Author Archives: Frank Moraes

About Frank Moraes

Frank Moraes is a freelance writer and editor online and in print. He is educated as a scientist with a PhD in Atmospheric Physics. He has worked in climate science, remote sensing, throughout the computer industry, and as a college physics instructor. Find out more at About Frank Moraes.

Morning Music: Tinariwen

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Emmaar - TinariwenIn my regular work, I have two bosses. One is the owner, but I don’t deal with him directly all that often. So I think of my boss as Toni. She’s a really interesting person. Really. Interesting. She’s a mother of three, but wilder than I’ve ever been. She picks up homeless people and lets them sleep on the couch. She’s a juggler who busks on the street. Whereas I close the drapes and hide inside, she rushes to meet the world head on. In fact, she has recently had run-ins with black bears and a cougar. She terrifies me, but I enjoy living in a small way through her.

She’s very interested in what she refers to as “African blues.” It is mostly music of the Sahara — most especially Mali. You may remember that I featured some musicians from the region some time ago, Ali Farka Touré & Toumani Diabaté. But I don’t know much about it. And so I thought it would be interesting to do a week of my boss’ favorite music. She sent me a collection that is focused in Africa, but isn’t exclusively so.

We start with what I believe is her favorite band, Tinariwen. They are definitely influenced by Touré — but I doubt there are many musicians from the region who haven’t been. You can definitely hear why she calls them African blues. It’s incredibly compelling music. Sometimes, when people listen to foreign music, they don’t get much out of it. For example, when Ravi Shankar performed at the Concert for Bangladesh, the audience applauded after his group tuned up. He famously said, “If you like our tuning so much, I hope you will enjoy the playing even more.” But this music is distinctly western, so the listener can appreciate what is different about it.

Here is “Islegh Taghram Tifhamam” off their most recent album, Emmaar. It’s very laid back, but they can rock. I might come back to them later in the week with another tune. They deserve it.

“Tinariwen Emmaar” by Source. Licensed under Fair use of copyrighted material in the context of Emmaar“>Fair use via Wikipedia.

Anniversary Post: King George III

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Conservative Ideal: King George IIIOn this day in 1760, George William Frederick became King George III. He is probably most notable for being king during the creation of the United Kingdom. But it is hard to take kings of this period forward all that seriously. From the 17th century onward, the monarchy lost more and more power. Certainly by the reign of William and Mary at the end of the 17th century, monarchs understood that their grasp of power was weak. And Parliament clearly had the power by the time of George III.

There has been much written about George over the years — much of it bad. But it doesn’t make much sense to me. Nothing would have been much different if someone else had been king. As it is, the man was crazy as a loon in 1788, which is depicted in The Madness of King George. And despite the way it might look in the film, he stayed crazy until his death in 1820. So for well over half his reign, he was insane, and the country did just fine.

I can’t help but quote my favorite line from the film, “Who can flourish on such a daily diet of compliance?” The monarchy exchanged the constant threat of death for the life of a much beloved pet. But even at the time of George, they still hadn’t fully accepted that idea. So they got compliance and maintained their delusions of power. But the truth is that had it come down to it, Parliament would have destroyed George III and the future George IV.

How to Write Haiku Without Being a Pedant

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HaikuI remember when I was in the ninth grade, we went through a section on the haiku. They really are very interesting, but there is nothing like good old fashioned American systematization to destroy, well, everything creative. So we were taught what is always taught: a haiku is a three line poem where the lines have five, seven, and five syllables. And that’s about it, other than that they usually have something to do with mood or weather or whatever the hell the Japanese are on about.

The result is some pretty horrible drivel. Here’s something absolutely terrible I was able to come up with in about 20 seconds:

I am a bad boy
I stole candy from the store
But I got away

See: it has the proper number of syllables in the proper order. I can tell you one thing: that is an A+ haiku by the standards of my ninth grade English class. But it does have a few problems.

Let’s leave aside that it’s deadly dull: I am, I stole, I got. There shouldn’t be any reference to the writer, because that’s implicit in the form. A haiku is supposed to be a report of what is happening from the writer’s perspective. This “haiku” misses all of these points. But it does get the syllables right, so that’s something. Or maybe not.

I was recently editing a article about mobile games when I came upon a statement about one of the game’s “about us” page that was given in the form of a couple of haiku. It mentioned that a haiku was a poem with blah, 7 syllables, blah. So I sent off a message to Madeleine Kane, my personal expert on all matters involving limericks and haiku. I had a vague memory that haiku is not so regimented as all that. And she sent me to an article by Naomi Beth Wakan, Dispelling the Myth of 5, 7, 5.

The article is primarily for teachers who want to provide segments like the one I took on haiku, but who don’t want it to be as useless. It’s worth checking out. But according to Wakan, syllables in Japanese are shorter than they are in English. So the 17 syllable business is normally abandoned by serious English language haiku writers. Instead, they “usually do a rough 2 beats, 3 beats, 2 beats.” That’s actually kind of exciting! For one thing, that provides almost no time to get the information out. I like a challenge.

The truth is that the standard, 17 syllable, format is too easy. Here’s something typical of what I can do in about a minute:

water drops pound roof
overflowing rain gutters
splashing mud puddles

But how do you make that work in a couple of beats per line? It isn’t exactly hard. The main thing is that it makes you get to the point of what you are trying to render. But doing it well is really hard, as five minutes of work shows in this remarkably uninspired translation:

rain drips from
rooftop gutters
muddy ground

Let me try again! Here is a Mary Barnard translation of a poem by Sappho, which I love:

Pain penetrates
Me drop
by drop

It’s almost a haiku already. It just takes some minor changes:

now pain
pierces and builds
drop by drop

The problem with going rogue and writing haiku that is true to the tradition is that there are millions of people who will tell you that you don’t know what you are doing because your haiku doesn’t have 17 syllables. But if anyone bugs you, I give you permission to respond with the following “haiku”:

is this the kind of
haiku that you want from me
that totally sucks?

The Economics Loophole That Leads Inexorably to Conservative Policy

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Mark ThomaMark Thoma wrote a very insightful article over at The Fiscal Times, The Lofty Promise and Humble Reality of International Trade. Most of the article is about something I’ve written about a lot around here. Trade agreements may be great overall. But at least in the United States, the benefits have gone almost exclusively to those at the top. The claim is always that these are the job creators, but given that they just keep accumulating money, it is clear that they aren’t creating jobs. They are able to game the system for their own benefit. And a big part of that has been the The Job Creator Myth itself.

But Thoma mentioned something that I didn’t know. Apparently, economists see themselves as above the opinion game. That is, they have no opinion about the trade-offs of a particular policy. So if a policy will make everyone better off, then the field says it is good. But if it makes a whole bunch of people better off but a few people worse off, it has no opinion. This came as a bit of a shock to me, given how much economists push all kinds of policies that absolutely do have losers — often very large numbers of losers.

There are even phrases for this — things like “creative destruction” — an indication that they know capitalism is set up to create losers, but it’s okay because “in the long run” we are all dead everyone is better off. So how is it that economists are able to push policies that they know will cause harm? (I mean, other than by being the shameless hacks and lackeys for the rich!) Well, Thoma explained that:

Economists, however, have ways around this. If a policy such as opening our borders to more international trade has both positive and negative effects, but the positive effects exceed the negative, then it would be possible to distribute the benefits in a way that makes everyone at least as well off as they were before the policy change.

That’s a hell of a loophole. By this, if a trade policy hurts millions of working Americans, that’s fine as long as it helps the rich by a greater amount. The fact that the gains could be distributed so that everyone is better off is all that matters. The fact that it literally never is doesn’t matter. That’s just details — nothing the economists need worry about! So they are able to push policies that could — in theory — be good for everyone, but are — in practice — only good for the rich. I’m finally starting to understand Greg Mankiw!

What I find fascinating about this is how much this is the way that libertarians think. For example, libertarians don’t believe in antitrust laws, because in theory a company with a monopoly could be open to another company coming in and winning market share. Of course in practice, that isn’t the way it works. But theory is all that libertarians care about. It’s bothersome that the economics profession uses the same kind of logic, which just so happens to give advantages to the power elite.

I find the whole thing upsetting, but it does explain why conservative economists can go around claiming that they they are just looking at the facts and yet be pushing for highly ideological policies. No wonder economics is such a screwed up discipline.

See also: No Trade Deals Until Our Economy Is Fixed.

Morning Music: Tiny Tim’s Stairway to Heaven

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Girl - Tiny TimAt last, we reach the end of our Tiny Tim week. And we go out with a bang. If I have only one song to introduce someone to him with, I go right to the big guns — the one song that shows everything that is great about him. And that song is his cover of Led Zeppelin’s “Stairway to Heaven.” It’s a perfect song.

Let’s start with the music. It is a light jazz version of the song with a relentless walking bass and a wonderfully syncopated drum. On top of this, is this wonderful 1940s style male vocal quartet, which allows Tiny Tim to play around a bit. The main thing is that the song is done completely seriously. But the critical thing about it is that no one doing it thinks the song is serious. It is about as serious as Mickey the Monkey.

Anniversary Post: Houdini’s Last Performance

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Harry HoudiniOn this day in 1926, Houdini gave his last performance. There is so much myth surrounding Houdini, that I find him almost intolerable as a subject. Indeed, in my second novel, I spend a great deal of time savaging him. Consider that Houdini’s act was always being performed in two places: wherever he was and then wherever his younger brother Hardeen was. And given that I’m not much of a fan of the big stage illusion shows, Hardeen did the only thing of the two of them that I’m really impressed with: plain view straitjacket escape. He was the one who saw that it was even more impressive if the audience could see the performer.

None of this is to take anything away from Houdini. He was a trailblazer, and certainly less boring than Thurston or Blackstone. And I was very interesting to hear a voice recording of Houdini from 1914. He had a far better voice than I expected. The style of that time was very much over the top, and here he sounds rather modern — nuanced. It certainly would have been interesting to see his act.

Everyone knows the standard, but incorrect, story of Houdini’s death: he was being visited by a fan before a show. The fan asked him if it was true that Houdini could take a punch to the stomach. And before allowing Houdini to get ready, the fan punched him, causing Houdini to suffer internal injuries. Houdini insisted on performing that night, but was rushed to the hospital afterwards. But it was too late and Houdini died. Du-du-daa!

It is true that the fan punched him in the stomach. But that was two days earlier. He did suffer great pain. It is probable that the punch did not cause Houdini’s medical problems, but they may have covered them up — making Houdini think the pain was from the punches and so no big deal. Regardless, after two days, Houdini did see a doctor who told him that he had appendicitis and needed surgery right away. Houdini brushed the doctor off, and gave his performance on the 24th — his last. After it, he went to the hospital where he died a week later.

This seems like madness, but it makes a certain amount of sense. As I know from own father, men of previous generations were hard. As it was, Houdini had a broken ankle through all of this, which he performed with. He was a man who was used to pain. And he had not only survived, he had flourished. He was one of the most famous men in the world. He was extremely wealthy, but like most men of his upbringing at that time, I’m sure that not working was unthinkable. So he died as he lived. It’s still kind of sad.

Translation Is Nothing to Be Pedantic About

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Roberto González EchevarríaRecently, I listened to a lecture by Roberto González Echevarría on his Introduction to Cervantes class at Yale. It was quite interesting, especially his discussion of why Don Quixote is spelled the way it is in the English world. It turns out that Spanish, like English at that time, did not have its spelling standardized. At that time “x” was generally used for the “hoe” sound. Since then, “j” has become standard for the “hoe” sound, so Spanish speakers spell the novel, Don Quijote. Since we are English speakers, there’s been no reason to change the spelling for the original.

Roberto González Echevarría on Translation

I was pleased to find that he was using my preferred John Rutherford translation. But it turns out that he only uses it because he wrote the introduction. He was very critical of the translation. He even tried to get Rutherford to make changes in the translation before it went to press. Rutherford refused. According to Echevarría, this was because Rutherford was an old fashioned Oxford professor. I tend to see it differently. Who is Roberto González Echevarría to ask for changes in the translation? He isn’t a translator, and I really don’t think he has much of an idea about what translators do.

He not only complained about Rutherford’s translation. Echevarría also complained about his friend Edith Grossman’s translation, which he claimed was slightly better. He then dismissed every translation and applauded the very first translation by Thomas Shelton. I’ve seen this before: people like to throw out praise for an old translation, thereby giving them cover from the charge that they don’t like any translation. And it helps when the Shelton translation is the least circulated of the well-known translations. But it is ultimately a pretentious claim, “The first guy who dashed off a translation in a month and half is better than all the translators who came afterward.” Again: it shows a kind of disdain for the whole process of translation.

The Purpose of Translation

Elizabeth Bryer at Plume of Words wrote a very interesting article a few years back, Rutherford and Grossman Translations of Don Quixote. Like me, she is clearly a partisan for Rutherford. But she didn’t write that one translation is better than the other. Rather, they are different. Grossman is more interested in getting the words right. Rutherford is interested in getting the experience right. Both those approaches are valid. What’s not valid, is for someone like Roberto González Echevarría to decide that they are the ultimate arbiter of what is a good translation.

Bryer noted a great example:

Rutherford tends to privilege the effect on the reader; Grossman, the source text: “mozo de campo y plaza” is translated by Grossman as “man-of-all-work” and by Rutherford as “jack of all trades.” Literally, Grossman is closer to the meaning (someone who does all the work, as opposed to someone capable of doing all the work), but Rutherford presents a cleaner-sounding English.

I would go further. I don’t think that Cervantes intended Don Quixote as a precise literary effort. Indeed, it was attacked as being something of a vulgar affair. So it seems questionable to me to worry about getting just the right word in translating the book. That wasn’t what Cervantes did — and may well explain why no one ever cared for his poetry.

Translator as Collaborator

Bryer goes on to discuss something I’ve called Rutherford on myself: introducing humor into the book where it may not have been to begin with. But is this wrong? Given that other bits of humor don’t work — due to language and just time — it is fitting. And I don’t think he ever strays from the original intent. But I can see where pedants might disagree with his choices, as though the original is a holy relic.

The point is that translation is a process that necessarily warps the original. It is not even possible to read the original in the way people of Cervantes’ time did, because the language has changed. The reader is always a collaborator in story telling. But translation takes the issue to a higher level. There are different approaches to the process. But there is no Platonic ideal. I believe that the best translation is the one that brings the original to life for modern readers. And that’s why I think Rutherford’s is the best. But if you most care about a slavish adherence to the words, as Roberto González Echevarría apparently does, perhaps the best for you will be Thomas Shelton’s.

Image from Yale, licensed under Fair Use.

Don’t Blame Base for Republican Insanity

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Paul KrugmanPaul Krugman highlighted a particular case of Republican silliness, Monetary Conspiracy Theories. Apparently, Donald Trump is now saying the Federal Reserve is keeping interest rates low because it wants to make Obama look good. It’s almost funny. After all, raising interest rates is something that the Fed does in order to put people out of work. I wonder if Trump’s supporters know this? I realize they are mostly older people, but still. The implication is that raising interest rates is something that we should want to do. Donald Trump is as much a populist as I am a fascist.

Krugman’s point is that Trump may be crazy to think this, but back in 2010, Paul Ryan was arguing that “quantitative easing wasn’t a good-faith effort to support a weak economy, but an attempt to ‘bail out fiscal policy,’ preventing the fiscal crisis Obama’s policies were supposed to produce.” Same thing. But Paul Ryan isn’t just a moderate in the eyes of the mainstream press — he’s a super serious wonk! This isn’t just about monetary policy, of course. The entire Republican Party is crazy. They are all pushing the same nonsense. If you were a Republican voter, what would you want: a candidate who believed crazy things but spoke soft, or a candidate who believed crazy things and ranted about them? That’s not hard.

The Republican Party has pushed further and further to the right until they are all bunched up at the edge of the fascist cliff.

What we have here is a Republican base that is paying attention. There is nothing surprising about what they believe. What is shocking is that we have an establishment media that slices and dices the Republican Party. There is a clear narrative: there are crazies in the party, but it is at base a good old fashioned traditional political institution. There is no reason to believe this. They are basing their judgement on rhetoric, not policy. Trump yells about “illegals,” so he’s an extremist. Marco Rubio does not do this, so he’s a moderate. But the two men don’t actually disagree about immigration policy.

It’s clear enough what has happened. The Republican Party has pushed further and further to the right until they are all bunched up at the edge of the fascist cliff. So until they all decide to just take the plunge, the only thing Republican politicians can do is find more and more extreme ways to verbalize their displeasure.

But how did we get to this point? The media have just followed along, defining as acceptable political discourse anything that enough Republicans were shouting about. Supply side economics was always a crock. No non-partisan economist thought it would work. And after 35 years, it has failed to ever work. But will establishment reporters counter Republicans who spout this nonsense? Of course not! Allowing it has worked great for them these last decades; no reason to change now.

So let me reiterate. Republican base voters are making sense in being attracted to Donald Trump and Ben Carson and Ted Cruz. The “establishment” Republicans aren’t offering policies that appeal to reasoning, so all they are offering is crazy policy with boring rhetoric. The fact that the mainstream press can’t tell that the “establishment” and “extreme” candidates are offering the same policy is why we find ourselves with an insane Republican Party to begin with.

Morning Music: Hey Jude

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Girl - Tiny TimThis is our second day on with Tiny Tim’s last studio album, Girl. As stated before, the title refers to The Beatles song. But he did another of their songs, “Hey Jude.” But unlike the original version, which is over-serious and grand, Tiny Tim’s version is pure Latin fun — “Cha cha cha!” I think that’s a critical element to his work. He loves the songs. He respects the songs. And he’s not afraid to play around with them.

Of course, now I expect to get someone coming on here explaining to me that I am an awful person for not holding the original version of the song in high enough esteem. Indeed, I see that Weekend Edition highlighted the song in, Annoying Music: Beatles Cover Songs. But really, is there anything more annoying than Paul McCartney taking a one minute ditty and pushing it past seven? Tiny Tim’s version makes me want to get up and dance. Cha cha cha!

Anniversary Post: Smurfs

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SmurfOn this day in 1958, the Smurfs first showed up in the funny pages. That’s distinct from the television series, The Smurfs. Same characters, but it took a while before they got off paper. And they didn’t have their own comic. They first appeared in Johan and Peewit — a Belgian comic created by Pierre “Peyo” Culliford. It was a medieval cartoon, like Don Quixote, in a way. Johan is a brave night who rushes into dangerous situations. Peewit is the court jester, but gets dragged along on Johan’s adventures. Whereas Sancho rides a donkey, Peewit rides a goat.

Like Peewit, the Smurfs are dwarfs, but of the blue variety. Frankly, I don’t find them nearly as interesting in Johan and (especially) Peewit. I want to run out and find some of the books. The Smurfs got their own strip a year after they first appeared. And the rest, as they say, is history. And like most history, they are racist. The enemy of the Smurfs, the evil magician Gargamel, is a stereotype of a greedy Jew. But more than that, there is the question of the “black Smurf.”

The first Smurf book was, Les Schtroumpfs Noirs. When it was translated to English, it was turned into, The Purple Smurf — with the requisite change in the coloring. You can see a comparison:

The Black Smurfs

I found an interesting article at Simply Maya, 55 Years of Belgian Blues. They put Les Schtroumpfs Noirs in the context of its time. It was the first Smurfs book, and it came at an important time in Belgian history, “‘The Black Smurfs’ came at a time when colonial empires were falling and just three years earlier Belgian Congo had gained independence to form what became the Democratic Republic of Congo, after years of brutal rule under Belgian kings where millions of African people had been killed.” It’s funny how our unstated assumptions ooze out onto the comics page.

Images used by fair use.

Why GOP Won’t Release Blumenthal Testimony

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Adam SchiffRepublicans asked more than 160 questions about Mr Blumenthal’s relationship and communications with the Clintons, but less than 20 questions about the Benghazi attacks. Republicans asked more than 50 questions about the Clinton foundation but only four questions about security in Benghazi. Republicans asked more than 270 questions about Mr Blumenthal’s alleged business activities in Libya, but no questions about the US presence in Benghazi. And Republicans asked more than 45 questions about David Brock, Media Matters — I have no idea what that is even — and affiliated entities, but no questions, no questions about Ambassador Stevens and other US personnel in Benghazi.

—Adam Schiff
Said during today’s Benghazi Hearing

Benghazi and Republican Malfeasance

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Trey GowdyToday, Hillary Clinton is testifying before the House Select Committee on Benghazi. It’s an amazing display. It’s such a joke. They’ve been beating this drum for three years now. They’ve found nothing. All they’ve managed to do is convince those in the right wing echo chamber that there must be fire, because if there is one thing the Republican Party is good at, it is creating smoke. But if that weren’t enough, we had Kevin McCarthy putting the hearings in the context of how it damaged Clinton’s approval rating. And over the weekend, we learned, Republican Chairman Of Benghazi Committee Caught Making Bogus Accusation Against Hillary Clinton.

It all involves Trey Gowdy. Earlier this month, he sent out a letter claiming that Clinton had revealed the name of a CIA source in some of her private email. Gowdy wrote, “This information, the name of a human source, is some of the most protected information in our intelligence community, the release of which could jeopardize not only national security but human lives.” On Sunday, the ranking Democrat, Representative Elijah Cummings hit back. Hard. It’s worth quoting at length:

The problem with your accusation — as with so many others during this investigation — is that you failed to check your facts before you made it, and the CIA has now informed the Select Committee that you were wrong. I believe your accusations were irresponsible, and I believe you owe the Secretary an immediate apology.

It appears that your letter was rushed out to the press to counter the public firestorm caused by Republican Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy’s stark admission that Republicans are using millions of taxpayer dollars to damage Secretary Clinton’s bid for president. However, your letter only provided further evidence of this fact.

It turns out that the information is not classified. But before releasing it to the press, Gowdy redacted the name of the CIA source, adding “redacted due to sources and methods.” This was certainly all done to make Clinton look bad. And as Cummings noted in his letter, “Predictably, commentators began repeating your accusations in even more extreme terms…” Of course they did! Just the same, you would think after the same thing happens again and again (as it has with selective leaks from various Benghazi committees), the the press would wise up.

What’s perhaps most important, is that a day after this story broke — showing malfeasance on the part of Trey Cowdy — Google News had nothing about it among its top news items. In fact, if you did a search on “Benghazi,” the first thing that came up was a Fox News article, “Ambassador Sought Security Staffing Before Benghazi Attack, Cable Shows.” It’s understandable that for the last 40 years, the Republicans have been looking for something to redeem them for Nixon and the Watergate scandal. They look for scandals everywhere, even while they find them nowhere. (Unless marital infidelity is as important as running a crime syndicate out of the White House.)

I hope Brian Beutler was right earlier this week, The Benghazi Witch-Hunt Against Hillary Is Backfiring Just Like Bill Clinton’s Impeachment. But is it really? I question that. It seems to me that the press is only waking up to the fact that there is nothing to all this Benghazi thing. The Republicans have had more than 13 hearings on it. That ought to be enough to come to that conclusion. Instead, it takes clear acts of malfeasance to make the press figure there is nothing to see. Of course, there is something to see. If the Democrats acted like the Republicans have, it would be a huge thing. Instead, given that this is simply what the Republicans have become, it is ignored. The Republicans are just awful, so there is no story.

“Trey Gowdy, Official Portrait, 112th Congress” by US House of Representatives – [1]. Licensed under Public Domain via Commons.