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Showing posts from September, 2021

Pres and Sweets

My cover isn't the one on the wikipedia page . This album came out in 1955. My mother was 8. Ruby is painting today and I put this on to start her out. This is probably one of my top jazz CDs played. Along with Kind of Blue, Sunday at the Vanguard , and my collection of Billie Holiday with Lester Young (Pres), and my Monk collection, Coltrane collection and my Parker collection, Armstrong's hot five and seven, and Ella. I never really listened to Harry Edison  on Trumpet (1915-1999), who is Sweets. Lester Young  (1909-1959) is the real star here, I think. "Charlie [Parker] was shy of hipster elaborations. He added nothing to the vocabulary, as did Lester Young, one of the great hip verbalists." Russell, Ross (1973). Bird Lives: The High Life and Hard Times of Charlie (Yardbird) Parker . "While growing up in the Algiers neighborhood of New Orleans, he worked from the age of five to make money for the family." (Wikipedia) "In September 1944, Young and Jo

To regulate big tech or not?

The question isn't yes or no, but how to be honest. There's an article in the NY Times . It provoked in me the question, do we lets these avaricious capitalist harm our society, or do we regulate it communism style? Of course those aren't all the choices, but that is what is being chosen in this moment.  How can we make people do the right thing? Government is a terrible blunt weapon. Capitalism is a terribly selfish and harmful weapon.  The fantasy growing up for me was that if we can just educate people enough. But that's not an opinion that is popular enough and the education isn't effective enough. I'm a wreck of a person, more akin to a baseball player who doesn't get on base most of the time. Tepid democratic capitalism will regulate it eventually, and the capitalists will throw up their arms. From my perspective, the Chinese government regulating and taking over the social media industry just feels wrong. It is possible for the America tech giants to

Star Trek Voyager

When we first meet 7 of 9 in season 4 Someone complained on Reddit that season 3 was boring but I enjoyed the exploration of culture.  Two episodes on season 5 have stood out for me. Of course the queen Borg stealing 7 back was fun. But the one on Bliss was quite evocative. And episode 16 The Disease is also great. There are some great episodes. I've been powering through them because they're leaving Netflix at the end of the month. Voyager was the Star Trek that I connected the most with. I watched TOS as a kid. I watched NG as an adolescent. I caught a few episodes of DS9 and learned to love it later. But I watched Voyager as an adult, every week, every episode. And yet my memory isn't that great. It does ruin quite a few episodes, that done hold up to rewatching as well. It hits me a different way, now that I've watched them all, continue to watch them all, and have read many novels.  I was reading the other day they didn't include the Kess breaking up with Neeli

Robert Heinlein

  Been reading The Pleasant Profession of Robert A. Heinlein by Farah Mendlesohn . So far in the first chapter she outlines his life, and the development of his political ideas. Heinlein (1907-1988) was introduced to me by my father. I've read a lot of his books, but I was thinking about trying to read more of them.