I know why so many parents like Dan Zanes

I was biking along listening to the iPod on Shuffle when a Dan Zanes toon pops up, "Country Life". It fit in perfectly with the other tunes and his music is so good. I am embarrassed but I could just listen to his music all day.

It seems part of his popularity is because many kids are strongly influenced by their parents and if the mom says this is great music and pumps it up to the kids, then the kids are all jazzed about it. That is cool. Why is grownup music so serious and not fun and uplifting?

Impressions of Eurasia

The heart of any musical work, jazz or classical, is not the theme itself, but the treatment and development of that theme.

Dave Brubeck

Family Guy Star Wars Spoof - two thumbs up

While not really related to the show, this was a great hour of TV, I watched around 45 minutes. There were so many funny parts and star wars and non-star wars references which were great. If you did not see it, you must get a hold of it somehow. Even if you don't like Family Guy, but you like Star Wars, you will like it.
Highlights:
- storm troopers side conversations
- R2 and C3PO smoking a dub
- dumpster diving in the death star trash
- scene in the funky bar with all the aliens
- when luke comes to rescue leah
- Red 1, Red 2, etc. fighters going in to blow the death star away

Richardson is Moving Up!

I really like John Nichols and now I like him more. Great piece in The Nation about Richardson. While I do not completely agree that his anti-war stance is the main thing that attracts voters, it is great that he is writing about him and pointing out that he is joining the top 3 candidates.

Richardson's edgy, opinionated and at times risky high-wire campaign has gained him double-digit poll numbers in the first primary state, New Hampshire, where he has begun to attract endorsements from key local Democrats and favorable reviews from the state's influential newspapers. One recent New Hampshire poll put him ahead of John Edwards. A summer survey of Democrats in the first caucus state by Iowa's Des Moines Register had Richardson in front of Barack Obama and just five points behind Hillary Clinton as the choice of the most likely caucusgoers. In Nevada, another early caucus state, Richardson's support has grown from 2 percent in March polling to 11 percent in August.

I don't think Richardson's experience/ resume is a minor thing, it is the most important thing. He has stronger experience by far than the other 3 top dem candidates and if they were the nominee, they would struggle because of their lack of executive and international experience.

Columbia won't cancel Ahmadinejad speech

I don't think it is so outrageous that the Iran Pres is going to speak at Columbia. While he has said some disturbing things, I think that dialogue in a civil forum is always good. Many professors and politicians both here and abroad have said disturbing, antigay, racist, anti-Semitic things and they get to speak and some are even in Congress. To completely blackball a leader of a large enormously important nation would only fuel tensions. I don't think he deserves an honorary Columbia degree and sweatshirt but if our government won't talk with them let academics talk with him.

This American Life - Review Part II

I have recently listened to the first half of two great This American Life shows. This show rocks.

1. Unconditional Love

The intro describes life in the 50s when both doctors and the mental health world strongly urged parents not to touch or kiss their children. The experiments conducted with monkeys at the Univ. of Wisconsin sound fascinating and cruel but what is even more cruel is that any parents practiced the parenting that these quacks advocated for. It is fascinating to thing of the extremely different types of parenting that can be practiced.

Part 1

Heidi and Rick Solomon adopt a son raised under terrible circumstances in a Romanian orphanage—so terrible that he's unable to feel attachments to anyone.

interviews with the parents and the kid who was adopted at age 7, who is now older, are really great. It is so much more than reading about this to hear them tell their story. It made me think my parenting challenges are not so bad. Wow, I can't believe they had the ability to keep trying. The mother's voice makes her sound so cute and normal it is hard to imagine her dealing with what she had to. This was one of the few times I had to listen to the iPod in the car. LISTEN TO IT!

2. Meet the Pro's

I did not think I would like the first part of the story since it is about basketball which I don't really find that exciting of a topic but it is very compelling. The American dream.

"The story of two amateurs meeting the pros. One is a teenager in New Jersey; the other, our reporter. Joel Lovell visits 19-year-old Luis Da Silva, one of the stars of a popular series of Nike commercials featuring professional and amateur basketball players doing dribbling tricks. Luis didn't even start for his high school basketball team"

The dribbling slang is awesome, a whole other poetic language. I don't really remember the commercial the guy appeared in but Joel's obsession with the commercial is wild. I don't think I ever was so interested in a commercial I watched shows only to see a commercial I thought would come up.

Part 2 - The life of professional poker players. Great story. Observations
1. Ira Glass, a guy with a job which I consider a dream job, actually seriously thinks about becoming a professional poker player. He actually was playing at the riverboat casinos (in Gary, IN I guess) after work and playing on-line all the time. He admits on public radio that he had a gambling problem.

2. Writer who entered the world of pro poker to write a story about it actually came in 5th in national competition and made lots of money. wow.

3. One of the players in the story let his 11 year old son play on-line poker. Not so bad if it was not for money but I bet it was which is very distrubing.

Should you spy on your spouse?

This is a very disturbing article about how couples going through divorce are often using email, phone records, and other electronic means to basically spy on their spouses. How could a relationship get to the point where there is such distrust and poor communication? This really makes you think.

General Petraeus or General Betray Us?

I don't think that the MoveOn ad is so bad. It is effective in that it clearly got attention and such an ad without the headline would not have received much press. Also, I am sure other's have made this point but I don't think that the headline or the points made in the ad say that he is a traitor. I think you are betraying the trust of the American people if you do not give us an honest objective picture of what is going on. A traitor is something else. I guess I can see why the democrats have to distance themselves from this because it seems mean and against the troops but why is this so bad and every democrat can attack our commander and chief? This will hurt MoveOn a lot, many people and pols will not want to support them anymore.

We Want a Pitcher Not a Belly Itcher

While I usually can't stand his right wing crap, this article from Charlie Sykes is pretty good and I generally agree. In "The wimpification of America - Nanny state revives itself as new school year begins" he talks about the over protective nature of schools and parents today. The article is full of examples of things that have been banned which we all grew up with and turned out ok.

Little League bans chatter during ball games

If you're saying, 'Swing, batter,' and this poor little kid is swinging at everything, he feels bad and maybe he turns to the catcher and gets mad.

More:

Other schools have already banned swings, merry-go-rounds, teeter-totters, crawl tubes, even sandboxes. One California school district — worried about "bullying, violence, self-esteem and lawsuits" — also banned tag, cops and robbers, touch football and every other activity that involves "bodily contact."

I generally think that these efforts are knee jerk reactions to problems incidents or complaints by some people and do not consider what you are losing. I am glad he doesn't say anything about this being a democrat/ republican issue because it is not but I am sure he is thinking that only democrats would do such dumb things.

One specific thing he uses as an example is shaded playgrounds in North Carolina. First point is that these are being installed all over the south, not just there. Second, while not really necessary in Wisconsin, these are well needed in the South. The parks we visit in Florida are misribiale without shade, nobody, parents, kids anyone would want to hang out in the direct sun when it is 90 degrees. I agree that many parents are a little nuts about not letting their kids ever play in the sun, gasp.

You have to love public access TV

I was channel flipping and found that WYOU public access TV was playing highlights from Fighting Bob Fest. I was hooked, great speakers, really refreshing to hear the strong clear minded voices.

I heard from Tom Harkin, Tammy Baldwin, John Nichols and some kid who did not look more than 12 who did a great job.

Mike McCabe from the Wisconsin Democracy Campaign was getting into an interesting speech and then got cut off mid-word so that that WYOU could play that ridiculous gross show where they show meat on a grill. bummer

Welcome to the 'hood - don't mess it up

Regent Neighborhood walkabout to the new students moving in to the rentals in the University Heights area. This is a good idea and in addition, I think the city should do more enforcement of current laws, ordinances, etc. on property maintenance, how many people can live in a house, parking, zoning, noise, etc. There are some beautiful homes over there but some are just too close to many student rentals.

The Craig Saga

here are some of my thoughts on the evolving Senator Craig saga. I don't think that the sting operations which caught him are really a good thing or good use of limited police and justice resources. I am not really sure it should be a crime. I also don't think the US Senate should do anything to him because of this misdemeanor crime which he plead guilty to. NPR had a good piece yesterday.

Would the Senate take action against a congressperson if they were found guilty of running a red light, petty theft, etc.?

I do think that he should step down because of the exposed hyprocacy and shame of years of lying to his family and others.

I can really care less whether he is able to be succesful in post conviction legal action to reverse the decision. It seems clear that he does what he was caught trying to do. That is what matters. I like Paul Soglin's thoughts on the matter but do think he should quit. I like his statement that Craig should have made.

gross

I have done a lot of camping and never had to do this. Many high mountain and national forest backpacking areas are requiring campers to take their #2 out with them. Nor more outhouses and they won't let you leave it there. Despite the mosquitoes, I guess one advantage to camping in the Midwest is that there are plenty of places to bury the stuff if you are doing back woods camping.