I’m not sure what you call this kind of music — “progressive jazz?” This is one of Metheny’s most complex extended compositions in a stunning live performance from 2005. For some reason it reminds me of a harmonically sophisticated jazz version of the progressive rock group Yes (sans pseudo-poetic lyrics).
A World War Two invasion of the US East Coast mounted and coordinated from an Axis base in Nazi-occupied Bermuda sounds like a scenario dreamed up by a science fiction writer — and it was.
But when “Life” magazine commissioned novelist Philip Wylie to come up with six variations based on the theme of an imminent German/Italian/Japanese attack on the United States, he was drawing on genuine military concerns then prevalent in Washington DC rather than his impressively fertile imagination. In the weeks following the December 7, 1941 Japanese air attack on the US naval facilities at Hawaii’s Pearl Harbour, American nerves were on edge about a possible Axis assault on the mainland.
The surprise military strike on the headquarters of its Pacific Fleet drew the previously neutral United States into World War Two [1939-1945]; four days after the Hawaiian naval base was crippled by two waves of carrier-based fighters, bombers and torpedo planes, Japan’s allies — Nazi Germany led by dictator Adolf Hitler [pictured above] and Benito Mussolini’s Fascist Italy — also declared war on the US.
The Axis grew out of the Anti-Comintern Pact, an anti-communist treaty signed by Nazi Germany and Japan in 1936. Italy joined the Pact in 1937. The “Rome-Berlin-Tokyo Axis” became a military alliance in 1939 leading to the integration of the military aims of Germany and its two treaty-bound allies.
In early 1942 “Life” — then one of the highest circulation news magazines in the US — approached Mr. Wylie, a “peacetime novelist, who later joined the Office of Facts and Figures in Washington”, as a sort of devil’s advocate to produce a series of speculative enemy invasion plans for the United States.
“When people say the US can lose the war, what they really mean is that some combination of the plans mapped here may work successfully for the Axis,” said the magazine. “Such an outcome, of course, presupposed that the enemy has nothing but good luck and the Allies nothing but bad luck.
As I understand it, there are more people on the planet and in the US than there has ever been.
Me thinks the math is a bit hinky.
I think what the article is discussing is population distribution. If you cut the Middle East + China out of the map you remove a huge chunk of the world’s population right there.
I think what the article is discussing is population distribution. If you cut the Middle East + China out of the map you remove a huge chunk of the world’s population right there.
COMPONENT SETTINGS FOR FEBRUARY 2013
One birth every 8 seconds
One death every 12 seconds
One international migrant (net) every 36 seconds
Net gain of one person every 15 seconds
I think what the article is discussing is population distribution. If you cut the Middle East + China out of the map you remove a huge chunk of the world’s population right there.
but also, it is predicted that world population may peak sometime in the next 40 years and stabilize or decline thereafter
iirc in the u.s. currently overall population growth is coming from immigrants whereas among people born here the growth rate is replacement level only
in italy the native population level has been more or less flat for a number of years
consider this: if the u.s. population was not increasing, then the commonly used rule-of-thumb about the necessity of the economy producing 150 thousand new jobs every month just to keep up with population growth would be out the door, and the grow grow grow dynamics of the american economy would change radically
but also, it is predicted that world population may peak sometime in the next 40 years and stabilize or decline thereafter
iirc in the u.s. currently overall population growth is coming from immigrants whereas among people born here the growth rate is replacement level only
in italy the native population level has been more or less flat for a number of years
consider this: if the u.s. population was not increasing, then the commonly used rule-of-thumb about the necessity of the economy producing 150 thousand new jobs every month just to keep up with population growth would be out the door, and the grow grow grow dynamics of the american economy would change radically
Isn’t that what we need? The planet can only sustain so many of us. We can only stand so many of us.
When the solution is less education for women and more religion for everyone, you have to figure there’s a political angle to the definition of the problem.
The parents of a good friend brought in two bikes for me to work on. One is the old bike of my friend, which has been sitting in a shed for at least ten years. Her mother came in with the bike and a towel, and she was beating the bike with the towel and making clouds of dust. That’s one of the two things I’m allergic to. Now I have a headache and almost a queasy feeling, and I can’t go back out there until the dust settles. My friend’s father brought in a bike that’s never been assembled, still in the box. Less dust, but more spiders, living and dead.
The parents of a good friend brought in two bikes for me to work on. One is the old bike of my friend, which has been sitting in a shed for at least ten years. Her mother came in with the bike and a towel, and she was beating the bike with the towel and making clouds of dust. That’s one of the two things I’m allergic to. Now I have a headache and almost a queasy feeling, and I can’t go back out there until the dust settles. My friend’s father brought in a bike that’s never been assembled, still in the box. Less dust, but more spiders, living and dead.
I should charge extra.
As one of my co-workers likes to say, “Don’t blow off your tools in the shop, you knob!”
Condolences. It’s peak allergy season here for me (tree pollen-acacia, conifers, etc.) It has barely rained in weeks, so I spent the last hour and a half out cleaning up the garden-weeding, cutting stuff back and just generally being sure I stuck my nose in a lot of dust and pollen, so I can really feel your pain.
eta: the barely rained part means nothing has washed the pollen off anything-just in case that wasn’t clear
in 1972 i was making minimum wage at $2.50/hr, but i lived in sublet room that cost me $100/month
cost of housing and medical care has gone up 3 to 5 times as fast as average compensation in the past 30 years
I hate it when bosses go on and on about how they used to only make X. If you don’t adjust for inflation, X is a meaningless data point. In 1852 I earned 8 a month.
Okay, check me on this: this dude is saying that counting slaves as 3/5ths of a person was a positive step in recognizing black people were people/citizens/Americans?
Okay, check me on this: this dude is saying that counting slaves as 3/5ths of a person was a positive step in recognizing black people were people/citizens/Americans?
I’ll tentatively sign onto that bandwagon.
Um, no, it was so the south had more political power in the federal government by inflating their population. (Yes, I know, slaves were actually people, but they were considered property by the law.)
The 3/5ths Compromise actually kept southern representation down.
It’s undoubtedly complicated, and anytime there’s a compromise that is supposed to make further progress possible, it can be debated endlessly. But given that, and the sensitivity of the issue, perhaps the president of Emory could have chosen a different example of ‘pragmatic compromise’. He went on to say, ‘Something like this process occurs every week on a university campus,’ which trivializes it, to say the least.
As Smith’s next tweet says:
If you need to find an example of political compromise, surely you can do better than one in which black people were counted as part human.
It’s undoubtedly complicated, and anytime there’s a compromise that is supposed to make further progress possible, it can be debated endlessly. But given that, and the sensitivity of the issue, perhaps the president of Emory could have chosen a different example of ‘pragmatic compromise’. He went on to say, ‘Something like this process occurs every week on a university campus,’ which trivializes it, to say the least.
After last night I think I’ll wait. Beck is a turd. As for the Emory U. president, Hanlon’s razor probably applies.
What happened last night?
Since the net effect was not to give Blacks any noticeable rights, and to increase the political power of the southern states, I’m guessing it’s not as complicated as one might think. But, I’m not a historian, so I won’t stake my reputation on it.
Since the net effect was not to give Blacks any noticeable rights, and to increase the political power of the southern states, I’m guessing it’s not as complicated as one might think. But, I’m not a historian, so I won’t stake my reputation on it.
I don’t think so-it permitted the slave states to be far more powerful than they would have been been without the additional representation that counting 3/5 of the slaves as population. It probably prolonged slavery. I don’t think there was serious doubt that Blacks were people-perhaps a lower form, but people nonetheless. You don’t let non-humans nurse your babies, raise your children, and for the men-be your mistress.
What doomed slavery was both the increasing realization of the immorality of the system and the industrial revolution which made slavery far less economically beneficial. Or so I learned many decade ago in high school.
All you say is right; I’m just saying giving slaves any sort of representational role (as 3/5th of a person) killed the whole idea of them as simply property.
Common in the South: do something for momentary political advantage, and have the ramifications bite you in the ass.
All you say is right; I’m just saying giving slaves any sort of representational role (as 3/5th of a person) killed the whole idea of them as simply property.
Common in the South: do something for momentary political advantage, and have the ramifications bite you in the ass.
So, if slaveholders in the south began to recognize their slaves as human beings, why did they fight the Civil War? Why did they treat freed Blacks so badly for a century after that war?
The 3/5 was about taxation and political representation. 3/5 of each slave counted toward the population figure used to determine seats in the House of Representatives.
So, if slaveholders in the south began to recognize their slaves as human beings, why did they fight the Civil War? Why did they treat freed Blacks so badly for a century after that war?
Because they were fucking stupid racists.
They recognized slaves for a political point, which they won, not understanding the precedent they’d set down.
To answer your question more completely:
They SAID that slaves were 3/5ths of a human being, for their own political purposes. In real life, they treated them as property.
They fought the Civil War because they were slaveholder douchebags.
They went all Jim Crow for the next century because they are bad losers, and want to fuck up anything that happened to be done right.
With baseball season upon us, I thought I’d post a possibly interesting little tidbit I just learned at MLB.com.
The National League had its first two perfect games within 5 days of each other, on June 12 and June 17 of 1880. It then waited 84 years for the next one, which didn’t happen until June 21, 1964 (Jim Bunning).
The 3/5 was about taxation and political representation. 3/5 of each slave counted toward the population figure used to determine seats in the House of Representatives.
The irony was that the representatives from slave states wanted to count slaves as whole persons (to inflate their representation in Congress), whereas opponents of slavery didn’t want them counted at all.
With baseball season upon us, I thought I’d post a possibly interesting little tidbit I just learned at MLB.com.
The National League had its first two perfect games within 5 days of each other, on June 12 and June 17 of 1880. It then waited 84 years for the next one, which didn’t happen until June 21, 1964 (Jim Bunning).
As we all know, the last large meteor strike was about 100 years ago, and then we have another along with a near miss on the same day. Ain’t probability fun?
As we all know, the last large meteor strike was about 100 years ago, and then we have another along with a near miss on the same day. Ain’t probability fun?
What do you think the chance of the repeat of Jim Botimngley’s 12 RBI’s is?
Well, it brought the South into the American system, for better or for worse. Imagine if the Atlantic Slave Trade had existed in the 1860s! There was a growing sentiment in the South towards this very thing, leading up to the Civil War.
It took but a spark to put this instinctive feeling into words, and words led to deeds. The movement first took definite form in the ever radical State of South Carolina. In 1854 a grand jury in the Williamsburg district declared, “as our unanimous opinion, that the Federal law abolishing the African Slave Trade is a public grievance. We hold this trade has been and would be, if re-established, a blessing to the American people, and a benefit to the African himself.”1 This attracted only local attention; but when, in 1856, the governor of the State, in his annual message, calmly argued at length for a reopening of the trade, and boldly declared that “if we cannot supply the demand for slave labor, then we must expect to be supplied with a species of labor we do not want,”2 such words struck even Southern ears like “a thunder clap in a calm day.”3 And yet it needed but a few years to show that South Carolina had merely been the first to put into words the inarticulate thought of a large minority, if not a majority, of the inhabitants of the Gulf States.
Interestingly enough, the international slave trade was forbidden by Confederate law, but Jefferson Davis had to veto a slave importation bill.
It’s undoubtedly complicated, and anytime there’s a compromise that is supposed to make further progress possible, it can be debated endlessly. But given that, and the sensitivity of the issue, perhaps the president of Emory could have chosen a different example of ‘pragmatic compromise’. He went on to say, ‘Something like this process occurs every week on a university campus,’ which trivializes it, to say the least.
As Smith’s next tweet says:
DADT was a pragmatic compromise that while still horribly repressive was still a marked improvement over what came before.
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More: Meet America's Most Shameless Defender of the 1 Percent, Harvard Economist Greg Mankiw It’s not really news that America’s economics departments, particularly at elite institutions, are stuffed with people whose careers are founded on protecting monied interests. But it’s pretty rare when someone just comes straight out and announces the fact. Meet Greg Mankiw, chairman and professor of economics at Harvard, one of ...
"It's striking how preoccupied Harris and VandeHei are with the perception that Politico is too 'insidery,'" Silver wrote. "My personal critique of their work cuts a little deeper than that, however. It's not that they are too 'insidery' per se, but that the perceptions of Beltway insiders, which Politico echoes and embraces, are not always very insightful or accurate. In other words, the conventional ...
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Google has petitioned a secret U.S. national security court to relax restrictions on the information the tech giant can disclose about government data requests, claiming such restrictions violate the company's right to free speech under the First Amendment. Google's motion, filed Tuesday with the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, is the tech giant's latest attempt to address recent media reports that suggested it gives the ...
Beyond Camp, other lawmakers scheduled to attend the rally include GOP Sens. Ted Cruz (Texas), Mike Lee (Utah) and Rand Paul (Ky.) along with Reps. Michele Bachmann (Minn.), Tim Huelskamp (Kan.) and Jim Jordan (Ohio).
More: Glenn Beck IRS Rally Gets Between Dave Camp and Sander Levin - Kelsey Snell
President Barack Obama is expected to use his speech at the iconic Brandenburg Gate on Wednesday to renew calls for a reduction in nuclear weapons. It is not the first time the president has called for a reduction in stockpiles, but by addressing the issue in a major foreign speech, Obama is hoping to rekindle the issue, which was at the center of his ...
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June 4, 2013 -- In 2010, in the journal Nature, a pair of physicists at the Santa Fe Institute showed that when the population of a city doubles, economic productivity goes up by an average of 130 percent. Not only does total productivity increase with increased population, but so does per-capita productivity. Share This: In the latest issue of Nature Communications, researchers from the ...
Senior bankers guilty of reckless misconduct should be jailed, a long-awaited report on banking commissioned by the government has recommended. The Parliamentary Commission on Banking Standards was set up by Chancellor George Osborne last year after a number of scandals involving the industry. Jail reckless bankers, standards commission urgesThe cross-party group's fifth report attacked the lack of accountability of bankers and also said some ...
LE BOURGET, France — Boeing Co. won major orders from five customers for a stretched-out version of its popular 787 Dreamliner jet at the Paris Air Show Tuesday, further evidence of a strengthening market for more expensive long-haul jets.Boeing announced the formal launch of its 787-10 program at the Paris Air Show on Tuesday and says it already has commitments for 102 jets from ...
When Laura Gambrel, 22, of Zionsville, Ind., graduated from Indiana University in May, she wanted to keep the celebration pretty low key. She didn’t walk at the ceremony, nor did she have a party because she planned to go right back to the university this coming fall for grad school. It seemed only fitting then that the one thing her mother attempted to do ...
Are you uncomfortable with ambiguity? It's a common condition, but a highly problematic one. The compulsion to quell that unease can inspire snap judgments, rigid thinking, and bad decision-making. Fortunately, new research suggests a simple antidote for this affliction: Read more literary fiction. A trio of University of Toronto scholars, led by psychologist Maja Djikic, report that people who have just read a short ...
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