Today we get to the greatest Talking Heads album, Remain in Light. And I guess I will spend two days on it. I figure you’ve all heard “Once in a Lifetime,” so let’s skip it. Although I have to admit, that was the song that got me into the album. I love the way that Byrne shouts the lyrics. And the rhythm section part is so infectious. Of course you could say the same thing about everything on the album. You could certainly say it about today’s tune “Crosseyed and Painless.”
Byrne is at his best when he is writing about people who are pathologically alienated from life. I suspect that says something about him, although I’ve never gone out of my way to find out what he is like as a person. He’s always seemed overly intellectual — sort of the way people see me. Of course, they are only partly right about me, and so I’m sure I’m only partly right about Byrne.
Regardless, I love the rap part of “Crosseyed and Painless”: facts are simple and facts are straight; facts are lazy and facts are late; facts all come with points of view; facts don’t do what I want them to… It’s rare that white people — especially of that time — were able to make rap their own. It is absorbed into the music, not poured on like taco sauce to give it a different culture’s taste.
The whole thing is amazing. I often complain about production, but in this case, all the stops are pulled out. The song goes crazy. But that drum and base riff is just unstoppable and it carries us through. It’s amazing to think that the band that started with Talking Heads 77 was able to reach this point of musical brilliance.
I’ll admit that this is a bank shot. On this day in 1985, 
Mark Thoma, the gentlest economist around, wrote an article that I mostly agree with, 
Last year, I decided that 16 March would from that day forward be 
All of these innovations have allowed the economy to decarbonize quickly without imposing noticeable costs on consumers. The coal industry is in a state of collapse. In just the last year alone, its share of US electrical generation fell from 36 percent to 28 percent. The four largest American coal-mining firms, which were worth a combined $34 billion five years ago, are now worth $150 million — a loss of more than 99 percent of their value.
I got a message from my publisher (and nominally “editor”) today. After 28 chapters have been submitted and typeset, I am told, “Need to have 2-3 call outs in chapters that are all text.” It made me think that it would be a good idea to discuss what editors do and what writers do. But first I should explain to you what “call outs” are. In the publishing industry, a “call out” is nothing at all. There is no term. The phrase is idiosyncratic: the result of a tiny publisher cut off from the rest of the industry — and one that really doesn’t know anything other than what it does.
On this day in 1956, My Fair Lady premiered on Broadway. I have two things to say about this. The first is that when I was 17 years old, I was part of a concert band that toured Europe. It was interesting. But the band was filled with people from the south. There were only two people who were at all from the west coast: a guy from Alaska and a gal from Arizona. Now the guy turned out to be my best friend on the trip. He was the only one who was willing to crawl out of windows and go roaming around the great cities of Europe drinking wine. Really: most of those kids were real duds.
On this day in 44 BCE, Casca and Cassius were making their final plans for the assassination of Julius Caesar, which would occur the following day. And you might ask, why didn’t I just wait until tomorrow to talk about the assassination? For one thing, I don’t care about the assassination. I’m much more interested in the plays about it than the actual event. That’s the thing about power: there always other powerful people who want to kill you. This is why I like my quiet little life.
In remarks as sharply critical as he’s ever been about the state of the 2016 GOP presidential race, Obama called the GOP presidential debate a combination of “fantasy, and school yard taunts, and sellin’ stuff like it’s the Home Shopping Network.”
