brainrow

A lot of Bruce Springsteen songs are about a kind of urban angst that I’ve never had to live with. I don’t fully understand this song, Lost in the Flood. But when I saw this 1975 concert on video, there were two lines that jumped out at me:

And I said, “Hey, gunner man, that’s quicksand, that’s quicksand, that ain’t mud.”

And later:

And he said, “Hey kid, you think that’s oil? Man, that ain’t oil, that’s blood.”

Somehow, those two lines, sung more than thirty years ago, seem to be about our present situation in Iraq.

Via A Blog Around The Clock: an artist named Christiaan Postma has created a remarkable clock.

I put together more than 150 individual clockworks and made them work together to become one clock. I show the progress of time by letting the numbers be written in words by the clockworks. Reading clockwise, the time being is visible through a word and readable by the completeness of the word, 12 words from “one” to “twelve”.

An animation shows the clock in action. In the photo here, you can see the word “three” falling apart and the word “five” not yet fully formed.

The clock doesn’t give you a lot of information when you need to know what time it is, but it’s a triumph of human ingenuity.

Fans of old BBC TV, particularly Doctor Who, may enjoy this visit to the old sound effects workshop.

People unfamiliar with those old shows will find themselves saying, “That’s a door?”

Update: This must be Dalek day on the prestigious internet. Boing Boing found a voice-changing Dalek helmet. But what if you already sound like a Dalek?

I feel good knowing that voters play a small, but important, part in the process of electing a president.

I don’t think anybody in the Daily Show audience has seen The Grapes of Wrath.

This official portrait of a tired Tony Blair took me by surprise — in my mental image of him, Blair seems younger, more energetic, and more cheerful. In the portrait, he seems a weary and broken man.

Tony Blair was a fine man who made one grave error: he put his trust in George W. Bush.

I think he was a great friend to America, who thought he could restrain the worst impulses of the reckless Bush by being Bush’s closest ally. By going along with some of Bush’s plans, he imagined he would be well-positioned for the give-and-take on other matters. He didn’t realize that Bush is no give and all take. It took a toll on his political popularity. The portrait suggests it took a toll on Blair himself.

I’ve never seen a photograph that looks like this. But the artist, I think, has really captured the man’s essence.

A great portrait rarely looks just like the photos. Instead, it shows us what’s inside — the inner truth of the subject.

Who should do the official portrait of George W. Bush? What artist can capture his inner truth? I nominate Ward Sutton.

It’s true, the picture there doesn’t quite do justice to Bush. As in any good portrait, the artist flatters the subject.

The Democratic National Committee looks at how much better off we are now:

Tsk. So partisan.

Josh Marshall on the ABC debate:

[M]embers of the prestige press appear to see … a positive journalistic obligation to engage in their own organized campaign of falsehood, distortion and smear on the reasoning that it anticipates the eventual one to be mounted by Republicans. In other words, we’ve gotten past the debatable rationale that journalists have no choice but to cover smears and distortions once they’re floated into the mainstream debate to thinking that journalists need to seek out and air smears and distortions on the grounds of electability, as though the mid-summer GOP Swiftboating was another de facto part of the election process like primaries, conventions and debates.

They’re just modeling themselves on FOX News. I don’t think you’ll see them treating John McCain this way.

Via Boing Boing, we have the Lincoln-Douglas Debates, ABC-style:

GIBSON: If your love for America were ice cream, what flavor would it be?

LINCOLN: (pausing with disgust and turning back to camera) Either the opponents of slavery will arrest the further spread of it; or its advocates will push it forward, till it shall become alike lawful in all the States, old as well as new — North as well as South.

DOUGLAS: He didn’t answer the question Charlie. This fall, that question is going to be on the minds of the American public. I’ve proudly stated that my love for America is Very Berry Strawberry.

(Bartleby.com is one of many sites with the real Lincoln-Douglas Debates.)

The flag pin started showing up on politician’s lapels during the Nixon Administration and the Vietnam War.

Then, as now, many politicans wore flag pins when they had nothing in their public record to indicate that they cared about the country or its people. Others, with fine records of patriotism and public service, wore the pin because they thought voters couldn’t distinguish reality from colorful fantasy.

Those poor voters. It’s not their fault they’re so dumb.

“See my pin? Looky! Looky! See the colors? Ooooh, shiny! You know what it means? It means Daddy loves America very much! Yes it does! Yes it does!”

Politicians and political insiders have been talking baby talk to the voters for years. Bush, Sr.’s famous “Read my lips! No new taxes!” is classic macho baby talk, as is Bush, Jr.’s notorious “Bring it on!” or Arnold Schwarzenegger calling Democratic legislators “girly men.”

For some reason, nobody calls this insulting condescension “elitism.” No, that term’s reserved for use against any politician foolish enough to talk with the American people as if we were adults.

Blogger Atrios says:

The problem with our political press today isn’t simply that too often they focus on the trivial at the expense of any substance, it’s that they regularly send the message that the trivial is what’s important. Not to them, they claim, but it’s what’s important to the great unwashed.

Nothing elitist about giving the great unwashed what they want, eh? And how do they know it’s what the great unwashed want?

Will Bunch writes:

As a journalist, I kind of assumed that ABC sent a film crew to western Pa., and then culled the most provocative questions from the people that they found. Silly me.

…

Nash McCabe [who asked about Obama and the flag pin at Wednesday’s debate] wasn’t located at random at all. Instead, someone at ABC News decided that they wanted to go after Obama on the patriotism issue, and they actively sought a Pennsylvanian who they knew wanted to bring it up. I assume they thought it would sound better if “a typical voter” asked the question instead of Charlie Gibson. “You see, we’re only raising the issue the voters really care about,” they can claim.

Sure. They know what we care about because they’re so smart, they know everything.

It’s an election year. There’s sure to be lots more baby talk to come. Watch for it.

Some in Iraq have caught onto the spirit of contemporary American democracy:

He was not deserting his men, the Iraqi Army captain insisted Wednesday. He had left his 70 soldiers in the midst of a battle in Sadr City the day before to take his long-overdue three-day break.

The captain, who spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of reprisals, said he intended to extend the break to five days, maybe longer.

It’s too bad his name was withheld — this is a man to watch. Based on George W. Bush’s own military record, this Iraqi captain is likely to be a future President of Iraq.

As much as he did not want to leave his men, he was not sure he would return to them.

“It is very hard; I’m thinking of resigning,” he said.

If only we could get George W. Bush to follow this man’s example.

Make it official, I mean.

Via Gizmodo, an internal Microsoft video to motivate the Vista sales team.

Caution: May induce self-inflicted eye gouging and/or eardrum piercing.

So you see, even the biggest companies have horrible, horrible internal videos.

I wonder if it’s possible to die of embarrassment.

Via Boing Boing:

Wildly Popular ‘Iron Man’ Trailer To Be Adapted Into Full-Length Film

Hollywood ruins everything.

Yet another lost verse from the Woody Guthrie song This Land is Your Land:

As I was walkin’ — I saw a sign there
And that sign said —

But on the other side … it didn’t say nothin!
Now that side was made for you and me!

Yeah! We’re born free!

(With thanks to A Blog Around the Clock.)

Inspired by a FOX News documentary on George W. Bush’s final year, The Daily Show‘s John Oliver looks at the stunning history of FOX News itself:

I guess “real” journalists don’t want to expose FOX, because it looks like they’re just trashing the competition. But FOX News isn’t in the journalism business, and it’s bad policy to go along with the pretense that they are.

Via Atrios, MoveOn’s quick review of the Hundred Years War strategy.