest of the world?
If the ability to scan thoughts actually became available, viable, and widespread, I think it would have implications for our culture, our society, and our way of life that we really can't begin to predict.
Future shock- meaning the inability of the human mind to assimilate drastic changes brought about by rapid advancements in technology- is a phrase that might be appropriate to describe contemplation of widespread use of this technology (and without an abundance of hyperbole, I think).
Would the collective unconscious become a collective consciousness if brain scanning became widespread? Would the technology be outlawed, tightly controlled, banned, and rarely used (maybe even taboo?) or would it become widespread and commonplace? And if thought scanning became common and people became used to the idea that none of their thoughts could ever be truly private, how far would we be from a society with a sort of collective hive mind instead of being a human species comprised of billions of chaotic, unique, disruptive, imaginative individuals?
I know I'm overdoing it.
Like I said, future shock.

Anyway, the article got me thinking.

Hope everyone is doing okay!
Happy Thanksgiving week!

American Censorship Day

2011-11-18T09:56:00.001-08:00

Okay, so I dropped the ball on this American Censorship Day post that I tried to make a couple of days ago. My blog was scheduled to automatically make a post on the 16th in order to make everyone aware of American Censorship Day, but somehow I messed it up (or, less plausibly, blogger might've screwed it up), and the post never appeared. So I missed the official American Censorship Day.
But I feel like this day was meant to draw attention to an important issue, and I still think people should know about it.
The issue being addressed with American Censhorship Day deals with the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA)that recently went before the House Judiciary Committee (on the 16th- the day I meant to make my post). SOPA is nominally designed to protect intellectual property, but it's opponents say that the bill is overly broad, affects too many individuals who aren't engaged in any sort of intentional, profit-driven piracy, and implements penalties which may be far too harsh to fit the severity of any infringement. The bill would place responsibility on social networking host companies to make sure that users of their sites are not posting materials that infringe upon copyrights. The bill also makes unautohorized streaming of content a felony.
The bill apparently would give the government the power to require host providers to shut down web sites after an allegation that intellectual property rights have been violated. The accused site would then have an opportunity to respond to the accusation, but it's not clear how long it would take to restore access to sites if there's been a misunderstanding and/or if no actual legal infringement has occurred. Companies like Google, Facebook, Twitter, and AOL have joined forces to oppose this legislation. Understandably, I think, they don't want to be held responsible for policing the content of their patrons.
I have some sympathy for the film and music companies who are undoubtedly losing revenue due to online piracy and streaming, but I think the bill has problems. To being with, it works by threatening lawsuits against every host site that fails to block a user whom an allegation is made against. Without some kind of due process occurring first, individuals with personal sites (sometimes which help them make a living) could be blocked even though the claims against them aren't valid. Host sites are likely to be put in the position of having to be overly inclusive if a large number of claims pop up, because they won't want to risk all of the lawsuits that they'll otherwise incur. The host sites may not be able to refuse to block sites even if allegations don't sound valid because the host would still potentially incur the cost of litigation (even if they're utlimately in the right).
Mostly, though, I just feel like this bill is a poor response to the way that the internet has organically developed. I strongly suspect that this bill won't stop the people who are making real money off of piracy (who will find a way around the internet protocols or restrictions placed on host sites), and instead we'll end up with a bunch of sites that end up blocked because they used a piece of a song or a part of a video as part of some legitimate discussion.
There needs to be balance, for sure. People shouldn't be able to freely generate profit off of other people's work without reimbursing the creators for it (especially if the creator is losing marketshare in the process), but I'm just concerned that legitimate discussion about media will end up being stifled and that smaller sites and blogs that never really turn much profit at all will be impacted more than the true pirates (many of whom operate overseas) who are making money directly by stealing intellectual property. Annnd, I guess at this point in my life I'm more worried about the censoring of internet content than I am about whether or not Hollywood is able to make enough money off whatever new CGI spectacular they're cranking out next.
That's it.
Any thoughts?

ALSO, Amy made amazing gumbo last night!! Amazing!!!

Update

2011-11-14T14:00:00.001-08:00

So it's been a pretty good week. I already mentioned that Amy and I went to Paul Simon last Saturday. On Wednesday night I went to dinner with Amy and Ryan and then we went to see Phantogram at the Mohawk. I like Phantogram. They have an interesting mix of synthesizers, loop tracks, live guitar, and now drums. The show was pretty good, but the sound guy had the drums and bass up way too high in the mix. I expect a lot of drums and low end from a band that leans toward the electronic, but I think that some of the distinguishing features of Phantogram as a band are the vocals by Sarah Barthel and Josh Carter, and, unfortunately, their vocals got drowned out quite a bit by the overwhelming pounding of the rhythm section.

Still, it was a good show, and it was fun to see Phantogram live. I enjoyed them quite a bit (I've included photographic evidence documenting our enjoyment in case you're not convinced).
On Friday night we went to see the UT Jazz Orchestra at Bates Recital Hall. Amy found out about the show, and it was a really good experience. Much of the concert was made up of performances of student compositions (I think a number of the orchestra members are grad students), and the songs were really good. Excellent musicianship, and some interesting tunes (Slush Pump Truck Stop springs to mind as one of the more creative pieces).

On Friday morning I stopped by the Veterans Day Parade and commemoration in front of the capitol. It was a nice event. I heard Lloyd Doggett speak, as well as several decorated veterans who had served in conflicts ranging from World War II up to Afghanistan and Iraq.

Sunday we had Mono Ensemble practice, and Amy and I finished watching Season 1 of Treme, which we both enjoyed quite a bit. Aside from that, the weekend involved some good meals (Amy one again made some delicious chilquiles on Friday), some errands, and a trip to the dog park.

So that's it! Just wanted to say hi to everyone, mostly. Last week was a pretty good week. Between Paul Simon, Phantogram, The UT Jazz Orchestra, and Mono practice, it was a great week from a music standpoint. For those who are interested, the UT Jazz Combos are going to be streaming their live performance tonight. You can pick up the feed through this page.

Veterans Court

2011-11-14T08:20:00.001-08:00

Here's a piece that a coworker forwarded to me about the Veterans Court that I've been working in for the past year. We just had our one year anniversary on November 10th!

Happy Veterans Day!

2011-11-11T05:59:00.001-08:00

Happy Veterans Day to to my dad and all of the other veterans out there. The entire country owes them a debt of gratitude for their service.

(here's Amy's Great Uncle Herb with a small, unidentified kid who wants to be like Great Uncle Herb)

On a more personal note, we had our one year anniversary and first graduation from our Travis County Veterans Court yesterday. It was a nice occasion, and I'm really happy for the veterans in our court who've been working hard as they progress through the program.
Hope everyone has a good day!

Paul Simon

2011-11-09T08:06:00.000-08:00

By the way, Amy and I went to see Paul Simon out at the Cedar Park Center on Saturday night. It was a really good show. Simon has been writing and performing great songs for a long, long time, and he's definitely earned his place in the pantheon of truly great American musicians.
He played a good mix of old songs and new songs, and even threw in a few covers (including a cool version of "Here Comes the Sun"). It was a cool show, a nice evening, and we both really enjoyed it. I've been thinking of this song ever since the show...

Good Gig! Thanks!

2011-11-06T19:04:00.000-08:00

Just a quick note to say that we had a really good time playing at the Carousel Lounge on Friday night. Thanks to everyone who came out to hear us play. We hadn't played in a long time, and you guys really made it a cool experience!
We hope to do it again sometime, hopefully in the not terribly distant future.

Technology and Jobs

2011-11-05T13:01:00.000-07:00

I caught an interesting story on NPR yesterday while I was driving in to work. The topic was about the intersection between machines and human beings in terms of technological advancement and its impact upon the job market.
For a long time we've known that certain machines have been competing with human workers for jobs. Typically, I think most people envision this in terms of factory automation, companies using robots or similar devices to help fasten bolts, weld components, or perform other relatively uncomplicated tasks on assembly lines (personally, when I've thought of technology stealing jobs, I've usually conjured up images of big robotic arms busily attaching parts to one another in car factories).
This NPR story talked about a conference held by economists and technologists at Harvard and M.I.T. recently called Race Against the Machine. One thing that I found interesting about the story (and apparently, by extension, about the conference) was that part of the discussion dealt not simply with the fact that machines are still taking over human jobs, but that machines have begun to take over more and more jobs that require a higher skill set- jobs that had traditionally been reserved for the middle class.
When automation first began to take over some human jobs it seemed like it was mostly taking over jobs that were monotonous, often involving physical exertion, and which were sometimes danger. Robots were replacing human workers on the factory floor, and many blue collar jobs fell victim to machines.
With the advent of increasingly sophisticated computer programming, however, the new technological threat to human employment seems to come more from areas such as data compilation and/or straightforward application of logic- and many of these jobs tend to be white collar.
Bank tellers, actuaries, accountants, ticket agents, and even lawyers (especially those previously engaged in document review and other high volume tasks) are being replaced in droves by computers as one employee with a decent machine and the right software achieves results that once required dozens of people. (the NPR story says that for attorneys engaged in document review, it now may sometimes be possible for one attorney to complete the work that formerly would have required 500 attorneys)
A recent article by Rana Foroohar in Time Magazine about the decline of upward mobility in the United States similarly pointed to technology as a thief of middle class jobs. It's not that computers and robots steal all jobs, Foroohar pointed out. Sales clerks, janitors, and maintenance people are needed on one end of the spectrum in order to perform relatively low skill level jobs in order to maintain the machines and put a human face on certain tasks, and on the other end of the spectrum, higher level, strategic decision makers and executives have been relatively unscathed by increased implementation of technology. The middle class, however, has been squeezed pretty hard by the use of machines and robots in many cases. In an economy where American workers are already struggling to compete with outsourcing and cheap foreign labor, job losses due to technological utilization can feel that much more devastating.

I'm not exactly sure where the solution lies. That same Foroohar article from Time pointed out that some of the European nations which seem to be faring pretty well during the global economic downturn are nations who have placed significant emphasis upon higher education in order to stay ahead of the curve in terms of technological innovation and development. With an investment in education (especially math, computer science, engineering, chemistry, and other sciences), some of the European nations have managed to avoid both the outsourcing of jobs (it's much more difficult to outsource jobs that are on the cutting edge of technological development) and job loss due to technology (if the jobs are things that are right ion the cutting edge of what's being developed, machines won't have been developed yet that can replace them). Essentially, if you can maintain a workforce that remains on the forefront of development and innovation, then those workers will consistently remain in demand for businesses that are creating new technologies.
And that's where we want to be. We want our citizens to be building new machines. Technology can and does create jobs, but your workers have to be at a skill level that allows them to help develop processes, components, etc. for these new machines. The theory is that if your population can stay one step ahead of the curve, then the advances in technology can drive your economy as you work to build new and better machines instead of primarily taking away jobs and leaving people unemployed.
So that's the good news. People are holding up investment in and emphasis upon education as a potential solution to this whole jobs/technology dilemma.
Buut... I'm not entirely sold on this line of reasoning. To me, it still feels like we're just not going to need as many innovators, designers, strategists, etc. (no matter how well educated they are) to compensate for the relatively vast number of people who are losing jobs to computers and machines. Annnnd (and I'm not sure how to put this delicately enough) there may be issues with trying to fix an employment gap by simply stating that we'll educate our way out of it. Science, math, computer science, engineering, etc. are some pretty difficult disciplines to master, and can we really count on the fact that we can simply school the middle section of our workforce into being highly skilled in some extremely difficult subject areas? We might be able to pull this off, but we're not going to pull it off by simply emphasizing different things in college. Our students have to be better prepared in the first place to study more difficult topics when they get to college. For such a plan to work, we need to educate our system from the elementary education level on up so that we can compete with countries who have long had wealthier, more homogenous populations and a stronger cultural emphasis on education.

I don't like to write a post that worries about something without sounding hopeful about some kind of viable solution, but the whole middle class American jobs topic is tough. Greater education is certainly a big part of the solution, but if we're going to rely on education to keep us ahead of the curve, then we need to get really serious about educating our students in a manner that makes them significantly more competitive on an international scale, and we need to be willing to make the financial investments and sacrifices that are necessary to reform our schools in a meaningful way. Most of all, maybe, we need to really work at changing the way that Americans, in general, look at education. We can't keep just looking at schools as baby sitters and free day care, and we need to have high expectations for our teachers and administrators while simultaneously giving them all of the support that they need to improve the learning process.
Nothing new in my pitch for an emphasis on education, I guess, except maybe to say that it might be the only thing that can save a lot of jobs from skilled foreign workers and machines. I really think we need nothing short of a cultural shift in terms of our approach to education if American is going to remain one of the most dominant economies in the world. In order to protect the economic standing of the American middle class I think we need PR campaigns and a renewed social awareness about the importance of education that's every bit as strong or stronger than the push for environmentalism and green energy has been in recent years.

I guess that's it. Support your schools. Support your teachers. Don't be afraid to expect more out of the education system, and make sure kids understand why education's important for their own futures and the future of their whole community.

I'm done. I'm done.
Stay ahead of the robots.

Peace.

Mono Ensemble Tonight!

2011-11-04T08:08:00.000-07:00

Come on out to the Carousel Lounge tonight at 9:00 to see my band, Mono Ensemble, in all of our musical glory! We want to see you out there! We really do!

Mono Ensemble is supposed to play from about 9:00 until 10:30, and then our friends in Venus Fixer will play from 10:30 until midnight! Come out just to hear Mono, or stay for the full shebang! You've got a DVR. You're not going to miss any of your shows...

Dia de los Muertos

2011-11-01T03:00:00.000-07:00

(this is Muchacho the sugar skull. Amy made him, but he is a friend to us all!)

Amy and I went to our first ever Dia de los Muertos party this weekend, hosted by our friends Mike and Meg, and their son, Finn. Although I remember community events celebrating Dia de los Muertos, mostly from my time in San Antonio, this was the first time I'd been to a Dia de los Muertos party, and it was a really nice gathering. For those who aren't familiar with it, the Mexican Day of the Dead celebrates family, friends, and loved ones who have passed away. The invitees were asked to bring a food or drink that was a favorite of a loved one who has passed, and a picture of a deceased loved one or a small favorite item for placement on a decorated "altar". The food was labeled with cards which explained: "This is (fill in the food). He/she loved (the person's name)!" The pictures on the altar weren't labeled, but people actually really did gather around the altar to look at the pictures and to explain to each other who the people in the pictures were. There were some really good pictures, some items that reminded people of loved ones, and a few small crosses and candles. I heard a few good stories related to the pictures, and people clearly enjoy the opportunity to tell stories about people who have passed.
Also, in keeping with Dia de los Muertos tradition, there were sugar skulls that the kids and adults decorated, and, in general, the party had lots of bright colors and decorations.
I've known about Dia de los Muertos for a while, but somehow it all made a little more sense after the party. For most Americans, I think it seems a little strange to have happy, positive feelings about skulls, skeletons, and thoughts of dead loved ones, but Dia de los Muertos is, at it's root, about remembering and honoring people that have been important to us and recognizing the fact that death doesn't truly remove them from our lives.
Anyway, there were lots of small kids roaming (i.e., racing) about at this party, and it made me happy to think that these kids will hopefully have some memories of celebrating a holiday that honors family members and loved ones who have passed. It kind of formalizes remembrance in a celebratory way, and it just seems like a really positive, cool thing.
And the food was great, too!
Thanks so much to Meg, Mike, and Finn! It was great a great party, filled with fun, warm people!

Happy Halloween!!

2011-10-31T07:06:00.000-07:00

Happy Halloween! I hope everyone has a fun, happy, safe holiday!
I've been to a couple of fun parties (although one was actually for Dia de los Muertos- more on that tomorrow), seen some creative costumes, and still have trick or treaters to look forward to tonight!
I like Halloween. I'm not always a big fan of gruesome scariness, but I like the Halloween celebration of things that are a little imaginative and wild. I hope everyone has a good one! Just remember to take care of each other!

Also, my dad is retiring today after working for as long as I can actually remember. I'm not going to write too much about it because my brother has already done an admirable job on his blog.
Congratulations on your retirement, Dad! Looking forward to hanging out with you in the "post work" era!

We Are the 53%?

2011-10-26T12:03:00.000-07:00

(I wrote this yesterday, but just getting around to posting it today)

So now, most inevitably, counterprotests have popped up that are meant to serve as a refutation of the themes and messages of the Occupy Wall Street movement. The "We Are the 53%" moniker refers to the 53% of Americans who pay taxes, and these counterprotesters argue that messages of personal accountability, responsibility, and work ethic are missing from the themes being expressed by the Occupy protesters.
Well, maybe the Occupy Wall Street movement might win over more adherents by including messages of personal responsibility. This is America, and, of course, we want our citizens to stand on their own two feet and be self reliant whenever possible. In general, though, I think that the "53%" response just isn't really on point in terms of responding to the central messages that are beginning to solidify within the Occupy movement.
Perhaps I've been missing a big part of the Occupy message, but I haven't heard many demands for government handouts or insistence upon welfare programs as a key part of their message. Instead, what I've mostly heard from them is a certain frustration over what they see as a lack of a level playing field when it comes to the influence exerted by corporate America, the financial sector, and the absolutely wealthiest percentage of the country, especially as compared to the rules that middle class citizens and everyone else are expected to play by. Recent Supreme Court decisions (see Citizens United) have recently given corporations almost unfettered rights to engage in political lobbying and involvement in the political process (thereby granting unprecedented first amendment rights to metaphysical "persons" which are, in fact, only powerful profit making machines), and there's a corporate tax structure in this country which allowed General Electric to owe no money in taxes in 2010 despite generating $10.3 billion in pretax income. Banks have been engaging in extemely risky practices in areas like derivatives and the mortgage markets, and tax dollars have been the ones bailing them out when things went south.
So yeah, we can always do with a greater sense of responsibility, self reliance, and principled behavior, but I think that the Occupy protesters would probably argue that large parts of Wall Street, Washington, and corporate America have been failing to live by those same responsible principles themselves for a long time, and, in fact, in recent years the American tax payers have been the ones bailing out corporations and the wealthy when they engage in irresponsible behavior- not the other way around.
I'm not saying that there isn't room for people to encourage personal responsibilty during the Occupy protests. I'm just saying that I don't think that the search for fairness expressed by the Occupy protesters and the expectations that individual citizens will strive to be self reliant are really mutually exclusive goals. I really do believe that there are plenty of hard working American citizens out there who have done their best to play by the rules who have ended up being seriously harmed by an economic downturn brought about, in large part, by companies who weren't held to reasonable rules of fairness.

I guess, like some of the people out their protesting, I just don't want to see the same mistakes repeated that led to our economic deterioration in the first place. It seems like now might be a good time to reassess and move forward in a healthier way.

That's all I've got. I hope everyone is doing okay!!

Hi!

2011-10-24T12:54:00.000-07:00

Man, I really do not have a lot of earth shaking news to share with you guys, but I just wanted to say hello. Keep in mind that Mono Ensemble has a gig coming up on November 4th at The Carousel Lounge at 9:00 p.m.!

Hmmmm....
What to write about....?
Well, the McRib is back again, so Ryan should be happy. I guess that's all that I have to say about that.
Yup, it's gross. He loves it. Me's my brother.

What else? I'm scheduled to be a judge this week for an advocacy skills trial at the law school over at UT this week. So I'll be sitting as a judge for law students in a mock trial. It should be an interesting experience. Amy seems to think that I can get through it without damaging any young, aspiring, enthusiastic legal minds, so I'm going to give it a try and do my best!
Amy is pretty good about encouraging me to try out healthy new things. But if the law students all hate me, I'm going to have them file their complaints with her! ;-)

Not too much else to report. We had a good weekend. It went by far too fast.

Hope everyone is enjoying their run up to Halloween!
Watch an old scary movie, eat some candy, and make yourself a costume! (or at least enjoy watching other people wear theirs)

Take care!

Goodbye, Laura

2011-10-20T13:24:00.000-07:00

Many of you probably don't know Laura Bennett Hague, but a a few of the people who read this blog definitely know her. Laura was a good friend of mine and housemate from my Trinity days back in college. She passed away this morning after a long battle with cancer. She was an extremely lively, caring, energetic person who was filled with boundless enthusiasm and an endless love of life. She had a tremendous sense of humor, loved entertaining people, and loved being entertained by them. She was fiercely loyal to her friends.
During college, Laura loved nothing more than organizing parties, planning outings, and thinking up fun things to do with friends. Her eyes would light up with excitement whenever someone would suggest anything from a houseparty to a spring break trip to a group dinner.
I hadn't seen Laura in a number of years, but I've been exchanging some messages and emails with her over the last couple of years, and it's also been quite evident to me for some time (although maybe this wasn't something that I initially picked up on in college) that she was a person of extraordinary strength, bravery, and faith.
Although I haven't seen her in a while, it makes me immensely sad to know that she's gone. She left behind her husband, Josh, and her daughter, Katy Jayne.
My sympathies and love go out to Laura and her family.

Some Halloween Spirit Coming at You!!

2011-10-19T12:32:00.000-07:00

Do the mash! It'll make ya feel good!

Update, A Bit on Occupy

2011-10-17T12:30:00.000-07:00

Hey! How are you guys? Just wanted to check in.
Amy was out of town this weekend. It was only a few days, but I missed her. After my having been away to Tulsa the week before last, and then Amy being gone this weekend, well... I just missed her. Glad she's back.
Friday night I hung out with Jamie and Ryan a bit. Saturday I went with my parents and with Reed to watch UT play OSU. UT lost, but the game was better than I expected, and, I thought, better than the score reflected. Fozzy Whitaker and Malcolm Brown both did a better than expected job with the running game. I'm still not entirely sold on the idea that we ought to be 100% committed to David Ash over Case McCoy as our primary quarterback, but I do think that Ash is getting better. He's got a good arm and he runs pretty well. He's young, and he needs to develop a little more awareness out there on the field (both in terms of pass coverage and pressure in the pocket). Hopefully he'll learn these things. On the other hand, if he doesn't learn (and sometimes college quarterbacks just never seem to develop an ability to quickly make good tactical decisions), I hope the coaches don't give up on the possibility of using McCoy. The coaching staff at UT is willing to demonstrate a lot of confidence in their players (which helps recruiting), but I think that sometimes they assume that a plaeyr needs time to grow when, in fact, the player has peaked (e.g., Garrett Gilbert). Obviously we haven't gotten to that point with Ash, and he's done pretty well, but I think the coaching staff should keep all of their options open.

What else? One month after they started, the Occupy Wall Street protests have spread to Austin and a lot of other places. The messages of the protests are sort of amorphous and the agenda varies a bit, depending on which protester you talk to, but the broad themes of the movement seem to deal with frustration regarding the American corporations, the government, and the ways in which the two things intersect. Among other things, people are angry about corporate influence in the American political process (lobbying and paid political ads by companies) and taxpayer bailouts for companies that helped to create the recession in the first place (with very risky investment strategies and bad lending practices). Companies which have taken assistance government assistance are felt to have had too little accountability and have done very little to create new middle class jobs (while overall corporate profits have done just fine). People may not really understand the intricacies of the linkage between the financial, corporate, and government realms, but they see the middle class in decline, poorly run companies repeatedly receiving taxpayer help ("too big to fail"), and corporations continuing to make really good profits, although many of these same companies (particularly in the financial sector) were responsible for the decision making that put the American economy in the hole in the first place.
The Occupy protesters have a long way to go in terms of advocating solutions instead of just voicing complaints, but I can see why people are irked. In particular, I think the focus on the private sector is long overdue. The government isn't the only boogeyman contributing to America's problems, and I think that Occupy's focus on the financial system is a good start. (I'm not sure that encouraging everyone to move their money to credit unions will really fix our problems, but it's at least bound to get the attention of the private sector. Predatory lending practices have helped lead to our recession, and with national banks slipping in stealth fees in areas like access to checking accounts- which banks are holding for free and loaning out to others at interest- it's easy to see why consumers are annoyed).
Anyway, Occupy needs to get more cohesive, organized, and eloquent if they want to create real change. With all of the disparate elements that they've collected under one tent, it might be difficult to bring focus to their agenda. But I understand the frustration.

What else? Hope you're still reading because Mono Ensemble has a gig on November 4th! Come on out and see us rock at 9:00 at the Carousel Lounge. Mono Ensemble will be playing from about 9:00 until about 10:15, with our friends Venus Fixer playing from 10:30 until midnight. Hope everyone can make it! More reminders to come!

Take care!

Lunacy

2011-10-11T09:52:00.001-07:00

If anyone's reading this today, I just want to remind you that tonight is a full moon. A hunter's moon. Jupiter is supposed to be visible somewhere near it.
It's October.
There's a full moon.
Go howl.
:-)

Back in the ATX

2011-10-10T08:59:00.000-07:00

Just a quick update. Well, after a fairly productive week in Tulsa, I got back into Austin kinda late Friday night. It was really good to get home and see Amy (and see Cassidy, and sleep in my own bed). The whole weekend was good. It was kind of rainy and overcast, which can sometimes get me down, but after months of severe heat and constant sunshine the clouds and drizzle made for a nice, cozy, lazy weekend. We ran some errands, hung out around the house a bit, and went to see a movie (we saw Drive, but neither of us cared for it all that much).
The UT-OU game was unpleasant, but as with any other traumatic experience, I'm working hard to suppress that memory. Thanks to Ryan and Jamie for having a few of us over. Aside from the events that were taking place on the TV, it was a pleasant experience.
I don't have too much to report in terms of the veterans court training trip to Tulsa. The National Drug Court people kept us really busy with classes and workshops and stuff about trauma and drug treatment and other related topics. In the evening our group went out to dinner a few times. We went to a place with pretty good barbecue and a blues band (Back Alley Blues & BBQ) in the Blue Dome District. We also went to a really good pizzeria (Andolini's) and a pretty good Irish pub (Kilkenny's). Tulsa seems like a nice enough town. The locals gave us a lot of razzing about the upcoming UT-OU game, but I would expect no less when a rivalry like that is involved.
Annnyway, it's good to be back.

Tulsa

2011-10-05T05:24:00.001-07:00

The conference is okay. Tulsa is okay. If we want to use the Internet in our hotel it costs $13 a day, so I'm making this entry from my iPhone.
I miss Amy.
Hi, Amy!
I'm not sure how Ryan travels for business and doesn't get grumpy.

Hello Tulsa, Goodbye White Chair

2011-10-02T13:39:00.000-07:00

Well, I'm off to Tulsa this week for a Veterans Court training. I'm not super excited to be going to spend a week in Oklahoma (I'm going to miss Amy, and the fall weather is starting to get nice in Austin right now), but I'm trying to stay positive about it.
Amy and I have had a good weekend. On Friday night we went to Lambert's. Neither one of us had ever been there, although both of us had read some good things about it, and I thought it lived up to its reputation. Amy had a pork chop, and I had shrimp and grits. We also had a chick pea appetizer, brussel sprouts, and a pumpkin brulee for desert. It was a really nice dinner, and I had a really nice time. I'll definitely go back there again.

(big happiness at Lambert's! And people wonder why I'm not thrilled about heading off to Tulsa)

Yesterday we just did some house stuff, and then last night we went over to my parents house to watch the UT-Iowa game. It was a nice evening. Not a great game, but it's always better to be on the winning end of a blowout!

And today I've been getting ready to go out of town. Also, we moved the trusty (and kind of grungy) ol' white chair out to the curb for bulk pick up. I sat in this chair a lot more back in the pre-Amy days (it's now been dubbed the "Jason is Alone" chair), but it served me well for a time. Via con dios, chair!

(This is Amy's new post as official guest greeter for the Hopalong Lounge)

At any rate, maybe I'll blog while I'm gone. Things might be slow in Tulsa.

Update

2011-09-26T08:49:00.000-07:00

The weekend was pretty good. Amy and I mostly ran errands and sort of puttered around the house on Saturday (Amy took her first trip to Garden Ridge Pottery, so that was a milestone moment that I got to share with her). We went to a nice baptism and brunch for Mary, Ani and John's daughter (friends who I met through Amy), and I rocked out with the Mono Ensemble (sans Eric) yesterday while Amy went to the gym. She seems fully committed to being in really good shape, thereby consistently remaining stronger and faster than myself (as well as smarter, but I'm not sure that happens at the gym).

We also watched the first two episodes of Sherlock, which is a BBC miniseries that puts a modern, updated spin on the character of Sherlock Holmes. The show stars Benedict Cumberbatch and Martin Freeman (Freeman is recognizable from the BBC version of The Office). Mark Gatiss and Steven Moffat (Doctor Who) are creators. I know that some Sherlock Holmes fans might initially be skeptical of the idea of a new, contemporary Sherlock Holmes (to be honest, I was initially a little wary), but the show is really well done, both in concept and execution. It's pretty clear that the writers have a great deal of respect and admiration for the original source material, and the show does a solid job of preserving the important personal characteristics of Holmes and Watson. I'm a big fan of the original Sherlock Holmes stories, but I've also really enjoyed this new version where you get to see the characters navigate the modern world (computers and cell phones) and the busy streets of today's London. And the list of characters from the original novels isn't limited to Holmes and Watson. I don't want to give too much away, but a number of supporting characters from the books appear as well, and it's really fun to see their depictions in this new version.

Anyway, the first season of Sherlock is comprised of only three episodes, although each is about 90 minutes long. They're supposed to be starting season two in early 2012, so I think people should check the show out now before the new season comes out. Amy and I have both been really enjoying it.

And in the category of new stories that I don't really understand but which sound really important, some CERN researchers in Europe have measured the speed of neutrinos recently and determined that they seem to be moving faster than the speed of light. Now I'm not going to pretend to understand all of the implications of this potential discovery (which still needs to stand up to a lot of peer review), but I do remember reading a layman's book or two on physics and hearing that the speed of light was more or less a universally held upper limit and that it's pretty much been held as being inviolable. I don't understand exactly how things will change if we find out that particles are moving faster than the speed of light, but it sounds as if some fundamental rules will have to be reexamined if it proves true.
On the positive side, it goes without saying if things can move faster than the speed of light, then that puts us one step closer to a Star Trek-like universe where we can zip around the galaxy one day in our space transports. So I'm all for that. Strap me in for a ride on the space bus!

Well, that's all that I have for now.

R.E.M. Breaks Up

2011-09-21T13:00:00.000-07:00

So R.E.M . announced today that they're breaking up.  It seems like a respectable decision. The band has been around for a long, long time, but they still have some artistic integrity and, not wanting to eventually become caricatures of their former selves, they're choosing to break up the band. I can respect the decision to end an artistic project- especially such a long running one- if you no longer feel that you have new, meaningful, interesting contributions to make. It's always better to leave your audience wanting more.
Still, I fee a little sad about the end of the REM era.  One of the first concerts that I ever went to (and maybe the first one where I just got dropped off and got to see a show with no parental supervision) was REM's Green tour back in 1989.  My friend Tim Choy was with me at this show, and I'm pretty sure that Ryan was there, too. I remember that Michael Stype didn't talk much between songs, and the rumor was that REM had come through Austin on one of their last tours and the crowd had rushed the stage. A couple of fans had supposedly been injured, and after that Michael Stype (and maybe the rest of the band) had decided that they weren't big fans of Austin, TX.
Anyway, I have good memories of that concert, anyway. I had been listening to the album a lot, and I was really intrigued by the sound of Stype's voice, the trippy, ambiguous lyrics, and the way that the songs did such a good job of creating mood and atmosphere without resorting to a lot of solos or self indulgent riffing.  REM wrote songs for people who wanted music that they could actually think about a little bit. The rock scene had the booze, drugs, and sex covered, and the pop stars had a good grasp on disposable dance singles. With REM, the songs had a range of topics, but there was a slightly deeper attempt to match music to mood and lyrics. REM was band that wrote their own songs and played their own music, but they were (or seemed) more interested in writing interesting songs than in just being celebrities.
In today's musical climate this seems like a more fairly obvious concept, but REM was gaining popularity at a time when most of the stuff on the radio or MTV (yes, MTV still played music videos back then) involved disposable, danceable tracks that were mostly meant to just be a pretty background for attractive pop stars to dance (e.g., Bobby Brown, New Kids on the Block, Paula Abdul, Debbie Gibson, Milli Vanilli, etc.). And the bands that actually played rock music seemed to mostly be clowns in tight clothes (often leather), sporting big hair and a compulsive desire to flex their musical muscles in front of anyone who would listen (Poison, Great White, Aerosmith, etc.). REM helped usher in an era of alternative music in which the songs themselves were meant to be more important than the celebrities performing them.
Or at least that's the way it started.
Eventually, of course, alternative music became co opted. REM and other college radio/alternative bands led the way, and Nirvana, almost inadvertantly, broke down the wall between mainstream and alternative music. All of the wanna-be celebrities found their way into a new genre that had initially been developed to avoid their influence.
The thing that made REM and some of the earlier "alternative" rock bands great was the originality and imagination that they brought to the music. They didn't necessarily rely on prodigious musicianship in order to create songs (mileage sort of varied in terms of technical ability from one band to the next), but they were really good at conveying ideas. Once alternative music got co opted though, you found people with very little creative energy cranking out extremely simple and often boring songs that just tried to imitate the sounds that other people had created.
And alternative music, unfortunately, is a good genre for hiding poseurs. The music doesn't have to be technically demanding. Alternative music bands, often wanting to differentiate themselves from the glitz and phoniness of glam rock and top 40 teenie bopper music, had often attempted to dress and act a lot more like "normal people" than mainstream rock or pop stars (okay, maybe the alternative bands wore a lot of flannel or looked like they needed a nap or shower, but at least they weren't wearing tight leather leggings and sporting long, quaffed hairdos with ridiculous amounts of hairspray).
Annnnyway, all of this to say.... Yeah, I get it. In a lot of ways the alternative movement led to an army of hipsters who don't have an original sound, only know three chords, wear black glasses, skinny jeans, and plaid, and sound whiney on every song.
I've been to SXSW. I know this happens.
But at the beginning, alternative music had a lot of creatve energy, and it was a major departure from the plastic, artificial, ridculosity that was going on at the time. At the beginning, the various sounds that made up alternative music were really something different, and some creative people were really attracted to working within alternative rock as an independent genre.
In some sense this is still a very good, healthy thing. On the whole, the alternative music movement reminded people that you didn't need to be able to play hypertechnical guitar solos, be able to hip hop dance, or dress like a glam rocker in order to make interesting music. The alternative music scene, at its core, was a reminder that anyone with an interesting sound or good song should be worthy of a listen.
REM were right at the forefront of this movement.
They had good ideas, an interesting sound, and enough drive and determination to claw their way out of the underground college radio scene and into the mainstream (wayyy into the mainstream- when I lived in San Antonio during college they shut down one of our major highways for the day and tied up the city's traffic so REM could shoot a video for "Everybody Hurts".).
I still like REM. I saw them for the last time at ACL Fest in 2003 (jeez, was that in 2003?!), and they put on a really good, fun show. They seemed like they were really enjoying themselves. It was cool because my memory of them from high school involved a much more sullen, sulky band.
Anyway, I gotta wrap this up, but I like R.E.M. and I'll miss them. They had some great lyrics (lots of great imagery, metaphor, and even humor), cool tunes, and they're an important part of the musical landscape in my life.
Peace.

ACL Fest 2011

2011-09-19T07:32:00.000-07:00

Well, my tenth year of ACL Fest has come and gone. I had a good time again and heard some good music, but the victory was a little more hard won this year. I've been sort of sick with allergies or a cold or something, so that brought my energy level down a little bit, and then the lineup was just a little weird this year. There were still some good acts, but there weren't as many bands on the lineup that I was looking forward to ahead of time, which I guess can be be attributed to a my own lack of knowledge about some of the acts (especially the newer ones) combined with a number of repeat performances from the bands that I was more familiar with (Ryan Bingham, Coldplay, Cold War Kids, The Walkmen, TV on the Radio, and Arcade Fire, for example, have all played the festival before, and this year's headliner, Arcade Fire, has, I believe, played the festival on at least three occasions when I've personally seen them). On top of that, I don't know if Kanye West blew out the sound system on the main stage the first night or what, but the sound for Stevie Wonder was pretty awful (it sounded like there was a great show going on somewhere, but we just couldn't hear it very well, so we ended up leaving earlier than we had planned), and Arcade Fire was kind of muddy as well. The sound problems bugged me, and I'm mentioning them because they're an issue that really needs to be addressed if ACL Fest is going to continue to market itself as a festival for serious music fans, especially when you're talking about the headliners at the end of the night.
On the whole, though, it was a good festival. I don't mean to sound down on it (I only mention things like sound problems because they seem like they could and should be fixed in future years). It was a fun weekend, and we're lucky to have a musical festival in our town! We had a little bit of light rain, but it didn't get too hot, and the weather, on the whole, was really very good.

Quick recap of who we saw:
Day 1- Delta Spirit, the Smith Westerns, Ray LaMontagne, a bit of Kurt Vile and the Violators, Gary Clark Jr., Mavis Staples, and a bit of Kanye and Coldplay.
Day 2- Iron and Wine, Fitz and the Tantrums, a little bit of Cut Copy, TV on the Radio, and part of the Stevie Wonder set.
Day 3- Ryan Bingham and The Dead Horses, Elbow, Manu Chao, a few Social Distortion songs, and Hayes Carl (we tried to see Randy Newman but left because of sound issues), and part of Arcade Fire.

Standouts for me included Gary Clarke, Jr., Fitz and the Tantrums, TV on the Radio, Ryan Bingham, Manu Chao, and, kind of surprisingly, Hayes Carl (didn't know much about either Hayes Carl or Gary Clark going into this). I also liked Elbow more than I expected to. Actually, when I think about it, most all of the music I'm listing here was good. We didn't stick around long for stuff we didn't care for, and we found some really good music to listen to.

Anyway, it was a good three days! Thanks to Amy for going with me and helping me have fun and thanks to Dan for giving us some nice parking!!

It's hard to believe it's been ten years. I remember Jeff Wilson sort of talking me into going to my first ACL Fest, and I haven't missed one since. Even though the festival experience can occasionally be a bit trying in its particulars (there were especially hot years, the year of dust, and the year of the mudbowl, etc. etc.), I'm really glad to line in a town that has such a strong community atmosphere and a commitment to live music. I'm not sure I'll make it to all three days of every festival for the next ten years, but I'll keep going, and I'll continue to be glad that ACL Fest has become an enduring part of Austin culture.

The Weekend

2011-09-12T07:44:00.000-07:00

Well, it was a good weekend- a nice, relaxing couple of days off, which was a good thing, given that we were in Arizona last weekend and we've got ACL Fest coming up this upcoming weekend.
I don't even remember what we did on Friday night. I really don't. Seems like we had some frozen yogurt at some point. I guess we watched the last episode of Deadwood.
Amy and I have really enjoyed watching Deadwood. The characters are pretty well developed and well acted, and they have long, interesting arcs that allow you watch them actually change and grow (or fail to grow) in a plausible way over the course of multiple seasons. The show explores interesting subject matter and themes, looking at topics like justice, immigration, gender roles, politics, and business, all played out against a backdrop where a newly formed civilization is struggling to rise out of the chaos and lawlessness of a more primitive environment. Deadwood was ultimately cancelled, but I think that the show still holds up really well. It would have been nice to have had a few more episodes to tie up some loose ends, but, on the whole, the show concluded in a way that was in keeping with its overall spirit.
On Saturday we got up and went walking around Lake Lady Bird (I still think of it as Town Lake, but I'm trying to get with the times). It was a nice walk. We did a lot of people watching, and the weather was nice. Saturday afternoon we ran a couple of errands. Saturday evening I went and watched the UT game over at Ryan and Jamie's while Amy got caught up on some stuff for school.
I feel a little bad for saying this, but I breathed a big sigh of relief when the coaching staff pulled UT quarterback Garrett Gilbert. He didn't really deserve to get booed, but he's had his chance, and UT has at least two other quarterbacks in the wings who show promise (and I know I wasn't the only UT fan who thought both Ash and McCoy performed more capably on Saturday).
Saturday night Amy and I joined Jaci, Josh, Heidi, and their friend Blake for some trivia at Opal Divine's. Our team was called "College Football is a Ponzi Scheme", and we came in second out of 27 teams! It was a nice night, and I enjoyed both the hanging out and the trivia.
Sunday was Uncle Donald's 83rd birthday, so the Steans clan (and Pearce clan) went to Cover 3. It was nice. We got some food, watched some football, and ate a little cake. I'd never been to Cover 3. It was pretty cool.

(Uncle Donald examines the menu and wonders when they started serving seared Ahi tuna and jerk shrimp salads at sports bars)

Sunday afternoon we ran a few errands, and that night Amy made some good chicken pesto pasta, and we just took it easy.

So that was it! Hope you guys had a good weekend! Amy and I enjoyed ours!

10 Years After 9/11

2011-09-10T13:29:00.000-07:00

There are going to be a whole lot of things written about the events of September 11, 2001, ten years after the fact. People are going to be typing up their memories of that day, and trying to measure how things have changed or failed to change since that event took place.
9/11 is a huge topic. Many books will be and have been written about it, trying to put the whole thing into some sort of perspective. Given all of the attention that the "big picture" 9/11 stories are getting this week, I wanted to just scale things back a bit and give my account of how 9/11 has affected my life. I knowing full well that I've felt nothing but the most minor traces of the impact of 9/11, and that it only affected me in the most indirect of ways, but I think that 9/11 affected all of us probably more than we realize as we go about our day to day lives. The attack and its aftereffects have just become ingrained as part of our social fabric, so we don't really think about them unless we take a moment to reflect.
Of course, like everyone else, I find myself standing in line with no shoes or belt in airport security lines. I occasionally think about the ways that The Patriot Act has made it easier for the government to invade our privacy without much judicial review. The 9/11 attacks, coupled with several less successful subsequent attempts at attacks on the U.S., have made us all a bit more jumpy and cautious when it comes to unexpected, public incidents. I remember being at ACL Fest a few years ago when a port-a-potty caught fire. None of us knew the cause, but we all saw black, billowing smoke rising over the crowded festival grounds, and there were some moments of uneasiness before one of the musicians noted that there had simply been a small accident. We all sort of breathed a collective sigh of relief. It's bizarre to realize that some religious wacko sat in a cave or desert hideout somewhere, probably right before the end of the millennium, and planned an unlikely attack designed to take down the World Trade Center. Years later, we're all worried about the possibility of enemy-inflicted mass casualties when a public toilet catches fire at an Austin music festival.
Another change in my life that can be attributed in no small part to the events of 9/11 deals with my professional life. I've been working in the veterans court for almost a year now, and I've been going to planning meetings for it that started probably almost a year before that.
The veterans court might have come to fruition without the 9/11 attacks, but then again, it might not have (or it certainly might have taken a much longer time to start one in Austin). Once again, the chain of events is just strange when you really think about it.
Radical Islamic terrorists launch an attack against the U.S. and take down the World Trade Center. The U.S. enters into a war on terror, sending troops into both Afghanistan and Iraq to contain threats against the West. American troops end up fighting nasty counter-insurgency campaigns in both countries. Troops return to the Austin area after having experienced extremely traumatic events (e.g., friends being killed by roadside bomb, sniper, and rocket attacks; exploding suicide bombers; busloads of Iraqi police being killed by explosions; the identification of bodies in mass graves; etc.). Our troops suffer post traumatic stress disorder and other conditions related to their combat experiences. As a result, some of these veterans have anger control issues, self medicate with drugs and alcohol, and display other problematic behaviors related to their combat experiences. Some of them get in fights or get behind the wheel of a car and drive when they really shouldn't. These are the people who end up in the veterans court, mostly. So, somehow we end up with a veterans court twice a month on Thursday evenings because some jackass in a terrorist training center in Afghanistan got an idea to fly a couple of planes into the World Trade Center.
Of course, we might have found a different war to fight if 9/11 hadn't happened. But then again, maybe not. Maybe we wouldn't have enough of a population of traumatized vets to justify a veterans court if we hadn't had the two wars spawned by 9/11. I like my job, but it would be nice to have fewer troubled vets. It would have been nice if 9/11 hadn't happened and we hadn't ended up going to war.
And it's weird to think about the fact that it was almost exactly ten years ago that we all watched events on TV that would ultimately send our troops off to war. It's even stranger to realize that enough time has now passed that they've not only gone to war, but have already returned to this country as veterans (many having done multiple tours) and are now working to settle into healthy civilian lives.
So that's my little part of the conversation. I know it's not the most dramatic 9/11 story that you're going to hear this weekend, but maybe it gives a little peek at how 9/11 had some indirect impact on everyday Joes like me- the people who weren't near ground zero on 9/11, were never first responders, were never in the military, and who never lost loved ones. I certainly don't mean to say that my story is anywhere near as meaningful as the stories that these people have, either. I guess my point, if I have one, is just that 9/11 factors into the lives of a lot of us in one way or another. Sometimes those connections are hard to quantify, but I think almost all of our lives have changed in certain ways, whether we immediately notice them or not, since 9/11.
Anyone who reads this blog will know that I sometimes have quarrel with our politicians and their decisions, but also want to give a big hats off to our troops and the first responders who keep us safe.

Peace.

City on Fire

2011-09-08T10:58:00.000-07:00

This is an image of the Bastop fire (downtown Austin in the foreground) that has, at last count, burned nearly 1,400 homes and killed two people. I know a few people from the courthouse who live in Bastrop, and many of our officers from the Travis County Sherriff's Department (who work at the courthouse) and even some of the investigators from our office have been out there working on the emergency. My thoughts and sympathies go out to our neighbors who are struggling through this.

Several Days Without Labor in Phoenix

2011-09-07T12:30:00.000-07:00

So this past weekend I took my first trip with Amy out to go visit her family in Phoenix! (well, technically, I guess, we were mostly in Peoria and Surprise, but for non Arizonians, I think it's probably easier to just call it Phoenix)

It was a really nice trip! We flew in on Saturday morning and started out by going to brunch at the Biltmore, which is a historic hotel and resort that has been open since 1929. It's a really cool place, with some interesting architecture and beautiful landscaping and grounds (and the food was really good).

(The Biltmore's a beautiful place. Even though it's in the desert, for some reason it occasionally conjured up, in my mind, comparisons to one of my favorite fictional hotels...)

Saturday afternoon we just sort of relaxed and took it easy. We were staying at Amy's grandparents' house (they were on vacation and graciously allowed us to stay there), so we just kind of relaxed for a while. Thanks to Carol and Jerry for the extremely nice accomodations.

(Amy and I realize that our lifetsyle is actually already pretty well suited for retirement)

Saturday night we went over to Amy's parents house (Jean and Greg's) for dinner. Heidi (Amy's sister) joined us along with Matt (Amy's brother-in-law) and Scott (Amy's nephew). It was really great to finally meet all of them! I'd heard about all of them a lot, and we've even chatted on Skype a few times, but it was very nice to finally meet them in person!

And dinner was great. Greg grilled some really good barbecue chicken, and Jean and Amy made delicious potatoes, salad, beans, and probably some other stuff that I'm not remembering (there was good cake for desert! Oh yeah, and delicious sangria! How did I forget the delicious sangria?! Well, I know how I almost forgot about the delicious sangria...).

Afterward we just hung out and visited and looked at some stars and nebulae through Greg's telescope (which was really cool).

Sunday morning we got up, and all went to the pool over in Sun City where Amy and I were staying (well, except Matt. Matt actually stayed home to do some work- and on Labor Day weekend!). The trip to the pool was really nice. I got to spend some more time talking to Heidi, and we all took turns playing with Scott in the water. Amy and I both really like the sun and the water, and the pool trip was really pleasant.

Sunday afternoon we went to the Musical Instrument Museum. I guess it's a fairly new Museum in Phoenix, and it's really interesting. It holds over 10,000 musical instruments from all over the world, and features an audio tour that allows you to hear them via audio and video clips that feature live performances that utilize the pieces on display. The museum has amassed a pretty amazing collection of instruments from various periods in history from all over the world.

(in this picture you can see Amy, Heidi, and Matt grooving to the sounds of what I believe to be medieval Chinese hip hop)

(in the Latin American section, Amy and Heidi fail to heed a prophetic warning, issued circa 1987 by Gloria Estefan and the Miami Sound Machine. "The rhythm IS going to get you...")

(somehow Ryan made it all the way to Phoenix just to sneak into the back of this picture to photobomb us)

Sunday evening we went to dinner at a restaurant called El Encanto. It was a really nice place. The outdoor seating was in a sort of courtyard with a pond (complete with ducks!), and the food and margaritas were very good. I had a chicken dish that was tasty, but I can't remember the name. It was a second chance to hang out with the whole Davis/Sinex clan, and it was a really good time!

Monday morning I got up (Amy had gone for her morning walk/run with her mom) and looked out the window to see a number of rabbits and a coyote who wandered in off the golf course to look for his breakfast. He came closer to the house than it appears in this picture, but it took me a couple of minutes to find my camera...

(strangely, he wasn't chasing a roadrunner, and he didn't demonstrate any proficiency with dynamite)

We went over to Jean and Greg's place for breakfast/brunch, and Amy's mom served up some really good migas (which have become one of my favorite foods over time), coffee cake, and fruit. Everything was really good.

Jean, Amy, and I went to the pool after breakfast and just swam around and relaxed. Jean and Greg's neighborhood pool is really nice and has a nice sort of backdrop view of the mountains.

After swimming we went home and pretty much just packed up to head back to the airport.

The entire weekend was relaxing and enjoyable, and it was really good to do some new, interesting, fun things in Phoenix, and, more importantly, get a chance to hang out with Amy's family. It was great to finally meet Heidi, Matt, and Scott, and I had a really good visit with Jean and Greg as well. I really appreciate the hospitality and the kindness, and of course, it's great to know that Amy has such a nice family! Thanks again to Jean, Greg, heidi, Matt, Scott, Carol, and Jerry for making it such a good trip!

Pre Labor Day Hola and Blog Topics

2011-09-02T11:35:00.000-07:00

Just wanted to check in with everyone before Amy and I jet off to spend the Labor Day weekend with her family out in Phoenix.

On Tuesday I went with Amy and a couple of her iSchool friends to see The Apartment at The Paramount. I'd never seen it before, and I really enjoyed it. It wasn't quite what I'd expected. I'd certainly heard of the movie, but with Jack Lemmon and Fred MacMurray starring as the film's leading men, I guess I expected more of a lighthearted comedy.
And the movie was funny, but it surprised me with its dark undertones. It's a testament to Billy Wilder and I.A.L. Diamond, the movie's writers, that a film involving themes of exploitation, misogyny, suicide, and dysfunctional relationships somehow managed to remain humorous and warm while still giving the audience a chance to relate to and sympathize with the characters in a genuine way. Of course, the strong acting by the entire cast helped, too (I think it was the best performance I've ever seen by Shirley MacLaine). Anyway, I'm sure that everyone but me has already seen this movie, so I guess I won't spend too much time dissecting it, but I really enjoyed it. Thanks to Amy for making sure that I finally saw it!

What else?
I haven't been blogging as much about politics and government lately, but to be honest, it's just because I've been finding the whole topic a little too frustrating and discouraging to even approach. I'm sorry if I sound negative for saying this, but I just don't have a whole lot that's useful to say. I'm ideologically opposed to most of the people on the far right, and leaders from far right seem to be controlling most of what goes on within the Republican Party these days (e.g., the Tea Party and people who share a similar mindset). They have a sort of "make no compromises/take no prisoners" mindset, and Obama and the Democrats are far too weak and conciliatory at almost every turn (on health care, the debt ceiling and fair taxation, terrorism trials and troop withdrawals, environmental protection, etc.). The Democratic leadership doesn't seem to be able to do much to protect America's middle and working class families other than to try to somewhat limit the damage that the Republicans are doing in the name of the American elite and big business, and genuine progress on most progessive issues still feels frustratingly out of reach.
Meanwhile, the American people seem to be making their political decisions in the sort of unthinking, reactionary manner that I've come to sort of expect. Mostly just frustrated and frantic about the country's failing economy and the national debt, voters sit poised to pour out their anger by heading to the voting booths to cast their ballots against whoever is in charge. Having extremely short memories, they seem to have forgotten that the economy had already started its tumble toward the end of an eight year period of Republican leadership, and that the national debt was hugely fueled by an extraordinarily expensive war in Iraq that never related to the events of 9/11 in any legitimate way, prosecuted under the leadership of an administration which mischaracterized intelligence data in order to induce a conflict (costing between 3 and 4 trillion dollars, by most estimates). People are angry about the economy, and they're ready to take it out on a bunch of elected officials who have mostly been in office a short time, even though the economic crisis has been long in the making and has affected not just the U.S., but almost every country in the industrialized world.
Other voters, perhaps less fueled by anger, are disappointed by the president's failure to make any headway on the economy since taking office. Even recognizing that he did not create the problems which he inherited, this second class of potential voters is deeply frustrated with and troubled by the president's unending, apparently tireless desire to cast himself as a "uniter"- a fantasy which has led to repeated capitualtion in directions of the failed policies which brought us to the untenable position that we currently find ourselves in (e.g., do we still need the Bush tax cuts for our wealthiest Americans if they helped drive the county into debt and ultimately failed to prevent a recession?).
Annnnnnnyyyyway....
I'm tired. I'm tired of the economy and tired of the government, and I'm just dreading the looming election year and all of the soundbites, slogans, shouting, and lack of meaningful discussion. Some people get more bothered by the empty promises and the sales pitches filled with hollow inspiration, but I'm more tired of the factual lies and the negativity.
I'm tired of our leaders, but, sadly, I'm even more tired of an unthinking, apathetic/apoplectic electorate that demands this sort of political process. I'm tired of voters who don't really make any attempt to gain any independent knowledge or make any sort of objective assessment about what's best for the country. I'm tired of voters who are so narrowly focused on their own self interest that they fail to see that complete inflexibility is going to ultimately be really bad for us all.
Our elected leaders seem to be in perpetual gridlock, and it feels like they're utterly incapable of getting anything done, but we can't solely blame our leaders for this fiasco. Congressmen and senators face constituencies who vow to immediately vote them out of office if they show even the slightest inclination toward compromise- no matter how reasonable. Leaders are hounded to sign pledges and oaths of loyalty, knowing that they'll immediately face a competitor from their own party during reelection if they make even the smallest deviation from strict party doctrine.
There's no way that our leaders can govern in this sort of situation, and there's no mantra or narrow ideology that can correctly inform every decision in every given situation.
I know this sounds hopelessly naive, but in order for Democracy to work, it really does seem like you need to have some level of education in your voters beyond soundbites and campaign ads. You also need flexibility and a willingness to compromise with neighbors who have differing points of view. And flexibility needs to come from both ends of the political spectrum.
But it doesn't seem like we're moving in that direction.
In fact, it feels like we're moving farther from it.
So I'm going to keep hanging out with Amy and eating froyo.
I'm pretty happy in my little corner of the world. But I find myself worrying from time to time that things will get nasty enough in the world at large that, ultimately, the world's problems will become my own. Given the economy, the job market (mostly for Amy), and my job (I work in a veterans court with war veterans who have been affected by our policies and in a mental health court that deals with health care and social service funding issues on a daily basis), I guess the bigger world is intruding already.
I'm watching, but I just want something new to discuss. It would be such a relief to hear some real discussion and to see some legitimate change.
So.... just have patience with the ol' blog.
And enjoy the posts about yogurt! ;-)

The Weekend

2011-08-28T22:15:00.000-07:00

So the weekend was pretty good. It went by way too fast.
I ate hatch chili enchiladas, played a kind of complicated boardgame called Caylus (or it seemed complicated at the time) with newfriends Reid, Jim, and Seth, went to a few stores, swam at Barton Springs, had band practice, and ate frozen yogurt.
The importance of the frozen yogurt is not to be underestimated.
Amy looooves frozen yogurt.
It's delicious, cold, and apparently good for you, so she likes it. A LOT.
For a year now she's periodically mentioned cravings for froyo, but I've typically had to quietly, sadly respond with my belief that there really weren't many frozen yogurt choices in South Austin. Maybe none at all. This statement would usually elicit a sort of mournful, wistful, faraway look as Amy longingly stared out the window and dreamed of having a boyfriend who could provide her with tastier, healthier frozen treats.
I'd looked on Google Maps, though, and no sign of yogurt in South Austin.
But on Saturday everything changed.
Wham! Bam!
We found two frozen yogurt places in South Austin within about a four hour span!
First we drove past a place called Yogurt 4 U on William Cannon, and then we found a place called Tutti Frutti Frozen Yogurt over in Sunset Valley only about a mile or two from my house!
We had yogurt there twice in twenty four hours.
I know that sounds like a lot of yogurt, but it was a weekend of celebration. (also, one of those times we went right after swimming and basking in the sun at Barton Springs. I'm pretty sure you're required by law to eat frozen yogurt after a trip to Barton Springs if yogurt is available)
It turned out that Tutti Frutti had been there for about a year, but I guess it took the place a while to work its way onto the interwebz.
And you wouldn't believe the change in Amy. Thanks to froyo, I'm able to bring joy into her life now. There's a spring in her step and a smile on her face. Sometimes, when she thinks I'm not looking, I see her close her eyes and grin as she thinks about frozen yogurt.
Annnnyway, I hope you guys are doing well. Stay out of the heat. Eat some frozen yogurt.

Peace.

Happy Birthday, Dad!

2011-08-21T16:10:00.000-07:00

So my dad, Rick Steans, is turning 65 today. Amy and I just got back from spending a couple of very nice days at the beach with Dad, Mom, Ryan, and Jamie.

I literally can't say enough about my Dad and what it mean to have grown up in a family with him. He's taught me everything from basic, practical life skills (e.g., how to change a tire and how to install grounded electrical plugs) to helping shape my worldview (e.g., "You're as good as anyone, but better than no one.")

At any rate, I don't want to get too sentimental on the ol' blog, but I would definitely feel remiss if I didn't mark Dad's birthday with some kind of post. I love you a lot, Dad, and I feel very lucky and proud to have you in my life! I hope you've had a good birthday!

Happy Beach Birthday!

2011-08-19T12:07:00.001-07:00

Hey Steanso readers!

Steanso and I are heading to Galveston to participate in Rick's birthday extravaganza. I don't know what awaits us down there (aside from the possible hurricane or Karebear Tsunami), but I know we'll have fun. I'm looking forward to some serious sunbathing and cavorting. Anyway, here's wishing you all a fun-filled summer weekend!

Take it easy,

Amy

The Weekend

2011-08-15T08:37:00.000-07:00

So the weekend was sort of a mixed bag. On Friday night a few of Amy's friends came over and we grabbed some food and played a few games. We played Dixit, which is a really interesting game involving pictures and interpretation (you have to guess how other people will perceive some sort of abstract images) and Imperial (which involved a big world map and wars, taxation, investment, etc.). Both games were a lot of fun. I didn't exactly win, but so long as we all had fun, we're all winners. Right? Right?!
On Saturday we met up with some other folks that Amy is friends with from the iSchool and law school for bar trivia at Opal Divine's. We ultimately came in fifth, but we were holding strong in second place until the final round, and there were 34 teams, so we did pretty well.
On Sunday we went to a funeral for my friend Debra Goodlett, who I mentioned had passed away a while back. There were quite a few people at the funeral, and some people said some very nice things.
I'm really going to miss Debra. She was much more than a coworker, and she really helped brighten up life here at the County Attorney's Office.
Sunday night we did some grilling, but in mid dinner my air conditioning went out, so I'm still contending with that. The chicken kabobs, on the other hand, were really good, but having a broken air conditioner during the middle of a heat wave is a real drag.

Well, that's it for now! I hope everyone is off to a good start this week!

What You See in the Clouds

2011-08-13T09:39:00.000-07:00

This is pretty wild. As a person who's pretty solidly grounded in a belief in science and logic, I recognize that the video shows clouds (i.e., water vapor) being shaped by wind as a storm blows in. I guess that some guy up in Canada shot this footage.

There are untold numbers of these meteorological events going on all of the time around the world, and probability itself would have to dictate that some of of the events arising out of this large group are bound to occur in formations that our minds will try to organize into recognizable patterns.

But there's some deeper, primordial part of me that still wants to posit that supernatural events, if they are ever going to exist at all, would have to take shape within the chaos and confusion of seemingly random events and coincidences- the less logical part of me argues that if there's some sort of chance that supernatural events could ever occur, then these occurrences might have to be the sort of things that a person could easily explain through logical means, while simultaneously being understandable, to a person who was inclined to see them differently, as something entirely different. This is, I suppose, where questions of faith and belief come into play. Faith in what, I'm not sure, but faith in something more than we can readily explain. The logical part of my brain wants to mock the superstitious part of my brain, but human beings have been superstitious for a long, long time, and thousands of years of evolution, in some ways, can prove a difficult thing to overcome.

So somewhere between feeling foolish about superstition and arrogant about the certainty that we have in our understanding of the universe, I feel stuck.

But faces in the clouds, no doubt, are a very cool thing.

Plastic Surgery and Comedy Gone Wrong

2011-08-11T13:05:00.001-07:00

So a couple of things have gone through my mind over the last couple of days. Well, at least a couple. One of these things made me look upon something with dismay that I think many other people might potentially look upon in a favorable light, and another made me look upon something that I had previously viewed with skepticism in a much more positive way.

The positive-viewed-negative line of thought for this week came from watching a trailer for the new movie, 30 Minutes or Less, starring Jesse Eisenberg, Danny McBride, and Aziz Ansari. The movie is a sort of dark comedy about the madcap hijinks that ensue when a pizza delivery guy (Eisenberg) has a bomb strapped to his body against his will and is forced to commit a robbery. I really like some of the actors in this movie, and some of the jokes will probably turn out to be sort of funny, but I'm having a hard time getting past the fact that the plot is loosely placed upon a real life event in which a pizza delivery driver named Brian Douglas Wells had a bomb involuntarily strapped to his body in Erie, Pennsylvania in 2003. He was forced to rob a bank before the incident ended in a police standoff (the police were unsure about whether Wells was a voluntary participant). Wells ended up pleading for the police to try to disarm the bomb in front of news cameras before being killed by the bomb's detonation (the question of whether Wells was a willing participant in a robbery conspiracy still remains, I believe, although no one seems to believe that Wells planned to end his own life).
So, anyway, I just have a hard time imagining sitting through this movie and enjoying a whole lot of belly laughs. I remember seeing video of the original standoff with police as Wells begged for help before his death, and I was pretty horrified by the whole thing.
Maybe I'm just getting old and stodgy, but I'm just kind of bothered by the fact that we're so cynical these days that an extremely disturbing and very real murder is apparently considered viable subject matter for a wacky comedy. Call me softehearted, but I feel like regardless of whether Wells was involved in a robbery plot or ended up dying in an awful accident after things went wrong, there's still a profound lack of human empathy occurring when we're using a gruesome death as the source material for a comedy. I guess I'm not even so much bothered by the fact that the movie got made (people have a right to make whatever kind of art that they want) as by the fact that the studio was convinced that there would be a large audience out there for this movie (and that's exactly the sort of calculation that the studios have to make before greenlighting an expensive motion picture).
The whole thing makes me feel vaguely depressed.

On a more positive note, I'm fairly amazed by the progress that Charla Nash has made following her face transplant. She was attacked by a chimpanzee in 2009 (a friend's pet) and had her face and her hands pretty much destroyed. Now, however, doctors have given Nash a new face, provided by an unknown donor, and Nash seems to be recovering fairly well.
The whole operation has given me a reminder about/new appreciation for doctors who do reconstructive and plastic surgery. It's probably mostly ignorance on my part, but my knee jerk reaction when I picture plastic surgeons involves thoughts of breast implants, facelifts, and other forms of cosmetic surgery that I tend to think of as mostly nonessential.
This whole Charla Nash story has been a good reminder that these sorts of doctors also do amazing things in terms in terms of restoring quality of life for people who have suffered devastating injuries. It's amazing that we live in a day and age when people can get a new face!

Anyway, short post, but I felt like writing something! Hope you guys are enjoying youselves!
Peace!!

A Step in the Right Direction

2011-08-08T20:00:00.000-07:00

So the Dow dropped over 600 points today and we're facing a possible double dip recession, the U.S. is facing the first ever downgrade of its credit rating, there are random riots going on in England (kicked off initially by a police shooting, but having quickly spread in distance and scope far beyond their point of origin), markets in Europe and Asia have been falling off sharply, and there's a horrible famine that's ravaging East Africa.

I think now, as much as ever, we need this...

Attack the Block

2011-08-08T15:01:00.001-07:00

Oh yeah! We also went to see a movie this weekend called Attack the Block. It was a British movie about some London kids who have to fight off an alien invasion. It was a simple movie, but really fun! I recommend it!

The Weekend

2011-08-08T13:44:00.000-07:00

(Amy has to have chocolate wine to keep her from getting scared of the wine with googly eyes)

The weekend was good. We had some good meals (chicken burgers with potatoes on Friday and grilled chicken last night with grilled veggies), we went to Barton Springs, we watched Deadwood, we did some shopping (nothing fancy), and got a bit of exercise. Also, I did some watering. Somehow this drought has turned me into an elderly farmer who's obsessed with irrigation.
Nice weekend!

Mr. Peanut

2011-08-06T14:12:00.000-07:00

So today I finished reading a book called Mr. Peanut that I bought at City Lights Books back when we were on our San Francisco trip in May.

I read a couple of pretty good reviews of the book after I finished it today, one from NPR and also a New York Times review by Scott Turow.

The novel, by Adam Ross, was well written, had a fairly complicated structure, and explored some interesting and difficult themes. At times, though, it made for a kind of harrowing read (which, I think, was part of the reason it took me a while to finish the book).

Mr. Peanut deals with marriage and questions about why marriages work and fail, exploring these questions in the context of a sort of a convoluted murder mystery. The book takes a look at at least three different marriages, each of them dysfunctional in a different way, and the novel is unsettling not just because of the murders that occur within it (I've read a number of horror, sci fi, and fantasy novels with as much or more bloodshed), but becauseof the realistic, recognizable, painful fights and relationship difficulties that foreshadow the violence.

Mr. Peanut was a book that was troubling because it just hits some raw nerves in terms of depicting the psychology of relationships. Even though very few readers have probably ever wanted to literally murder a loved one, a much larger number of readers will be able to relate to a fleeting (or maybe not so fleeting) sensation of wanting to "kill" someone out of frustration, anger, disappointment, etc..

I'm not going to say much more about the books because I think other reviewers have already done a pretty good job at saying some good things about it (Turow definitely has a strong review).

I guess I mostly just felt like Mr. Peanut was a book that I didn't exactly enjoy all of the way through, but still, I guess that in the end I thought it was a very solid novel. The book puts its audience through some unpleasant experiences, but it also gets the reader to think about relationships and maybe even learn a thing or two by way of close, detailed examination of the normally private emotional lives of couples.

Even though it took me a while to get through it, I have a feeling that Mr. Peanut is going to be one of those books that sticks with me for some time.

Ummm... okay, this wasn't my best book post. Maybe I'll update it again later and make it better.

Of course, by then you'll all have moved on to better things.

But I'll feel better.

Staycation

2011-08-02T14:16:00.001-07:00

Yesterday was a really good day. I took a day off of work so Amy and I could celebrate summer. We got up late and ate Don Juan tacos for breakfast at Juan in a Million. We went tubing in San Marcos. It was nice and peaceful and hot and cold and relaxing. We had frozen yogurt. We ate watermelon. We got sunburned and then sat in the dark air conditioning and watched LA Confidential. Amy made chilaquiles for dinner, and they were really, really good. We took Cassidy for a nighttime hop.
Just a great summer day.
Thanks to Amy for sharing it with me!!

Teddybears!

2011-07-29T07:03:00.000-07:00

Listened to this on the way to work this morning, and thought you guys might enjoy it on your Friday.

Shrimp Night!!

2011-07-26T20:07:00.000-07:00

Delicious shrimp! They came all the way from the ocean to find their way onto the Hop-a-Long grill! Good job, Amy!

Sunday Afternoon at Hop-A-Long

2011-07-26T13:08:00.000-07:00

Amy Winehouse, Authenticity, and Audience Confusion

2011-07-25T07:59:00.000-07:00

There was a really good piece by Amanda Petrusich recently on Salon.com about the death of Amy Winehouse and the role of authenticity in music.
The article talks about the fact that music fans, and fans of other forms of art as well, crave authenticity in art. It also questions what the authenticity really means in terms of how it applies to art. In general, I guess listeners feel like a piece of music is more "legitimate" if the audience feels like the life of the artist clearly reflects the sort of experiences and emotions that the art seeks to convey. The line of thinking, I suppose, is that art comes from a more sincere, honest place if the audience thinks that the artist has truly lived the through the sort of events described in their work.

But what do you make of that notion in an age when so many artists exert tremendous effort to spin media images that comport with their art after the fact? We have a whole lot of different musicians out there who are surrounded by teams of managers, publicists, etc., all trying to craft a public persona for artists that will help to sell their product, rendering semi-fictional to entirely fictional biographies that only reflect their histories and lives in the most tangential way (a fact which is made even more absurd when you realize that some of these artists are trying to legitimize themselves by bending the truth about their lives, oftentimes in an effort to try to lend credibility to songs and records written by ghostwriters- songs that the "artist" didn't actually write in the first place).
Other artists try to create a lifestyle for themselves which they think will legitimize their music. Many a country music star has grown up in a suburban environment as a fan of rock and roll, never having ever really experienced a rural lifestyle, only to end up later parading around in cowboy hats, talking of their horses and cattle, and singing of the ranching/country lifestyle. A number of rappers have built careers upon descriptions of growing up "on the streets" despite having actually grown up in a relatively comfortable middle class environment. And, of course, many rock acts seem to have picked up self destructive drug and drinking habits almost as a way to prove to audiences that they're musicians who are legitimately deserving of the "rock star" label.
So the audience craves authenticity, but it's hard to know what's authentic a lot of the time.

And even if the lifestyle seems to match the lyrics, isn't it still impossible to know whether the emotions portrayed in the art are genuine? Doesn't anyone suppose that there have been rappers who are actually from the streets, having written songs about the despair brought on by violence and drugs, while in truth they sort of love the street life because it's brought them money, fame, and success? Haven't there been rock stars who've alluded to the pain and sadness of their drug problems, while in truth some of these same people have mostly enjoyed their habits, including the chance to sing about how awful their struggles had become? Is the music authentic just because of the life events of the artist, even if the emotions expressed in the art aren't genuine?
In her article, Petrusich also makes an excellent (and I think accurate) point about the fact that legitimacy, insofar as it actually exists in music, has to come from the audience and not the performer. The emotional resonance that matters is actually the affect that a piece of music has upon the listener. Maybe in some cases it helps a listener to feel more emotionally connected to a song if that listener feels like the artist was feeling some sort of genuine emotional experience at the time that the song was written. On the other hand, even if a song was written for a primarily commercial purpose, if that song conjures up memories or otherwise stirs up valid emotions in the listener, then then the origins of the song may actually be irrelevant.
Authenticity in art might rely primarily upon the emotional reaction of the audience and not upon the emotional investment of the artist. Given the fact that it's all but impossible to be sure exactly what the artist was thinking as they created their work, the genuine emotional response of the audience might be the best that we can ever really hope for in appreciating a piece of art.

Anyway, things aren't going to change, and audiences are going to continue to demand that the lifestyle of an artist mirrors the content of their work in some way.
As Petrusich points out in regard to Amy Winehouse, the problems arise when artists feel so strong a need to legitimize their work that they're willing to sacrifice everything- even their lives- in order to lend an air of authenticity. The whole phenomenon just becomes that more tragic when the whole thing is misguided and sadly self fulfilling on the part of both artists and fans.

What in the World is Wrong With People?

2011-07-22T19:40:00.000-07:00

A gunman killed 80 people at a children's camp in Norway today, and seven more were killed in a bomb blast in Oslo, the nation's capital. There aren't a lot of details yet, but police are saying that the two events were linked. The gunman, who is in custody, has been identified as Anders Behring Breivik, a man described as a right-wing extremist by authorities.

I feel bad for the people of Norway.

Really bad.

I read somewhere that the shooter paraphrased British philosopher John Stuart Mill on his Twitter account, saying, “One person with a belief is equal to a force of 100,000 who have only interests.”

And I guess that's what's sort of scary, actually. When John Stuart Mill formed this thought, I'm sure that he meant it to be a highminded, inspirational statement about the sort of things that can be accomplished by an individual of endurance and perserverance if he has a sort of well-conceived, worthwhile set of ideals. And given the time period in which Mill made this statement (pre-internet, pre-personal publishing, etc.), he probably envisioned a world in which most culture shifting, society-altering goals could only be accomplished if an individual managed to gain the cooperation and help of other people. Fervent belief could win people over to one's cause and change the course of history, hopefully to positive effect.

But in Mill's era (1806-1873), the power of the individual was more limited than it is today. A preson pretty much had to win over others if they wanted to have a singificant impact. Even as late as 1873, it was fairly difficult for a single individual to go on a killing spree that might take the lives of over 80 people or to put together a fertilizer bomb that could cause a horrific amount of damage to the population center of a major metropolitan city. In Mill's day they didn't have pistols with 30 round clips, radio controlled detonators, and dum-dum bullets. They didn't have an internet that allowed paranoid, delusional loners to search the globe for other sympathetic loonies so that they could fuel one another's psychosis (ultimately convincing one another that the extremely radical, fringe beliefs of a small handful of loonies were the the strarting point of a social revolution).

Even if a person were able to singlehandedly commit so much mayhem, the sorts of personal, instant publication and communications devices that we have today weren't available to a solitary individual. In Mill's day and age, the lone nut job might be able to blow up a building, but he would never be able to carefully and instantly disseminate his message in the way that a person can do today.

All of this to say that I think we're just beginning to see the beginnings of the significant numbers of one person (or perhaps very small group) terrorist attacks that we'll ultimately going to be in store for. We live in an era when automatic weapons are readily available and easy to use, and an era when manifestos can be published with a keystroke. Enraged loners no longer have to feel alone or powerless. Nowadays they can strike out at the society that has enraged them, and they can die or go to prison with the full confidence that they've adequately justified themselves (in their own minds, anyway) to the targets that deserve their wrath. When in past times they've known that committing atrocities would only get them sent off to death or jail, ultimately dismissed as the crazy people that they are, nowadays these loners are convinced that violence will draw attention and lend credibility to their twisted logic. These people don't understand that society isn't marginalizing them because they're crazy- they think that we just don't understand them because we haven't been paying attention to their insights carefully enough.

And they're willing to go to great lengths to command our attention.

The power of fervent, individual belief has traditionally been something to be admired. But obviously not every belief is worthwhile, no matter how strongly a person believes it. Given events like the Oklahoma City bombing in 1995, Columbine in 1999, the Beltway sniper attacks in 2002, the Virginia Tech massacre in 2007, the Fort Hood shootings in 2009, and so forth and so on, it just feels like we're living in a scary time.

Mostly I like technology. I'm a big fan.

Wingnut ideology, the internet, and easily accessible, high powered weapons that just make for some really problematic scenarios, though. And, unfortunately, all of these things seem to exist exist in abundance these days.

Once again, my sympathies go out to the Norwegians.

Final Shuttle Landing

2011-07-21T05:03:00.000-07:00

So the final space shuttle flight came to an end early this morning. I really hope that we find some sort of program that replaces the space shuttle so that we can continue our country's tradition of manned space flight (right now we don't really have a specific program in place, from what I understand. Our astronauts are going to be hitching rides with the Russians for awhile- which just seems wrong- and then hopefully we can transition into some new private sector space program). I know that there are some people out there who are sort of critical of space travel and space exploration these days (mostly because of the expense), but I would really like to see it continue. We exist in only the tiniest corner of the universe, and the idea that we might give up on wanting to explore and understand more of it just sort of depresses me (especially as we continue to fund wars for which no one even seems to be able to articulate a satisfactory resolution).

Anyway, my thanks to all the people who worked on the shuttle program over the decades. I know that the shuttle program didn't ultimately reach every goal that it set out to achieve (e.g., it turned out to be a little more expensive than planned), but for almost all of my life it's been America's spaceship. It's done great things, and I'm proud of it.

Grill Night!

2011-07-20T11:01:00.000-07:00

Just a couple of pictures from dinner last night. Amy made some really good barbecue chicken with some kind of corn salad (also good!). I stood by a large metal contraption while fire heated up the things Amy made.

Here's Amy, perhaps beginning to feel a bit of the symptomatic madness brought on by summertime barbecue fever.

And here I am trying really hard not to ruin things.

Another Day at the Justice Factory

2011-07-18T18:52:00.000-07:00

Prosecutor Room, County Court at Law 5, Monday Morning

(The Lawyer Horde)

Space Lawyers and Hiding Outside of Time

2011-07-17T13:45:00.001-07:00

Haven't written in a while, so.... hi!!!

Here's something that caught my interest recently- apparently researchers at Cornell University are saying that they've come up with a set of lenses that actually cloaks events in time. In their experiments, a beam of light is used along with a set of lenses which leave the flow of the beam apparently unchanged, while, in truth, extremely small, unobserved events have occurred within it. Apparently the current technique only allows events to be cloaked which last about 120 nanoseconds.
Huh.
I'm a little more slow and bumbly than that, so they're going to have to find a way to stretch that cloak time out a bit if I'm going to be able to use it to get into real trouble...
Anyway, cloaking time is cool.

I think.

I'm sure that people in the military are already coming up with various terrifying applications for more advanced versions of this technology.

In other news, there was a sort of interesting bit on NPR this week about the likely expansion of "space law" as a growing area of legal practice. Given ongoing efforts to expand space travel and exploration as a private sector business, the FAA and other federal regulatory agencies are likely to see a much greater need for a whole new set of laws and rules in the relatively near future. (Spaceport America is already under construction near Truth or Consequences, New Mexico, and Virgin Galactic and other companies are planning space flights with purposes ranging from tourism to satellite deployment and repair to resupply trips for the international space station.) Everyone knows that more rules, laws, and regulations mean that there will be more disagreements and arguments about their implementation.

Enter the space lawyer.

I always new that this criminal justice thing was just sort of a temporary gig, anyhow.

I look forward to the day when I rocket into orbit in my suit (perhaps while wearing some sort of bubble helmet) to take depositions from private sector astronauts. It'll be difficult because I'll have to try not to become distracted by the view of earth out the space station windows. Or maybe I'll arguing pretrial motions before a space judge while a robot court reporter takes down my arguments.

But probably earthbound space lawyers will mostly just start out quarrelling over FAA regulations regarding spacecraft design and operation. Entrepeneurs involved in private sector space programs are already expressing concerns about the development of potentially restrictive rules that might hamper the development of new space travel vehicles. Of course, people on the ground might not want giant rockets landing on their homes.
At any rate, space lawyering sounds kind of interesting.
And I know I'd look good wearing a tie in my space suit, with my zero gee briefcase and bubble helmet.

On My Christmas List...

2011-07-11T14:44:00.001-07:00

Weekend Update

2011-07-11T07:04:00.001-07:00

Just wanted to pop in and say hello.
The weekend was pretty good. Friday night I just kind of hung out and goofed off (watching TV or something?) while Amy studied for a Saturday test.
On Saturday I ran a bunch of errands. Amy took her test, and then afterward we made a celebratory run to Half Price Books followed by a nice dinner at El Meson on South Lamar.
I had never been to El Meson prior to about a month ago (the South Lamar location is relatively new), but I've really started to like it. I hope that it does some good business- although I have to admit that right now it's sort of nice to be able to walk into a good restaurant without having to wait for a table.
Sunday we got up and went to Barton Springs. It was really hot out, but the water felt great. We walked Cassidy, and then Amy went home to do some homework Mono Ensemble practiced at my house (for some reason Amy doesn't seem to think that studying goes very well when there's 120 decibel rock music involved). Band practice was pretty good. We played a version of Ted Nugent's Stranglehold, and that might not have even been the best song of the night.
After band practice, Amy came back over and we just sort of goofed off and read. I mercy watered the front lawn a little bit.
Annnyway, it was a nice weekend! Sorry it went by so fast...

Bye, Bye, Space Shuttle!

2011-07-08T13:22:00.000-07:00

Adios, space shuttle!! I know that you're just starting your last mission, but I'm going to miss you!!! You've been with me almost all of my life (I remember watching space shuttle launches since early junior high, at least), and you've always been a symbol (along with all of your astronauts) of the great things that America can do with our collective intelligence, bravery, persistence, and willpower!!!

Anyway, I know that the mission isn't over yet, but I'm already starting to miss the shuttle!

Belated 4th of July Barbecue Photos (from Ryan and Jamie's Barbecue)

2011-07-08T12:28:00.000-07:00

Pat and Juan in a cutthroat game of bean bag toss (I learned at the party that some people call this game cornhole. I thought that people were pulling my leg when they told me this, but I looked it up, and it's actually true!) I almost didn't even bring this game with us because it was so hot out, but amy insisted that Americans are drawn to it like bees to honey on the 4th of July...

Amy and I Ryan put on their "American faces" for the 4th. Apparently Ryan's American face reflects a bit more about the historical plight of the migrant worker, while Amy's American face reflects hotdogs and theme parks!

Jamie and Heather. Tow patriotic cats in their hatz!

Thanks for the barbecue, Team Steans!!!

Casey Anthony

2011-07-06T20:02:00.000-07:00

So just a quick word about the Casey Anthony acquittal. I'm not going to go one in much depth here because I didn't follow every detail of the case with the sort of rapt attention that others brought to it. Also, I acknowledge that there's already a ridiculous amount of analysis, speculation, and pontificating that's been associated with this case. Mostly I just want to jot down my thoughts because this seems like one of those big, famous cases that everyone will be talking about for years to come, so I kinda just want to record my thoughts as a matter of what I was thinking "at the time".
First of all, I think that the woman was guilty. I think that almost everyone out there feels like she killed her kid. I even read today that most of the jurors thought that she was guilty, but that the state had not "proven their case" beyond a reasonable doubt.
To be honest, I think that this sort of thinking- the sort of "scorecard" version of justice in which juries try to sort of grade the performances of prosecutors instead of just focusing on whether or not they've been convinced beyond a reasonable doubt of a defendant's guilt- has become more and more of an obstacle in terms of achieving justice in the courtroom in recent years. Reasonable doubt is a standard which is sort of purposefully left vague, and, in my opinion, has for some reason been raised to a strangely unrealistic level in recent years.
Undoubtedly, jurors should be very confident in their decision when finding someone guilty of something like capital murder. I understand, of course, that people want to be confident in what they're doing before they make that kind of crucial decision.On the other hand, I feel like people have begun to hold prosecutors and law enforcement to an unrealistic standard. As I remind my own potential jurors when I do jury selection, reasonable doubt is a standard which should be taken seriously, but it's also a standard under which people are convicted for countless crimes across this country every single day. But it feels as if, lately, many jurors take the concept of "beyond a reasonable doubt" to mean some a level of certainty that would be hard for a person to ever feel unless they had witnessed the crime themself.
Also, people spend a lot of time consuming fictional television programs, movies, and books where every loose end of every case is explained away in excruciating detail, and where forensic science magically and irrefutably provides ironclad, conclusive evidence which is almost always 1000% rock solid. Fictional detectives always get the bad guys to crack during interrogations, and, perhaps most tellingly, fictional criminals always end up leaving some sort of critically damning clue which proves to ultimately be their undoing.
I've been working in the criminal justice for about 12 years now, and I'm here to say that the real world typically isn't like that. In the real world, cases are often circumstantial, and eyewitness accounts, when available, may or may not actually be more unreliable than scientific evidence. In the real world, prosecutors are often required to go forward with the best evidence that they have, but without a smoking gun, and then rely on intelligent jurors to make logically sound inferences that lead them to derive a reasonable conclusion from a sufficient amount of available evidence. The justice system, in short, sort of needs jurors who can take two and two and put them together to come up with four. If you have a halfway intelligent criminal, they're often going to escape prosecution if you can't put these sorts of logical jurors in the box.
I think the jurors on this Anthony case just sort of outsmarted themselves. They got hung up on the exact specifics of how this child died and on other details, and they lost site of the fact that many of the details, including the exact manner of death, weren't really relevant. You don't really need to know exactly how a murder victim died in order to prove a murder. In fact, a fair number of murder convictions have been obtained over the years without the bodies of the victim having ever been found. Mafia prosecutions, for instance, have been filled with trials with missing bodies.
So, I don't know... this verdict bothers me. Like everyone else, it bothers me because a murderous mother will go unpunished, but it also bothers me because I think this verdict is sort of indicative of some recent "forest for the trees" problems that I've seen both personally and in the media with criminal juries.
If anyone reading this ever gets called for a jury on any sort of legal case, please just do me the favor of trying not to check your common sense at the door. Don't expect CSI or Bones or any of the other fictional shows that magically draw a picture right before your eyes of the minutia of how every tiny detail unfolded in a crime. Instead, expect to see hard working law enforcement personnel who are putting the best evidence that they have before you and then asking you to be reasonable as you make a decision. this is the relaity of actualy jury service.
The law doesn't require you to overlook the obvious when you're serving on a jury. In fact, the legal system just doesn't really work if jurors aren't capable of drawing obvious conclusions.

Oooookay. I just had to get that out of my sytem.

Happy Birthday, Sig!!

2011-07-06T08:12:00.001-07:00

Today is Sigmund Bloom's birthday. Sig is a good friend, and a fellow member of our savant gard experimental music group, Crack. I first met Sigmund back in 2003? 2004? I think it was 2003. Jeff introduced me to Sig by way of piling him into the back of my CRV so we could road trip for Radiohead in the Woodlands on their Hail to the Thief tour. As memory serves, Sigmund introduced himself, shook my hand, and then promptly passed out and slept all the way to Houston. Jeff assured me that Sigmund usually was more of a talker, and would probably have more to say on the way home. Jeff was right. Sigmund got revved up about music, politics, and life on the way home, and he hasn't slowed down much since.

Anyway, by now Sig and I have quite a few shared experiences under our belts, most of them good, and a few not so great. But it's been really good to have Sig around as we've gone through it all.

Happy birthday, my brother. Best wishes to you and yours as you make your next trip around the sun!

5 Years

2011-07-03T06:00:00.000-07:00

Today marks the five year anniversary of the accident that took Jeff away. I still think about him, and although life has moved forward and some healing has taken place in his absence, life has never been the same since he left us.

I still miss you all the time, Jeff, and I know that a lot of other people feel the same way.

And to anyone and everyone reading this- please, please don't drink and drive this holiday weekend or any other time. I know that it often seems harmless until someone gets hurt, but having some drinks before getting behind the wheel puts innocent people at risk.

Take care of each other.

Debra

2011-07-02T14:11:00.000-07:00

My good friend and coworker Debra Goodlett passed away last night. She had suffered a stroke a while back, and had been gravely ill over the past few weeks. She really was a ray of sunshine in my life, and I'm going to miss her terribly. I know that a lot of people at the courthouse and the Travis County Attorney's Office feel the same way.

Debra, you and your family are in our hearts and minds. Rest in peace.

CNN Reforms and the Difficult World of Modern Media

2011-07-01T07:26:00.000-07:00

There was a piece on NPR that I heard recently about Mark Whitaker, CNN's new top news executive, and the difficulties that he faces in taking over a news organization that still has a stated goal of objectivity and bipartisanship in a modern media environment that fosters bias in its reporting and analysis (CNN has recently been growing its audience, but Fox still beats them by more than a 2:1 margin). CNN has strategies that it continues to implement in order to continue to survive and thrive. Whitaker plans (smartly, I think) to move the organization away from a role in which fiery pundits from the political extremes duke it out on air while anchors and reporters mostly stand idly by like hapless referees. Whitaker says that he plans to try to focus on more in depth reporting, with more research and fact checking, and he hopes to bring more of an international sensibility to the network, giving an audience a sense of global context by letting the audience know what sort of stories are receiving attention and reaction around the globe.
I think these are smart moves. Investigative reporting might be more expensive than cheap, colorful political argument (it costs more to pay reporters to do off-camera research and investigation than it does to throw loudmouth pundits on the air), but I think that CNN will be well served if it can manage to carve out a perhaps smaller, but curious and well informed audience. I hope that the audience for this sort of reporting is enough to sustain the network. I hope this not only because I typically prefer CNN, but because it would be nice to know that there are sufficient numbers of people out there who yearn for objective facts to at least support the continued existence of a major media organization. I know that CNN isn't perfect in terms of being objective, but at least they seem to be striving to avoid bias (it's the sort of neutral, middle ground territory that they've staked out), and CNN seems to do a much better job of trying to avoid bias than either Fox or MSNBC.

On a related note, the story about CNN got me thinking about some broader issues. It just bothers me that so many people out there are so consciously willing to allow their news information to be filtered in order to support their particular point of view. Are we really so insecure in ourselves and our beliefs nowadays that we can't tolerate the possibility that unfiltered reality might intrude us? Repeated studies and polls have shown that viewers of Fox News have consistently been one of the most misinformed news audiences in the country (see results here and here and here and here for some examples), yet the Fox News audience continues to grow and grow. People prefer a news outlet that gives them pretailored, prescreened, easily digestible "facts" that only fit their preconceived worldview. And plenty of news sources on the left that offer a similarly skewed perspective (MSNBC has also been shown to have significant numbers of misinformed viewers on some issues). We live in a world where we only read news sites that reflect our biases, only watch television news that reflects our predispositions, and, in many cases, only discuss world events with family and friends who are likely to agree with us.
We've created a culture where we artificially and painlessly exist in a cocoon of likeminded opinion and sentiment, and we've gotten so used to this existence that we can no longer tolerate even the smallest amount of cognitive dissonance brought on by facts that don't support our worldview. Instead of expanding our minds, remaining flexible, and becoming more tolerant, we're insulating ourselves. And I think that our inability to deal with opposing viewpoints or to accept reality on its own terms is making us, although outwardly more opinionated, probably utlimately less confident and secure. Wrapped in the swaddling of likeminded reinforcement (not only in terms of ideology, but an understanding of the world itself), we're kind of becoming spoiled brats. A willingness to sacrifice curiosity about the actual world for a set of selective facts or distortions that reflect our worldview? Well, it just seems like that path leads to solipsism, which ultimately leads to some extremely unhealthy living for both individuals and society.
And I think that this whole phenomenon, the trend toward seeking viewpoint affirmation instead of nurturing a curiosity for undiluted facts, might ultimately be doing some very real and serious damage to the social fabric of our country. Some people are making a lot of money by feeding our appetite for confirmation bias, but I think taht this is occurring at a cost.
I know that the culture wars have been going on for a long time and that our nation has always been home to groups of people with significantly different ideologies, but I still think there's a qualitative difference between living in a country where people are interpreting facts differently versus a country where people were never even exposed to the same set of facts in the first place.
But that's where this fractured news media system is getting us. We're being selectively presented with facts that some third party has determined to be appropriate for what they perceive to be our worldview. We live side by side, but two neighbors living next door to one another in the current media climate may see two entirely different places when they look out the window.

Annnyway, more blah, blah, blah. Mostly, I hope CNN really does try to stick to stronger analysis, more invesitgative reporting, and a commitment to objectivity (refusing to be cowed by self interested allegations of bias arising from any particular political camp). It would really be nice to see that sort of commitment actually pay off.
It never hurts to hope.

Perry for Prez?

2011-06-27T07:10:00.001-07:00

Hey! How's stuff? My weekend was good. Did a bit of shopping with Ryan, had a nice dinner with Amy and her mother and grandmother, went to Barton Springs, got a chance to do some reading, listened to some music, and so forth and so on.
Very nice. All very nice. Not to be overly weird, but it was one of those weekends that just sort of makes you... I don't know... grateful. Grateful to have a nice life in a nice place with really good people in it.

Annnyway...
I'm not sure that I have a whole lot to report on.

One thing that's been catching more and more attention in the national media lately has been the possibility that Rick Perry might make a run for president.
To be honest, I have sort of mixed feeling about that possibility.
I think Perry would have to step down from his interminable reign as governor in order to run for president, so if he lost the governorship and then lost the presidential race as well I guess I'd be pretty happy.
I guess it's clear that I'm not a big Rick Perry fan. On a personal level, I find him obnoxious and possessing a prodigious ability to make our state look ridiculous (remember the comments that he made that about the possibility of Texas secession and his very manly story about supposedly having no choice but to shoot an attacking coyote with a laser sighted pistol?).
On a more important level, I think Perry is touting supposedly huge growth and success for Texas under his leadership, while, in truth, many of the alleged gains that have been made during his governorship have actually proven to be little more than elitist insider cronyism and exploitation. Perry has dished out taxpayer subsidies, tax breaks, and deregulation for Texas businesses (especially to friendly campaign donors), so he's managed to lure some prominent employers to Texas (thereby keeping some of the employment figures up), but Perry has done this at the cost of a reduced standard of living for many middle class and working class Texans. Texas has the highest proportion of minimum wage jobs in the country, and the nation's lowest median wage. The tax breaks, tort reform, and deregulation used to lure companies here have resulted in a state where the richest individuals and businesses continue to make tremendous amounts of money, but the wealth is often built upon an economy with an underpaid workforce, an environment where citizens face pollution and other dangers that are brought on by deregulation and tort reform, and a diminished tax base where the middle class suffers from things like underfunded schools, lack of basic health care services, crumbling bridges, etc.. Big businesses aren't being asked to shoulder the burden of paying taxes to support the people that they are drawing into the state. In fact, Perry has dished out hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars to corporations in exchange for promises of job creation, but then he's failed to recoup those dollars when jobs weren't created or when they were outsourced overseas (and some of the businesses benefitting fom these deals have been shown to have political connections to Perry).
On top of this there are large numbers of Texas businesses that profit from an extremely cheap labor pool comprised of our illegal immigrant population. Many, many Texas businesses significantly extend their profit margins by employing undocumented workers (who can be paid substandard wages without any benefits). This almost certainly improves our state's overall economic standing. What bugs me is that at the same time, Perry rarely misses a chance to play to his conservative base by complaining about border control and illegal immigration issue. The hypocrisy is just kind of shameless. Perry claims to want to curb illegal immigration, but not if its going to hurt business in any way. There's never really a word spoken by the governor about stemming the tide of immigration by way of punishing employers who employ undocumented workers.
In short, I think Perry is almost all attitude with very little substance. He pays lip service to a conservative, middle and working class Texas base while practicing leadership that sacrifices the standard of living for that base to the benefit of the very wealthy. I look at Perry's policies while trying to imagine their eventual conclusion, and I see some future Texas that basically looks like a third world country with a wealthy upper class, a fairly poor working class, and ultimately, very little middle class in between. In the end, this sort of model is short sighted and unsustainable. Without a healthy middle class of consumers who have decent salaries and money to spend, the economic engine ultimately sputters. The middle class consumer is what drives the American economy. Frankly, I don't think it's a huge benefit to Texas to have a bunch of companies rush into the state if they're not willing to pay taxes or living wages. Texas could eventually turn into the sort of place that has a fair number of profitable companies (and a relatively small, but very successful upper class), but Texas businesses may end up almost entirely selling their products to people in other places that have more money and a better standard of living.

Anyway, I'm not sure exactly why I felt the need to get in my two cents on Perry at this point (he hasn't even announced that he's running), but it felt good to get some of my concerns off my chest.
On the other hand, Perry has been preaching to converted conservatives here in Texas for far too long. It would be kind of nice to see his ideas and his leadership record actually subjected to a little scrutiny from people from beyond our fair state.

Debra

2011-06-24T08:49:00.000-07:00

Mostly just wanted to check in with everybody and say hello.

Also, my coworker and good friend, Debra Goodlett, has been in the hospital for almost three weeks after suffering a very serious stroke. I've been thinking about her a lot. Her condition is very grave, and things aren't looking very good at all.
Debra was working the mental health docket since before the time that I started on it, and she worked on mental health issues, both at the Austin State Hospital and at the probate court prior to working for the County Attorney's Office. On a professional level, Debra has been very knowledgeable and good at her job. She taught me much of what I know about the way that the local mental health hospitals, agencies, and service organizations work. She's been really good at talking to victims, in particular, many of whom are family members, neighbors, and friends of mentally ill people, and many of whom are just sort of at the end of their rope. When victims and witnesses have needed someone to talk to someonewho understands the impact that mental illness has upon the people who are living with mentally ill people (and also about the difficulties of navigating the mental health care system and the justice system), Debra has done a really good job at relating to them and making sure that their viewpoint is taken into account as we resolve cases.

On a more personal note, Debra is a really good friend of mine. For years now I've been talking to her every day at work about topics ranging from family and friends to office gossip and food. In a work environment which can sometimes be stressful, she almost always managed to make me laugh or smile. She's even given out some good advice from time to time- not the least of which involved encouraging me to ask out Amy for the first time (which would have happened anyway, eventually, but I'm sort of a wimp, so Debra definitely helped move the process along). On her pop ins, Debra's even been watering the cactus in my office and helping to keep it healthy.
Anyway, Debra's been on my mind a lot lately, and I miss her a whole lot, so I just wanted to say so. She's a good friend, a good/fun coworker, and a great person. My heart goes out to Debra and her family. Everyone here at the County Attorney's Office is thinking of you and yours, Debra.

Father's Day

2011-06-19T16:38:00.000-07:00

I already saw him today and told him this in person, so maybe this is superfluous, but happy Father's Day, Dad! I love you, and somehow appreciate you more with each year that goes by. You managed to make fatherhood and so much of this whole "responsible adult" thing look easy while we were growing up, while managing to have some fun at the same time...

Happy Father's Day to you other dads out there, too! Hope it's been a good one.

Does Antimatter Matter?

2011-06-08T14:43:00.000-07:00

So we've recently learned that scientists at the CERN (a particle physics laboratory in Switzerland that houses the Large Hadron Collider) have been able to trap antimatter and study it for almost 17 minutes.
That sort of blows my mind. As I told Amy, when you hear about certain events, the news just sort of makes you realize how little you understand about a whole lot of other things. I guess that this whole antimatter business sort of fell into that category.
To me, antimatter, to the small extent that I've known anything about it, has always been mostly the stuff of science fiction. I'd heard it described here and there, usually during some sort of cosmological lesson about the Big Bang and the origin of the universe (when antimatter existed in just about the same amounts as matter for brief moments before disappearing), or, more frequently, as part of some sort of imminent disaster scenario on Star Trek. At any rate, antimatter is just one of those concepts that I never quite managed to incorporate into a worldview of "concrete" reality.
The very concept of antimatter- some sort of... something that possesses the opposite properties of normal matter and which destroys regular matter in a burst of energy upon contact- is something that I really have a hard time even getting my head around.
And yet we've been generating antimatter since the 1950's. Since at least 1955 scientists have been creating antimatter in particle accelerators, although until now their ability to study antimatter particles has been limited quite a bit by the fact that previous antimatter particles only existed for fractions of a second before colliding with regular matter and being destroyed.
But now CERN scientists have managed to use superconducting magnets to trap antimatter and keep it around.
I don't mean to keep harping on this, but that's weird. The idea of antimatter itself is strange enough, but the accompanying idea that our scientists are now advanced enough to capture it for a measurable period of time, manipulate it, and study it- well, that's just the icing on the cake. Somewhere in Switzerland, for over a quarter of an hour, a bunch of physicists managed to keep something that I do not understand hung up in a magnetic field- swirling particles of antimatter that possess the mirror opposite characteristics of matter and which more or less violently come to an end when they come into contact with anything that we might think of as a normal substance.
Anyway, I'm not sure what point I'm trying to make other than to say that sometimes something just slips into the newspaper headlines that really makes me take a step back and look at the world in a different way (at least for a little while). This antimatter thing was just one of those stories. It reminds me that I can't possibly hope to fully and accurately imagine the world as it will exist in the future because I really don't have anything close to a full understanding of what we know about the universe around us in the present.

The universe is expanding.
Gravity is caused by the bending of spacetime.
The faster you go, the slower time moves.
And now scientists are studying some sort of thing that has characteristics which are the mirror opposite of normal matter.

The universe isn't really what it seems. And I don't really understand what it actually is.

Mental Health in the Courtroom

2011-06-03T11:18:00.001-07:00

Just a quick note to say hi. I'm in day three of a four day seminar on mental health in the courtroom. We have an interesting mix of mental health and legal professionals here. The subject matter is interesting and very relevant to my job, so that's good, but the long days of involved lectures in a windowless room still wear me out a bit.
Good seminar, though. Hope you're all doing well!

Memorial Day

2011-05-30T07:08:00.000-07:00

Happy Memorial Day, everyone! It's a day set aside to memorialize the soldiers that we've lost while serving in the military, so I want to encourage everyone take a moment or two to do that. As I've said before, I work on the veterans docket nowadays, and as a result I've just become a little more aware of the injuries and difficulties that some of our veterans are dealing with as they return home from combat. I think that it probably wouldn't hurt to take a moment to think about those folks as well.

On a more personal note, Amy is supposed to be getting back into town after visiting her family in Phoenix for a number of days, and I'm really looking forward to having her back in Austin again!

So that's it! Have a good one! Stay safe!

Loughner Incompetent

2011-05-25T13:46:00.000-07:00

Well, I just reread this, and it's a little rough and meandering, but I'm going to publish it anyway. Not very polished, but maybe it has a thought or two in it might be worth preserving...

So Jared Lee Loughner has been declared incompetent to stand trial.
I'm sort of following this case a bit out of a professional interest as well as personal curiosity. Some of you already know, but I work on a criminal court docket that specializes in clients who are diagnosed with mental illness
The judge's incompetency ruling on the Loughner case doesn't necessarily mean that he'll never be prosecuted. A finding of incompetency means that doctors have examined the defendant and made a recommendation to the court as to whether or not the defendant is fit to stand trial and then the judge made a ruling about whether the defendant was healthy enough to go forward. A defendant is fit to stand trial if: A) he can rationally understand the court proceedings and the charges against him, and B) he can communicate with and assist legal counsel in his own defense. If a defendant is incompetent to stand trial, it means that the defendant has to be treated for mental health issues until he has been "restored" to competency. Defendants can typically be held for competency restoration (which is a form of treatment) for the same amount of time that they could be sentenced on the charges that they currently face. In a case like Loughner's, where the sentence could be anything up to and including the death penalty, this means that the person could theoretically be held pretty much indefinitely.
Competency to stand trial is different from an insanity defense. When a person is found not guilty by reason of insanity it means that the person couldn't tell right from wrong at the time that they committed the offense. If a person is incompetent it just means that they're not fit to proceed to go to trial (or enter a plea) at the time that the court proceedings are taking place. These two states are not mutually exclusive. Defendants who are insane at the time that they commit an offense may later be found to be incompetent to stand trial and vice versa, but neither finding necessarily determines the other.

I deal with a fair number of competency issues on my own docket, and although defendants can be incompetent for a number of reasons, I guess they usually end up falling into one of two general categories.
The first category involves clients who are hallucinating, psychotic, and so detached from reality as to be unable to understand where they are, how the court system works, or the nature of the charges against them. They just don't have valid perceptions of reality. These are the people who are seeing things, hearing voices that they can't ignore, and/or unable to really recognize the actual nature of their current surroundings. These people might see ghosts in their jail cells, or their attorneys might look like big, blue smurfs to them. More often they hear loud voices in their head that they can't distinguish as being nonexistent (when these voices become impossible to ignore or start compelling people to do things they're dubbed command hallucinations).
The second broad category involves people who tend to see the world a little more "as it is", but who are completely delusional about how it works. All of the people encountered by these sorts of defendants might be seen as working against them as part of a conspiracy of government spies. Their lawyers might be seen as angels or demons who are in disguise. Radio waves might be controlling the minds of everyone around them. These sorts of people might know how the legal system is supposed to work, but they are convinced that nothing is as it seems, and they frequently seem convinced that they are the only ones who know "the truth" about how things actually operate. People who try to correct them or question their delusional thinking are typically dismissed as ignorant or incorporated as part of the delusion (e.g., if you don't understand what's really happening then you must be a spy, too). Their thought processes are often tangential and disorganized, based only loosely, if at all, on logic, and they often draw conclusions about their surroundings which aren't really supported by any sort of reliable information or logically sound inference. In my experience, it's not at all uncommon for these sort of people to be extremely dismissive of the idea that they might have a mental illness.

I'm not claiming that these categorizations are scientific, and I know that there's a lot of room for overlap. I'm just sort of describing the types of cases that I usually see on my docket when we're dealing with someone who's incompetent. Just today I found myself dealing with a case involving an incompetent woman who falsely believes (I checked up on this) that she's actually an operative for the FBI who is working to uncover secret assassination plots...

Loughner, in my mind, seems to be falling into that second main category. I'm guessing that he's extremely delusional and paranoid. It sounds like he doesn't trust his lawyers at all, and he hasn't been communicating with them in any sort of meaningful way. Two different doctors have examined him and found him to be mentally ill and unable to truly understand the nature of the legal proceedings or to assist his attorneys in his own defense. If I were to hazard a guess, I'd say that he's probably convinced that his attorneys are part of some sort of larger conspiracy against him. He probably has an extremely delusional worldview that doesn't make a whole lot of sense. I'm going to go out on a limb and say that there's probably no small amount of paranoia in there as well.

At any rate, I'm not terribly surprised that Loughner has been declared incompetent. The more interesting questions, I guess, will now revolve around whether he can be restored to competency (if Loughner refuses medications and treatment, he can probably be forced to take meds, although that will require an additional hearing) and around whether or not doctors will ultimately determine that Loughner was insane at the time of the shootings.

Trying to draw conclusions about whether or not a defendant was sane at the time he committed a crime like the Tucson shooting spree is a process that seems at once fascinating, troubling, extremely important, and very, very difficult.
It sometimes seems that we're more than willing to accept the fact that doctors are accurately describing what is going on in our brains when they're diagnosing ailments or simply trying to heal people, but when we rely upon that same science as a guide in determining whether or not someone was in control of themselves when they committed an unspeakably tragic crime... well, in those situations we sometimes balk at the explanations that science provides.
Sanity determinations in these cases go to the root of what we, as a society, want to define as a crime, and they test the amount of faith and credibility that we place in modern psychiatry and psychology. Sanity determinations in especially serious cases pit our willingness to adhere to scientific principles against our desire for retribution.
Personally, I find these sanity questions interesting because I don't think that you can really have justice without satisfying the scientific principles first. Criminal punishment exacted without first achieving assurances about mental capability and culpability isn't really justice- it's simple vengeance. On the other hand, prosecutors have to be careful not to allow false or exaggerated claims of mental illness to obfuscate the truth. As psychology progresses and we continue to see more and more types of criminal behaviors characterized as symptoms of mental illness, there's a temptation to overlook conscious choice and active decision making as a critical element in understanding the way that people behave. Prosecutors have an obligation to reinforce the idea that people still need to be responsible for their own actions and accountable for the things that they do. Conscientious prosecutors will understand that there are cases where people should not be held responsible for their actions, but they need to keep in mind that whenever possible, a prosecutor's job is to make sure that society is fully capable of holding defendants accountable for their actions.
Personally, I tend to think that mental illness should be taken into account, but, on my docket, I tend to take illness into account far more often as mitigation for reduced or alternative sentencing than as an absolute excuse or defense for a crime. For one thing, most people with mental illness who commit crimes tend to more or less know right from wrong. The cases where people truly don't know what they're doing or appreciate that they're doing something wrong are definitely out there, but they seem to be relatively few in number (although defense attorneys often seem more than happy to try to characterize as many offenses as possible as being the result of mental illness). On those cases where people really are so sick as to be out of control, those individuals need to be linked to services anbd treatment whenever possible, and then asked to stick with a treatment regimen that addresses their condition. If a person is insane because they refuse to take care of himself, then that becomes also becomes an issue of personal responsibility, and the person needs to be held accountable for the ultimate results of their choices.

The natural human tendency (a tendency which I have great sympathy for, by the way) is to want to hold people accountable for their actions. We give more leeway in the case of minor indiscretions (e.g., we cite the youth of the offender, or the natural human tendency to make mistakes), but when someone does something terrible, we typically want the perpetrator to suffer punishment.
Cases like Loughner's are the sort of events where our knowledge and understanding of science can potentially collide with human nature (note that I said potentially- I'm still far from convinced that Loughner wasn't aware that he was doing something terrible when he committed those murders).

If Loughner's case proceeds to trial and if the state can find a reputable, reliable doctor who thinks that he knew right from wrong at the time of the shootings ( I would bet a whole lot of marbles that defense counsel will come up with a doctor who will say Loughner was not competent), the trial is likely to become a battle of experts, with doctors facing off against one another, attempting to support their analysis with sound reasoning while lawyers try to convince the jury that one doctor or the other has stronger credentials and the most plausible, feasible theory.

I'm not sure where I'm going with all of this except to say that I find it all really interesting. I have tremendous sympathy for Loughner's victims, and I absolutely am not trying in any way to legitimize what this guy did. As someone who's worked as both a defense attorney and a prosecutor, though, I still find it fascinating to watch as society grapples with issues relating to mental illness in a case like this. Maybe I just find it fascinating because I personally feel very conflicted about the sorts of issues that a case like this brings up.

In any case, I'll be watching...

San Francisco

2011-05-25T08:32:00.000-07:00

So Amy and I just got back from a trip to San Francisco! Had a really nice time. Neither of us had ever been out there before. We really couldn't have asked for better weather or a much smoother trip. We stayed in Union Square, and explored the city by bus, streetcar, railway, and on foot.
The brief rundown...
We saw Chinatown, Golden Gate Park, the Academy of Sciences, The Golden Gate Bridge, Alcatraz, and Fisherman's Wharf. We saw Union Square, North Beach, Noe Hill, Embarcadero, and Market Street (and probably other places I'm not thinking of). We saw sea lions, visited Grace Cathedral, went to a cool arcade museum, ate sourdough, checked out The Wok Shop, visited the Ferry Building Marketplace, stopped by City Lights Books, and had a snack at a Children's International Dance and Food Festival at Golden Gate Park. We had good Chinese food at House of Nanking, good Italian at Incanto, and a really good breakfast at Dottie's True Blue Cafe. We wandered the city and enjoyed the ladscapes, the architecture, the people, and the weather.
It was just a really good trip, and I had a great time.
Thanks so much for sharing it with me, Amy!

The Weekend

2011-05-16T07:22:00.000-07:00

The weekend was good. I went on some walks with Amy and Cassidy, went to Barton Springs with Amy, got a bit of exercise, had dinner with Dad, Ryan, Jamie, and Amy, watched a couple shows, and played some music. In particular, it was nice to get out in the sun. I'm glad that Amy shares my appreciation for Barton Springs.

Here's a pic from Mono Ensemble practice on Sunday.

We played, among other things, a cover of Peace, Love, and Understanding.

Happy birthday today to Meredith Shaw, who is turning six, and who joined us for band practice yesterday.

Here'a piece of artwork that she created on my patio while we were playing. Very nice... ;-)

Still Sleepless

2011-05-09T14:09:00.000-07:00

This is a version of a song called Still Sleepless that Frank, Jim, and I recorded at an acoustic practice at my house on May 1st. It might be a little rough because we just recorded it with a small, digital recorder, but I think that, in particular, Jim has a pretty cool bass part that he bows on his upright...

Here's a link to the song in case anyone is interested...

Happy Mother's Day!

2011-05-08T07:00:00.000-07:00

My mom is currently in Africa on a mission trip, and my text messages don't seem to be getting through to her (she's sent me a few, but I can't send any her way, apparently), so I guess I won't really be able to wish her a happy Mother's Day properly until she gets back. I saw her right before she left, though, and had a chance to wish her a safe journey and tell her that I love her. Hopefully that will suffice until she returns. Here's a photo that I really like of Mom and Amy at Enchanted Rock in January.

Anyway, happy Mother's Day to all of you moms out there! Good moms definitely make the world a better place. My own mom continues to serve as a constant role model and source of admiration. I know plenty of other people who feel the same way about their own mothers.

So thanks, moms!

Stay safe in Kenya, Karebear, and we'll see you when you get back! Love you! I know you want some good pictures, but remember, lions are not for cuddling. (I'm only half joking. I got a text from her at 5:00 this morning telling me that she had seen four lions in a park. It was a bit surreal.)

Arcade Fire

2011-05-05T12:06:00.000-07:00

So it's been a really good week for music. First I went with Amy to see The Decemberists at Stubb's on Saturday night. That was a really good show. I wrote about it here. Amy got us tickets to see The Decemberists for my birthday, and that was a great present!

Then on Tuesday night I went to see Arcade Fire out at The Backyard with Ryan and Jamie and Amy Rushing (who works with Ryan at UT). Ryan and Jamie got me a ticket to the Austin Arcade Fire show for my birthday. The Austin Arcade Fire show was really good. The music sounded really cool, and the band seemed genuinely happy to be back in Austin and performing again (I know that a lot of bands pay lip service to whatever town they're performing in, but given the fact that Arcade Fire has chosen to shoot videos in Austin and spent some time here, it felt like they had a legitimate affection for the city). Anyway, it was a really good show and a nice night, and it was really fun to go see some live music with both Ryan and Jamie (strangely, I've seen shows with each of them separately over the years- including ACL Fest with Ryan and Springsteen with Jamie-, but I hadn't been to see a show with both of them in a long, long time).

Anyway, Ryan wrote a little review of the show on his blog. Thanks to Ryan and Jamie for taking me!

Amy had an exam on Wednesday morning, so she didn't make it to the show on Tuesday night. On Wednesday, however, Amy jumped int he car and headed down toward Houston to see Arcade Fire. It was a really fun road trip!!

We got to my parents house in Spring in the late afternoon and had a nice dinner with my dad out in the Woodland's at a place called Jasper's. The food was really good. Mom didn't come with us because she had a birthday dinner that she was attending with some friends, but Amy and Dad and I had a really nice dinner.

The show itself was great, too. It was at the pavilion in The Woodlands.

Arcade Fire is a great band, and their lead singer, Win Butler, grew up in The Woodlands. Arcade Fire's last album, The Suburbs, won the 2011 Grammy for best album of the year, so I was curious to see how the music would resonate with the band and the crowd given the fact that they were performing the music in the same neighborhoods that had inspired the album.

In fact, the show turned out to be really great, the crowd was really into the music, and Butler made a number of references not only to the fact that he had grown up in The Woodlands, but to the fact that he had actually worked for a while as a ticket taker at the Cynthia Woods Mitchell Pavilion.

Anyway, the band was energetic, the crowd enthusiastic, and the weather about as good as we could have asked for. I had a great time.

In the morning we got up and spent a little bit of time with my mom, The Karebear, who is leaving today to go on her fourth mission trip to Kenya. She seemed happy and ready to go, and we're all happy for her, although it's always weird to bid your mom farewell when she's jetting off to Africa for a week and a half (especially when Mother's Day falls during that period of time). Africa's just a long way aways.

Here are some photos from the Woodlands show...

So that's it. I really love me some Arcade Fire. As I told Amy, I could easily see them again right away if I had the chance. Their music and energy are just infectious.

Osama Bin Laden Killed

2011-05-02T09:05:00.000-07:00

So we finally killed Osama Bin Laden. That's almost certainly gotta be a good thing.
Still, I'm not really making this post because I feel some tremendous sense of justice (the guy managed to live and hide for a really long time after killing thousands of people) or because I think the world is going to be different from this point forward (it won't- Al Qaeda seems like it's been waning in power for years, and to the extent that it still remains a threat, it now seem to have a decentralized structure, with individual cells and divisions mostly acting independently. By most accounts, Bin Laden hasn't actively been controlling the thing for a long time. The threats that we face now aren't really likely to be from the 2001 Al Qaeda organization which sponsored the 9/11 attacks).
Anyway, I'm mostly just making this entry to sort of put my own personal bookend on a long and sad segment in American history.
Like most people, I vividly remember where I was and what I was doing on September 11th. I had court that day, but it was cut short. No one wanted to be in a multi-story government building on a day when we weren't sure of the extent of the terrorist attack. I remember being very worried about my uncle who was working in and around the Pentagon at the time. Mostly I just remember the imagery of watching those towers fall and feeling really horrified and incredibly sad and angry. I also remember thinking, even on September 11th, that Osama Bin Laden was probably behind the event, and that he was probably just trying to draw the U.S. into some sort of violent, visceral reaction that would draw us into conflict in the Middle East so that our reaction would further inflame anti-American, anti-Western sentiment in that part of the world.
I didn't just leap to these conclusions after watching the towers fall. The first 1993 Al Qaeda bombing at the World Trade Center and the 1998 embassy bombings in Africa had already created some media buzz. I'm not sure if Bin Laden was directly tied to the 1993 WTC attack, but I knew that he had been directly involved in the 1998 embassy bombings and had made statements indicating future plans to carry out attacks against the U.S..

Anyway, as things stand today, I'm glad Bin Laden is dead. I doubt that his death changes much, but I do feel like it provides some measure of justice (he definitely doesn't deserve to be free and running around), and at least it helps to preclude the possibility that he might eventually muster the resources and power to launch another awful attack at some point in the future (before September 11th he had been known to spend a number of years planning and carrying out individual operations, so even though we hadn't heard from him in a long time, surely the man was never completely out of the minds of the U.S. intelligence community).

On the other hand, Bin Laden's death feels like a bit of a hollow victory. Unfortunately, he accomplished a great deal of what he set out to do.
He drew us into a conflict in the Middle East which inflamed anti-American sentiment and inspired a new generation of jihadists in that part of the world (I'm thinking even more of Iraq here than I am Afghanistan, since the war in Iraq had a more tenuous link to the actual events of 9/11). Even more troubling, he accomplished the primary goal of all terrorists- spreading fear, tension, and unease amongst his enemy.
Bin Laden employed 19 men armed with box cutters, and he turned America's perception of its enemy, the world, and itself on its head.
Prior to September 11th we mostly saw Al Qaeda and similar organizations as small but dangerous criminal enterprises which might best be controlled through international policing and some moderate counterintelligence work. After 9/11 America grew to see itself as a nation under siege. Foreign terrorists were seen as mysterious, ubiquitous, and capable of striking with devastating ferocity at any place, at any time. Various countries in the Middle East were seen as breeding grounds for radical muslims who were chomping at the bit to infiltrate American borders and destroy us. America's intelligence and military budgets ballooned exponentially. We found ourselves entrenched in a ridiculously expensive war in Iraq that put an incredible drain on our resources and morale while essentially gaining us little or nothing in return.
Even we engage in the security theater that comes with standing in lines at airports with our shoes and our belts in our hands, and I can't help but feel that the terrorists, at least on a psychological level, have wracked up some significant victories.
The truth of the matter is that we were probably too lax in our feeling of invincibility before 9/11, and too paranoid and frightened for years afterward. Maybe we're beginning to strike a better balance. Maybe Bin Laden's death will help in that continuing process.
I just hate the thought that the 9/11 attacks and Osama Bin Laden were the event that shifted our lives so dramtically.

Anyway, Bin Laden is dead. I'm glad he's dead. He had no room in his religious orthodoxy, ideology, or worldview for anyone's way of life but his own, and the world is better off without his sort of deadly intolerance.
Hopefully his death brings a little closure and healing.
Not sure what else to say. I hope the next young radical Muslim who becomes furious with the west takes his anger out by voicing his anger on the floor of the U.N.'s general assembly or by launching some sort of media campaign against us.
I'm not naive. I don't think that we're ever going to get everyone to like us.
But if we can get our enemies to talk and launch political and P.R. campaigns and make arguments instead of resorting to violence.... well, that's my pipe dream.

Blah, blah, blah.
Thanks for putting up with that...

P.S. to The Decemberists Post

2011-05-01T19:01:00.000-07:00

By the way, the tickets to The Decemberists were from Amy, so...

THANKS, AMY!!!!!

It was really fun! (see my last post for further evidence of this)

:-)

The Decemberists

2011-05-01T08:01:00.001-07:00

Amy and I went to see The Decemberists last night at Stubb's. We almost skipped the show because we were both just feeling tired, but we ended up making it, and I'm really glad.

The music was great, Colin Meloy was funny, and the crowd eventually got really into the spirit of things (after a sort of subdued start).

The Decemeberists are really cool. I've known about them for a long time, and I had even seen them at ACL Fest once before, but Amy's enthusiasm for the band sort of made me listen to them with fresh ears and gain a much greater appreciation for a band that I had always sort of liked but had never gotten really into.

Part of what changed my opinion was listening to the songs closely enough to really appreciate the lyrics and the thought that Colin Meloy puts into his songwriting. The Decemberists aren't really the kind of band that blow you away with the virtuosity of their musicianship, but Meloy is a really great lyricist, and the band is really good at creating music with mood and atmosphere that paints images, conveys emotion, and draws you into the songs.

And don't get me wrong- The Decemberists seem to be fine musicians, but musicianship just isn't at the heart of what they do. Sometimes the songs can be structurally complex, but you aren't going to hear a lot of solos, and any extended segments that carry on without words usually appear in the context of supporting the lyrical content.

Anyway, the show was really fun, and I'm really happy we went. Amy and I both enjoyed it an awful lot. Nice night, good crowd, really good music. I'll remember that one for a long, long time.

The Long Fall

2011-04-27T12:13:00.000-07:00

So I just got done reading a book by Walter Mosley called The Long Fall.

I'd heard Walter Mosley's name before, but I'd never read one of his books before, and now I feel like I've probably been missing out on some really cool stuff for a long time.

The Long Fall is a good old fashioned noir detective story that takes place in modern day New York. It's a book that's definitely character driven, told from the first person perspective of a street smart, witty, well spoken African American ex-boxer gumshoe named Leonid McGill.

McGill is the sort of character that people are either simply going to like or not like, without much room for indifference or apathy inbetween. McGill tends to speak in absolutes and aphorisms, typically with no small amount of perception and insight. At times, though I couldn't help wondering whether a real life Leonid McGill might run the risk of seeming a touch arrogant or overbearing. In any case, as a character, I found McGill to be a fun person to spend time with.
The Long Fall is clearly meant to be the first of a book in a series, and I gather that Leonid McGill has been fleshed out after first appearing in a supporting role in some of Mr. McGill's earlier work. As a result, I'm not exactly sure how many of the people in The Long Fall have previously appeared in other Mosley novels, but regardless, the sizable number of intriguing characters in the book really add color and richness to the world that McGill inhabits. Given the fact that the actual plot of The Long Fall isn't all that groundbreaking (striving to keep true to traditional noir storyline as opposed to trying to break new ground), an interest in the characters themselves becomes that much more important.
Fortunately, Mosley is adept at breathing life into characters and making you care about them. His central figures have ambiguities, nuances, and quirks that make them much more than the stereotypical noir figures that might have taken shape in lesser hands, and Mosley manages to infuse a great deal of vibrancy into the more "minor" supporting characters as they move alongside the major ones, even when giving us only small glimpses into their lives.
Anyway, I liked The Long Fall. I recommend it, especially if you're into detective books and/or noir. It's a book which feels thoroughly contemporary while holding true to the stylings of traditional noir, and it's a quality addition to the genre- a good read, with characters and stories that sucked me in and pulled me along.

Easter Weekend

2011-04-25T13:57:00.001-07:00

Amy working on homework. Easter Eve.

Amy, Ciera, and Dad in church.

Mom, Ciera, Susan, and Jonathan doing it up right with the chocolate fountain.

Not too much to say about Easter except that it was nice.Pretty traditional as far as Steans family Easters go. We went to church and had Easter dinner. The Bloods, who are family friends, were in town and visiting my parents, so we got to hang out with them. The kiddos had an Easter egg hunt.

It was a nice Easter. Thanks to Mom and to Dad for making it so nice for the rest of us!

Happy Easter!

2011-04-24T07:30:00.001-07:00

Just a quick post to wish everyone a happy Easter! Hope everyone has a nice day!
A quick note just to say that my thoughts and love go out to my old friend and college housemate, Laura Hague, who is battling cancer. I'm thinking of you and your family, Laura!
Have a good Easter, guys!

For Amy

2011-04-21T12:43:00.000-07:00

I dedicate this song and video to my girlfriend, Amy, because I think she's the sort of wonderful woman who will appreciate the sight of a baby monkey on a pig, and even more importantly, a song about the same thing!

Thanks for putting up with me, Amy!

R.I.P. Gerard Smith

2011-04-20T13:50:00.000-07:00

TV on the Radio bassist Gerard Smith died today after a battle with lung cancer. To be honest, I don't know too much about the man, except that I like his bass lines and that he was a member of one of the most innovative, funky, and sometimes beautiful bands that I've had the pleasure of enjoying in recent years.
Peace to Smith, his loved ones, and the members of TVOTR.

Jennifer Egan Talks Writing

2011-04-19T13:12:00.001-07:00

I usually try to avoid just embedding videos without much comment because I don't want my blog to feel like I'm just repoting stuff, but I recently wrote a short, sort of perfunctory review of Jennifer Egan's A Visit from the Goon Squad, and then today I stumbled across this video interview with Egan where she's talking to Time Magazine about her book (which has apparently won a Pulitzer Prize). It's a short interview, but she seems like an articulate, engaging person. That's always nice to see. Sometimes you get those writers who choose to write because they're not very comfortable or skilled when it comes to communicating on a face to face level. Anyway, as I said before, I recommend the book.

Or if the embedded video won't play, look here.

Ryan's Birthday Cocktail Party

2011-04-18T08:27:00.000-07:00

So, on Saturday Ryan and Jamie had a few friends over to their place to have a few drinks and eat a few treats in honor of Ryan's birthday. Amy made some food, and I brought some veggies, and we headed over to Steans Manor for cocktails and tomfoolery.
Here's Jamie, proudly presenting various forms of cheese.
Here's Amy, getting all gangsta and demandin' respect for her (very delicious) baked fontina.
Various party revellers prepare to sing a round of some sort of song that celebrates birthdays.
Me with some cute girl that I met in the kitchen.

The birthday boyee!

9 Types of Light

2011-04-17T11:53:00.001-07:00

So I'm lying on the hillside at Barton Springs, enjoying beautiful springtime Austin weather and listening to the new TV on the Radio album, 9 Types of Light. Except for the fact that Amy's off doing homework, things couldn't be much nicer. I really like the new album. It's probably the most accessible album that TVOTR have put out, all in all. I have sort of mixed feelings about that, given that some of their more challenging earlier efforts have ultimately proved really rewarding, but still- all my favorite TVOTR ingredients are there. They continue to do a great job of blending electronic and acoustic elements. They continue to employ an alternating combination of haunting and frantic vocals by Tunde Adebimpe and Kyp Malone which, along with interesting rhythms and harmonies, keep you changing your mind about whether you want to dance or lie on a beach. It's a good album. I think, commercially, it could be their biggest success to date, and it's an album that can probably help them cross over to a more mainstream audience while still preserving the integrity and originality that come with the band's unique sound. I remain a real fan.