Before we get to the birthdays, it is the 50th anniversary of the Great Train Robbery. In 1963 on this day, a 15-man gang stole what is equivalent to about $100 million off the Royal Mail train. Although most of the men involved where captured, most of the money never was. The most famous of those men is Ronald Biggs. He was put in jail, but escaped in 1965 and managed to avoid capture. In 2001, he turned himself in and went to jail. In 2009, he was released because of failing health, but he is still kicking today on his 84th birthday.

One of the early British liberal philosophers Francis Hutcheson was born on this day in 1694. French Romantic period composer Cecile Chaminade was born in 1857. She is best known today for the Flute Concertino in D Major. When I was a kid, I loved it. And it is popular with flutists today because it is an extremely showy piece. But with maturity, I have come to see that it really is just crap. But here is James Galway performing it and he really does make it work. It shows off what can be done with a flute when someone really knows what they are doing. It isn’t just the speed; listen for Galway’s exquisite articulation of some of the fast passages:

And to make up for that, here is Jean-Pierre Rampal playing Francis Poulenc’s Sonata for Flute and Piano which I believe was written for the flutist. Interestingly, both Rampal and Poulenc had the same birthday, January 7. That has nothing to do with today, of course. We’re just trying to detox from Chaminade:

Alcoholics Anonymous co-founder Bob Smith was born in 1879. I understand the people who founded AA. They were looking for serious behavior modification. At that time, heavy drinkers commonly died in their 40s from the liver damage. So for those guys, it was a matter of life and death. But as alcohol abuse has become a smaller and smaller problem (I’m not concerning myself with drunk drivers here), Alcoholics Anonymous has become bigger and bigger. Now it is applied to high school students, the very idea of which would have made Bob Smith laugh. Of course, the reason it has become so big is partly because of Hollywood (if someone in a movie has a drinking problem, you can be sure they will end up at an AA meeting to demonstrate the growth of the character). But the bigger reason is the American justice system that forces people who get into trouble to go 12-step meets that may be many other things but that are fundamentally religious indoctrination. Doubtless AA has done much good over the years, but at this point it does far more harm.

Mexican general Emiliano Zapata was born the same year as Smith. French composer Andre Jolivet was born in 1905. Many people find his music difficult, and I hear that. His earlier work is more tonal. But even later, I find him quite enjoyable. Here is (Because I’m feeling a bit mean?) his Concerto for Percussion, which I find captivating:

Hollywood producer Dino De Laurentiis was born in 1919. The great actor and swimmer Esther Williams was born in 1921. She only died a couple of months ago at the age of 91. Here is a montage of scenes from her films:

And physician and reproductive rights activist George Tiller was born in 1941. He was murdered by an anti-reproductive-choice fanatic who has become a hero in a certain part of the death cult (that is, Christian) anti-choice movement.

Singer Mel Tillis is 81 today. Actor Dustin Hoffman is 76. Singer Connie Stevens is 75. Actor Paul Hogan is 74. Actor Don Most is 60. And David Howell Evans, AKA The Edge, is 52. I don’t think much of him as a guitarist. He is more of a sound artist, like Brian Eno. And in that regard, he is brilliant.

The day, however, belongs to the great theoretical physicist Paul Dirac who was born on this day in 1902. It is kind of hard to explain why he is important. His work, although recent, is already important enough to be taught in lower division physics. He made fundamental contributions to both quantum mechanics and quantum electrodynamics (relativistic quantum mechanics). He predicted the existence of antimatter (anti-electrons, actually) in 1928. He was also known for being socially awkward—even by the standards of physicists. Some have even suggested that he was marginally autistic. But I doubt that. He was just a little odd.

Happy birthday Paul Dirac!

According to an article in in The Carville-Greenberg Memo yesterday, older citizens are turning against the Republican Party. Part of this is not surprising. As Digby noted this morning, older more conservative voters die off to be replaced by younger less conservative voters. But the results of recent polling go way beyond that.

Consider, for example, that Republicans had a 21 percentage point advantage among senior voters in 2010. Now, among those likely to vote in 2014, the advantage is only 5 percentage points. That’s huge. In 2010, seniors made up 23% of those who voted. If these numbers hold, that would mean that the 2014 election will go 3.7 percentage points in the Democrats’ direction compared to 2010. That’s over half the deficit of the 2010 election. And that’s just based upon the senior vote.

There are other bits of data. I was interested to see that they drilled down a bit into the favorability ratings. For example, 55% of seniors say that the Republican Party is too extreme. That’s a very bad number for them. Most people don’t pay attention to politics. They don’t know, for example, that the Republican House has now voted 40 times to defund Obamacare. And even if they did, they would respond with a Rodney King, “Why can’t we all just get along?” But it looks now that all the work of the Democrats over the past two years is paying off. The Republican brand used to be “fiscal rectitude” and “strong national security.” Now it looks like “extremist.”

As I’ve argued again and again, the Republicans really have painted themselves into a corner. You can only push ideology so far before it becomes unmoored from reality. And it isn’t like this is something we’ve only seen on the right. The extreme left in this country (which never had any power) back a few decades were constantly at war with each other over minor disagreements about ideology. That’s what happens when a movement gets crammed together in a small ideological galaxy on the edge of the universe. They can’t move any further out so they squabble about who the real socialist is. Or as we see in the Republican Party: who the “Constitutional conservative” (or whatever) is. This is, after all, a group that now claims they lost their way because George Bush Jr was not a real conservative. Jeez!

So is David Atkins right when he asks, Could Republicans Really Lose in 2014? As I noted above, it won’t happen with the senior vote alone. And I stand by my prediction that the Democrats will not take back the House in 2014. But this movement amongst our oldest citizens is good news and it makes 2014 look a lot better.

Hungarian countess and serial killer Elizabeth Bathory was born on this day in 1560. She was never convicted of her many murders because she was never charged. She was above the law, just like the rich of today. The great geographer Carl Ritter was born in 1779. Expressionist painter Emil Nolde was born in 1867. Billie Burke, the women who played Glinda the Good Witch of the North in The Wizard of Oz was born in 1884. Labor organizer Elizabeth Gurley Flynn was born in 1890. The great archaeologist Louis Leakey was born in 1903. Carl Switzer, who played Alfalfa in Our Gang was born in 1927.

Magician James Randi is 85 today. Actor David Duchovny is 53. Gymnast Yelena Davydova is 52. The more annoying Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales is 47. And actor Charlize Theron is 38.

The day, however, belongs to writer and storyteller Garrison Keillor who is 71 today. I’m not that big of a fan of his fiction. But A Prairie Home Companion is about as close to a perfect entertainment as exists in the world up to this point. Now if you could just combine it with Radio Lab, that would really be something. Of course, that is what I want; such a thing would probably be a flop. Anyway, A Prairie Home Companion is great radio and I listen to it most Saturdays. Here he is doing his thing:

Happy birthday Garrison Keillor!

Last night, I had a curious reaction to a recent Bobcat Goldthwait film, God Bless America. For those unfamiliar with it, it is a “black comedy.” But that hardly captures the essence of the film that pushes the limits of even that very broad category. It tells the story of Frank Murdoch, a quiet and polite man whose problems in his personal life lead him to kill an annoying reality TV star. The event is witnessed by precocious teenager Roxy Harmon and the two of them go on a killing spree—mostly of people whose main crime is that they just aren’t nice.

Perhaps the best scene in the film takes place in a movie theater where the duo go to see a documentary about the My Lai Massacre. Four of the five people watching the film are rude in various ways. So while the song “It’s Oh So Quiet” plays, Frank shoots them all (Roxy is not yet proficient with a gun). Before leaving the theater, he speaks to the terrified survivor, “Thanks for not talking during the feature. Thanks for turning off your cell phone.” She says, somewhat confused, “You’re welcome.” And they leave. Despite memories of the 2012 Aurora shooting (which took place after the film was released), it is an incredibly funny scene:

I enjoyed the whole film. Goldthwait squeezes a lot of humor out of his idea. It is more than just the gut laughs of the over-the-top violence and the catharsis of people like Bill O’Reilly, Simon Cowell, and Honey Boo Boo getting their due. The film is also sweet with humor more like Little Miss Sunshine than Natural Born Killers. It also puts in some interesting speeches strategically throughout the film so that no one can miss the satire and message of the film.

Where it all fails is in its theme. Ultimately, Goldthwait doesn’t seem to understand that his characters are no more heroes than William Foster in Falling Down. Frank doesn’t like what the society has become, but what he would prefer is only slightly different. Yes, our culture is coarse and insipid. But there is no indication that Frank is anything but insipid himself. Roxy is just an ignorant youth with cliched views. Their frustration is understandable. But there is nothing revolutionary in their thinking. And what does the film ultimately have to say on the issues that it raises? As far as I can tell, it is cynical about the issues: there is nothing we can do about our society, so it is enough to enjoy this fantasy about killing all of the people who annoy us.

And I did enjoy it. I especially liked its postmodern self-reference—being exactly what it claims to hate. And it portrayed the relationship of the two main characters with great sensitivity. Ultimately, it represents all that it is good and bad about Bobcat Goldthwait. He isn’t a great thinker, but he’s a funny guy in ways that while distasteful are ultimately delicious.

Afterword

Here is “It’s Oh So Quiet” from Happy Texas:

Netflix highly recommended a Canadian television series to me, Todd and the Book of Pure Evil. I was skeptical, but I figured I would give it a try. After all, Netflix has a good track record with me. Plus, it was recommending the series because on my interest in John Dies at the End. And I was pleased. Todd is very much like Buffy the Vampire Slayer, but with a sense of humor. In fact, that was the big problem with that show: somehow Joss Whedon forgot that the idea of Buffy was a joke. Todd has no such problem: it is straight comedy. In fact, it’s quite silly.

The basic story is that there is this eponymous Book of Pure Evil that is hanging around the high school. It feeds off people’s desires by giving them what they want. But just like the curse of the claw, the dream is twisted into a nightmare. For example, the eponymous character Todd wishes to play the guitar really well but it causes people to bleed out of various orifices. (Did I mention the show also has a fair share of coarse humor?) By the end of the second episode, four students have formed a gang to stop the Book of Evil. There is stoner Todd, who is perhaps the least interesting character. There is Jenny whose father disappeared while reporting on the Book. Todd has a huge crush on her. There is Curtis, Todd’s one-handed best friend who gets most of the best lines. And there is science geek Hannah. Both her parents are dead, so I assume that was due to the Book. She has a crush on Todd.

This gang of high school kids do battle not only with the book but with guidance councilor Atticus. While wearing a polyester suit, he commonly meets with a group of satanists wearing beautiful, heavy robes. Once, when Atticus was being called by the head satanist, the picture of the satanist with his hood covering half his face shows up on the phone. Funny stuff. Also among the adults is the janitor Jimmy who seems much like Todd will be in 20 years.

Perhaps the best part of the show is a group of three head bangers who hang out in the school parking lot smoking pot. They give Todd advice in the form of riddles. They are, of course, a great homage to Macbeth’s three witches. Why not? Plot some Shakespeare into the middle of a “horror” film. Works for me.

Thus far, I’ve just watched the first two episodes which I think are supposed to work as a kind of pilot. And it is quite entertaining. It certainly isn’t up to the standards of John Dies at the End. For one thing, it is produced on a pretty low budget. There are very few locations. Little set dressing. Few extras. Dodgy lighting. But the acting is good and all the production works to tell the stories. So I’m interested to see how the series goes. But it is definitely worth checking out.

Afterword

There are a couple of other films Todd and the Book of Pure Evil reminds me of. One is the very good Tucker & Dale vs Evil. The other is the not so good but fun The Last Lovecraft: Relic of Cthulhu.

Before we get to birthdays, I’d like to talk about war. On this day in 1915, the final push by the British at Gallipoli, the Battle of Sari Bair started. Gallipoli has an earned reputation for being a pointless battle within a pointless war. There were roughly a half million casualties at Gallipoli and over 30,000 during the two week battle at Sari Bair alone. And then exactly 30 years later, the United States dropped a nuclear bomb on the civilian population of Hiroshima. As many as 166,000 people were killed. We waited all of three weeks between the first successful atomic blast and dropping a bomb on Japan. Without getting into my feelings about culpability, this is all just a total fucking shame. In the most important ways, we have not evolved at all past ants. The intelligence that allowed us to land the Curiosity rover on the surface of Mars one year ago today seems powerless to stop us for killing each other.

The great early Baroque composer Barbara Strozzi was born on this day in 1619. Here is a beautiful performance of Che Si Puo Fare:

French religious philosopher Nicolas Malebranche was born in 1638. He thought God made everything happen. I pretty much agree, but my concept of “God” is so broad as to make me an atheist. Given Malebranche’s theodicy, I think he may not have been that different from me. The discoverer of palladium and rhodium, William Hyde Wollaston was born in 1766. The great English poet Alfred, Lord Tennyson was born in 1809. Cuban composer Ernesto Lecuona was born in 1895. Here is an impressive performance of Malaguena by Roy Clark (one of his signature pieces, apparently):

Actor Lucille Ball was born in 1911. I was never that fond of I Love Lucy, but I’m rather fond of her as the “Queen of the Bs.” Face it: she was kind of annoying with that whinny voice on the show. But she was always a honey! The historian Richard Hofstadter was born in 1916. He is famous for books like Social Darwinism in American Thought, 1860–1915 and Anti-intellectualism in American Life. He was a great man. Actor Robert Mitchum was born in 1917.

White supremacist, cofounder of the White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, and murderer Samuel Bowers was born in 1924. According to Wikipedia:

That means for all of that crime, he ended up spending only 14 years in jail. And he lived to a ripe old age. People who believe there is a loving God are kidding themselves. Good people live short, brutish lives. And people like Bowers live long happy lives. I suspect that in prison he was a hero to all of the white supremacists, so even that was a fairly pleasant experience.

Screenwriter Norman Wexler was born in 1926. Artist Andy Warhol was born in 1928. Political scientist Chalmers Johnson was born in 1931. Another great man, he is notable for his understanding that the United States had created a new kind of empire. He said, “A nation can be one or the other, a democracy or an imperialist, but it can’t be both. If it sticks to imperialism, it will, like the old Roman Republic, on which so much of our system was modeled, like the old Roman Republic, it will lose its democracy to a domestic dictatorship.” We’re more than half way there. I’ve been arguing for years that eventually (possibly in my lifetime) the countries of Europe will have to go to war with the United States. As our economic power decreases, we will use our military in ever more overt ways to prop up our failed (increasingly fascistic) economic policies. Go team!

And the truly independent director Paul Bartel was born in 1938.

Actor Frank Finlay is 87 today. He is best known for playing Porthos in those great Richard Lester Three Musketeers films. Cocaine smuggler George Jung is 71. He was played by Johnny Depp in the film Blow. That movie, like most drug films depressed me greatly. But there is good news. He is slated for release in November 2014. So hopefully he will at least not die in prison. And M. Night Shyamalan is 43. Look, I know people like to dump on him. But the truth is that as far as major Hollywood films go, he is really good. Few people make films as good and thoughtful as he does. I know when I see one of his films that it will at least be a worthy effort.

The day, however, belongs to biologist Alexander Fleming who was born on this day back in 1881. You see, I had to give the day to him because if it weren’t for him, I would likely be dead. He is the man who discovered penicillin. He actually did quite a lot more during his long career. But that was quite enough for any man. Here is the story:

Happy birthday Alexander Fleming!

In the development of opinion, newspapers play an indispensable part. Without them, democracy could not endure in large countries like the United States and Canada, for, aside from local areas of small population where events become a matter of common knowledge through the personal intercourse, people are almost entirely dependent upon the newspapers for political information. “The newspaper is,” says Walter Lippmann, “in all literalness the bible of democracy, the book out of which a people determines its conduct. It is the only serious book more people read. It is the only book they read every day.” Nearly everyone has a favorite paper upon which he relies for information and from which, perhaps without knowing it, he borrows his opinions. It may, among serious-minded people who have made a wise choice, become a household institution, an intimate friend capable of inspiring personal attachment and strong regard. Great indeed is the power of the press—and the responsibility that goes with power. In the past its influence, exerted on behalf of self-government and social justice, has often seemed vital. There are many papers today that possess and merit public confidence. But on the whole a feeling of distrust and apprehension has somewhat shaken the credit of the press.

—Howard R. Penniman
American Parties and Elections (1952), pp. 86-87

What did I say? You remember: back in June. I was angry at Lindsey Graham telling Fox News that we shouldn’t be upset about the NSA spying on us because they were just going after the terrorists. He said, “I’m a Verizon customer; I don’t mind Verizon turning over records to the government, if the government’s gonna make sure that they try to match up a known terrorist with somebody in the United States. I don’t think you’re talking to terrorists; I know you’re not. I know I’m not so we don’t have anything to worry about.” You know, I hate Martin Niemoller’s poem “First They Came…” It isn’t that it is bad (although as poetry, it is). It is just that people overuse it and apply it to ridiculous things. For example, a lot of people used it when the government was talking about closing the gun show loophole in the gun registration law. Sorry: that wasn’t what Niemoller was talking about. But in the case of surveillance, I think it applies. Oh, how it applies!

As I wrote back in June, “We don’t know what the government is doing with those records. For another thing, data use creep is a well known phenomenon. I can well see the definition of terrorism creeping from ‘people who bomb us’ to ‘people who sell drugs to us’ to ‘people who cheat on their wives.'” Well, step one was already fully underway when I wrote that. According to John Shiffman and Kristina Cooke at Reuters, Exclusive: U.S. Directs Agents to Cover Up Program Used to Investigate Americans. They write:

And then they tell those local authorities to cover up the fact that they got the information that way. So via an illegal wiretap, the local authorities are told of a cannabis grower. Then the local authorities just happen to pull the grower’s car over because he, “didn’t use his turn signal.” And of course, they just happen to have a drug sniffing dog with them. You get the idea.

Now you may not like cannabis growers, but that hardly matters. There are a couple of issues here. One is that our intelligence services are illegally misusing data. Another is that people’s fundamental Constitutional rights are being denied without them ever finding out about it. Yet another is that they won’t be able to mount a good defense should they even attempt to do so. But most of all: this is data use creep. If you think this same thing will not happen to political groups, than you are hopelessly naive, evil, stupid, or all of the above.

This is an outrage and it has me really angry. But while the story is getting a decent amount of coverage, I don’t expect that Americans will be too concerned about it. Just as with Lindsey Graham, they’ll think, “I have nothing to worry about because I’m not a drug dealer.” And they’ll keep saying that right up to the point where it directly affects them. And then they’ll write some shitty poem about how first they came for the terrorists.

Yesterday, I was in a pretty good mood. But this stopped suddenly for an odd reason: the Jezebel article Banker Bro Now Hiring Frat Dudes with Hot ‘Slampieces’. If you aren’t familiar with it, the article is very much “dog bites man.” It contains a letter from one fraternity guy to all of his “brothers.” He has been unable to find a job, “Fuckin’ Obama’s fault for strangling this economy.” So he got his father to allow him to access his trust fund early, which is worth “mid 7-figures.” And now he’s going to start a hedge fund!

Three times in the email he refers to “slampieces.” From what I can tell, these are women who are beneath you but who you fuck on the sly. He also mentions hiring secretaries for the men to ogle “and possibly slam.” So he’s a real charmer and doubtless so is his whole fraternity. Of course, his main pitch is that he and his brothers will become “filthy rich.” And doubtless he’s right. Ezra Klein certainly thinks so, Why Hedge Funds Run by Idiots Can Do Well. For Awhile. Money begets money, but even if he screws up and loses all of the money, I’m sure his father will bail him out. As it is, he is explicitly depending upon his father’s connections to make the fund successful.

When I first saw the letter, I thought it was a prank. The writer of the article, Anna Breslaw attests to its authenticity, saying that she’s checked out the undisclosed writer and his powerful father. So if there is a prank, it would be on Breslaw, not by her. But my time on earth has indicated that in the vast majority of these cases, things that look like satire are not. This guy, who must be in his early 20s, shows the maturity of a 13 year old boy. Or rather: the immature of a 13 year old boy.

The rich are falling down on the job. It was once the purpose of college to refine the young rich. But the fraternity system seems to allow young men to go off to school and become even more insular and silly than they went in. These are, after all, not people who have lived on the streets. They have never wanted for anything. Yet all that life is about is being filthy rich so that they can attract lots of “slampieces.” It is nice to think that this kid’s father would find out about the letter and rescind the offer. After all, it doesn’t sound like sonny is mature enough to get his 7-figure trust fund. But I suspect that daddy is much like his son with his own slampieces.

Beyond all that, the letter is a great example of how the rich think. Privilege drips from every word. In the sense, the letter is not sexist; I suspect this young man sees all people as objects for his personal amusement. But given his trust fund, he could do anything. Let’s assume this guy has $5 million. If he invested that and made 2% above the inflation rate, that would net him $100,000 per year. That’s a decent income for doing nothing. And it would allow him to leverage his privilege into doing something of some value for society. But instead, he wants to start a hedge fund—which does nothing for anyone except those in the fund itself. Check out this graph from Business Week (via Ezra Klein) that shows that hedge funds do worse than the market as a whole:

So this guy wants to make money by providing yet more useless investment opportunities to the filthy rich. And yet it is “Fuckin’ Obama’s fault for strangling this economy.”