Hey! Music in the 80's wasn't that bad! IMHO

I like to listen to podcasts when I walk my dog. 

(She'll be 16 at the end of May and still walks 1-2 miles a day!)

This morning I listened to an episode of NPR's terrific All Songs Considered. I discovered this podcast maybe 10 years ago and I love it. It's introduced me to many bands that I love that I maybe would never have heard of because I don't listen to Top 40 radio or pop music much anymore. (I'm mainly a classical music nerd.)

One of the groups I discovered thanks to All Songs is Mumford and Sons, for example. 

The podcast I listened to this morning was called "The '80's: Were They Really That Bad?"

My answer to this question would be "NO!" - but they did an hour of trashing the 80's. Now, I agree that the 80's weren't the best decades for music. The 50's, the 60's the 70's... you can't really compare. On the other hand, post-80s there wasn't much. Grunge, rap, hip-hop, these are reasons I tune my radio either to NPR or to an oldies station. 

Reasons I like the 80's:

One, I graduated in 1984. So, it was the soundtrack to my high school experience. 

Two, it was happy music. You tapped your foot, you could sing along, it just made me happy. 

Hall & Oates, Duran Duran, Quarterflash, I just loved them.

Now, unfortunately, there was also David Lee Roth out there. 

I may not be a music critic like the guys on All Songs, but the music from the 80's makes me happy so who cares?

Thank you for the shame, Pasco Police Department!

I want to thank the Pasco Police Department for providing me the opportunity to feel shame in my community and my community's law enforcement community. I had never felt ashamed of local law enforcement before this week.

I have been denied the opportunity to serve on Benton County juries twice because I told the attorneys that I would give police officers the benefit of a doubt when they testify.

But, what has happened? The fourth fatal shooting in Pasco in six months! (And that doesn't include recent shootings in Kennewick and Richland this year.) This one, however, was the most shameful. A homeless man, one who had recently lost his job, was shot and killed while running away. A man that was the type of person our "peace" officers should be trying to help was murdered instead.

I notice that Pasco Police cars have the quote "serving our community since 1910" on them:

Too bad the police officers who killed Antonio Zambrano-Montes weren't serving anything but death and fear.

As I said, I want to thank the Pasco Police for showing me that we are no better than Ferguson or New York City. The question is will the Franklin County justice system reach a higher bar? Or will we have another day of shame?

It was even more shameful that we are represented by these officers in the national press. The LA Times, the Chicago Tribune, CNN, Al Jazeera America -- they all reported on this tragedy. Let's hope that when the investigation by Tri-City Special Investigation Unit is complete and the Franklin County Prosecutor makes his final determination that we will not have another reason to be ashamed. That we unlike Staten Island and Ferguson, can hold our police officers accountable.

Man shot by Pasco police identified; protestors picket City Hall

Wisdom From The Pen Of Margaret Atwood

I've been trying to finally finish up the stupendous MaddAddam trilogy by the even more stupendous Margaret Atwood!

She always has little nuggets of wisdom in her books. Including these two quotes by her character, Adam One:

What is 'belief' but a willingness to suspend the negatives?

He said that if you acted according to a belief, that was the same thing. As having the belief.

Woah!

The Dangers of the Islamic State (and, really, ANY Theocracies)

This program, "Islamic State" on BBC Radio 4's Report show, had some disturbing (and fascinating) insights into the Islamic State. 

BBC Correspondent Peter Marshall interviewed former (and disillusioned) jihadi Aimen Dean.

One of the most disturbing things was something that came from a childhood friend of Dean's who is now a judge in the Islamic State. They were having a theological/ideological debate and Dean brought up how can all the other Muslims be wrong and you be right? The judge brought up the case of Noah. God destroyed ALL of humanity except for 12 individuals. He was showing us an example. That God shows us the way.

Quite horrifying. I am a believer. I admit that. I believe in God. I don't believe in THAT God. However, this shows us the danger of religion. That it inculcates the belief, the worldview, that we/you/I/they are right and everyone else is wrong -- and expendable. 

It isn't a strictly Muslim/Islamic failing. Don't think that. 

Excellent program!

Islamic State on Radio 4

Love will find a way!

While reading the January issue of BBC History Magazine, I ran across this great item. As I cannot find it on the web, I will type it in from the magazine:

"A monkey hugs its way into a sailor's possession"

On a quiet Wednesday in 1818, the genteel surroundings of the lord mayor's Mansion House were suddenly rocked by appearance of a sailor, a showman and a monkey.

The sailor had recently visited an exhibition of wild beasts at Saint Bartholomew's Fair, "a school of vice which has initiated many youth into the habits of villainy". It was a place the Newgate Calendar would call the "assemblage of idle people... waiting to plunder the honest part of the people". 

For the sailor, just such a misfortune had occurred, as the monkey in question was taken from him and placed into the showman's menagerie, who now claimed ownership of the poor primate. All three parties in question had arrived to settle the dispute. The lord mayor decided that the only way to resolve the case was to let the monkey choose for himself, and, as a curious crowd grew outside, the monkey made it clear he was much more attached to the sailor than the showman, by clinging to his neck with great affection.

From the Bury and Norwich Post / 16 September 1818

News story sourced from britishnewspaperarchive.co.uk and rediscovered by Fern Riddell. Fern regularly appears on Radio 3's Night Waves.

There can be no us, without them

This is a concept that seems to be cropping up in my reading lately. I had finished Howard Jacobson's Booker-nominated book J recently. A dystopian novel in the British future after some unnamable and unremembered catastrophe people are renamed, social media is destroyed, and memory is outlawed. (People are only allowed one or two historical items in their homes.) Apparently, this is to stop "what happened, if it happened" from happening again.

Yet, violence still occurs. People are not happy. The Orwellian organization Ofnow decides that maybe people need a "them".

And, now, I am reading the National Book Award longlisted for nonfiction book Nature's God: The Heretical Origins of the American Republic by Matthew Stewart and it has come up again!

In Chapter 2, he explains how the American people, the colonists, are interested in a spiritual cure for "material anxieties". The first was a belief in belief. But, it's the second reason that really struck me.

"The other assumption, usually left unstated, was the one that human beings invariably make about the groups to which they so anxiously wish to belong: that it is only worth being a member of a group if someone else isn't included."

There it is again! Is this a facet of the human condition? Do people NEED to do this? I mean, I have left churches because of this very thing. As it tells us in Galatians:

If this is true, why do so many churches discriminate?

And, as Thomas Jefferson tells us:

Yet, pregnant women have fewer protections from their employers than employees who have been convicted of a DUI (http://www.scotusblog.com/case-files/cases/young-v-united-parcel-service/). And armed white men can walk openly with their guns in Fred Meyer and Starbucks, yet a black man carrying a toy gun can be shot down in a Wal-Mart.

I want to believe that we don't need a "them". I also want to believe that I'm personally better than this. Do you read my blog? Please comment below or on my Facebook page.

A Success by the GOP Yardstick

As seen on Google+

in 2012, Pawlenty said a GOP president could generate 5% growth; Romney said a GOP president could get 6% unemployment, and Gingrich said a GOP president could get gas to $2.50 a gallon.
By Republican standards President Obama is a striking success.

http://on.msnbc.com/1AEGcoB