Quote of the Day
No human race is superior;
no religious faith is inferior.
All collective judgments are wrong.
Only racists make them.
no religious faith is inferior.
All collective judgments are wrong.
Only racists make them.
Elie Wiesel
SPECIAL NOTE: Blogger Issues May 10-12
I have a temporary post on the blog explaining this. Around 3:30PM EDT yesterday Blogger went down without notice. Tuesday evening, around the time I published my post, I noticed some anomalies involving my name and certain profile information missing on my post as I published it. Blogger was in the process of rolling out some new features. For a few hours, we couldn't even access the blog itself. Then the blog was available in a read-only capacity, and my Wednesday post was available. Blogger sent out a notice that they had to do a recovery procedure that would require returning to Tuesday night's state. At some point hours later, my Wednesday post disappeared, leaving my Tuesday post as my lead post.
I was working at yesterday's post when the failure happened and I kept a copy of the unfinished post in a local computer file. I was able to word-process the missing Wednesday night post from a pdf backup file and it is available here. I then finished up Thursday night's post, which is available here. (If you haven't had a chance to read them yet, I think they are quite good.)
No doubt some of my regular readers will not know that Blogger service returned around noontime today, so I may maintain a copy of this notice on the blog and in posts through early next week.
American Idol May Have Lost Me...
Now I'm going to discuss something really controversial: America's top television show over the past decade, American Idol. The more jaded person might describe the show as Survivor Meets Karaoke. (The faithful reader knows this because I embedded several relevant videos in my closing musical interlude segment.) For the last few years, I have been emailing one of my nieces, often rank-ordering the singers in my assessment of performances each week.
This season was interesting for a number of reasons: an almost complete turnover of judges and a fairly distinctive pool of talent. But I had already picked out my top 3 at the get-go: Casey Abrams, James Durbin, and Jacob Lusk, respectively. (The only female near them in sheer vocal/musical talent was Pia Toscano.) Casey Abrams is easily the most accomplished musician in the history of the show, but he has very good pipes as well, which I would classify as sounding somewhere between CCR and Steely Dan's lead vocalists. (Like many vocalists, he has an annoying signature gimmick, his growl.) The show has evolved over time; it used to more explicitly ask the singers to sing from genres outside their comfort zone. More recently, contestants were allowed to pick material near that comfort zone (I'm not sure I like that change.) In any event, Casey Abrams, like many singers on the show, found himself being typecast as the jazz guy (with James Durbin, it was the heavy metal guy, and two years ago, Blake Lewis was the beatboxer). Casey found himself in a surprise exit at #11, until the judges used their one-time-a-season privilege to save a deserving singer. But Casey found himself leaving 2 weeks ago (which I think reflected his choice of material than performance). Jacob Lusk has a well-trained voice and impressive range and tone, with gospel roots. From my standpoint, his performances at times could be a little uneven and susceptible to his emotions (e.g., his version of the Vandross hit, "Dance With My Father").
Going into this week's top 4, I never thought my top 3 would get eliminated in 3 consecutive weeks, leaving two young, inexperienced country singers, Scott McCreery and Lauren Alaina, and a passable rock/jazz singer Haley Reinhart. (Host Ryan Seacrest made reference to a rumored, obvious relationship between Casey and Haley, whom performed an impressive duet together.) James Durbin, who has Tourette's syndrome and high-functional autism, has routinely turned in consistently high quality performances, which reminds me of Bo Bice, although his musical style is more consistent with Adam Lambert and Chris Daughtry. My guess is that he chose the wrong material; both of his performances Wednesday were easily the best of the show. I was constantly remarking to my niece that both Casey and James needed to choose more pop-sounding material. It is a shame Durbin lost, because (and this is one of the reasons I have for writing this segment) a person whom is able to overcome his limitations (e.g., Tourette's syndrome) would have been pure Americana.
This was perhaps the biggest upset in American Idol history since Chris Daughtry was eliminated ahead of Elliott Yamin. Chris Daughtry has gone on to sell more music than any other American Idol singer except for Carrie Underwood and Kelly Clarkson.
I will still watch the final two shows. If I was going to make an educated guess, most of Durbin's votes will likely go to Haley, with Scotty and Lauren splitting the country vote, perhaps leading to a Scotty-Haley finale. But the most interesting part of the finale for me is whether a long-teased duet between celebrity judge Steve Tyler of Aerosmith and James Durbin takes place, and I wouldn't be surprised to see a reprise duet between Casey and Haley.
I think that the show will need retooling. Without the acerbic comments of Simon Cowell, the judges this season waxed mutual enthusiasm over the wisdom of their candidate selections, raving over mediocre performances of the semifinalists. There are different ways to revamp the show, e.g., shaking up the judges or by adding a producer-selected reviewer email/tweet from some anonymous guests in the music industry.
Second, the multi-vote format needs to streamlined to become fairer to contestants. I only voted once a week (in fact, it was unnerving for me to get prompted on whether I wanted to vote again); some of these singer fans act like they're Democrats voting in a general election.
Third, I think judges need to have more of a role than they currently have (which amounts to a single save after it gets down to viewer voting). There are a variety of ways to implement such a concept, but, for example, judges should have an ability to block up to 3 candidates from elimination through the top 8, 2 through the top 4, and 1 to the finale. Right now, the judges' comments count for nothing (unless viewers consider them salient), and the singers have in some cases pushed back on adverse comments. I also like a "Judges' Choice" spotlight song, where they select one of the contestants to sing a feature selection during the results show (e.g., best performance, most improved performance, etc.)
Fourth, I think the theme shows need to be reworked--a dedicated songwriter show just isn't going to work for artists like Carole King. There should be broader themes, say, singer-songwriters, power or R&B ballads, story songs, tribute songs, the British Invasion songs, post-breakup Beatles hits, Simon and/or Garfunkel hits, country-crossover hits, one-hit wonders, dance songs, Idol alumni hits, Youtube song suggestions, etc.
Finally, I want to see more specific challenges from a singer perspective--perhaps it's a record producer's choice for each singer, an a cappella selection, an extemporaneous selection, a medley, and/or complex songs (holding high notes, traversing multiple scales, etc.)
My fearless support record for AI Finales (no apologies):
AI 1: Kelly Clarkson (won)
AI 2: Ruben Studdard (won)
AI 3: Fantasia Barrio (won)
AI 4: Bo Bice (lost)
AI 5: Taylor Hicks (won)
AI 6: Blake Lewis (lost)
AI 7: David Cook (won)
AI 8: Adam Lambert (lost)
AI 9: Lee DeWyze (won)
Political Potpourri
We now have official challengers for next year's GOP Presidential nominations, with Gingrich announcing earlier this week and Ron Paul this morning. I'm somewhat amused to see the first attacks already started, with a video of Gingrich and former Speaker Pelosi, the most radioactive Democrat in America, joining in a video spot addressing climate change (highly unpopular with the base). Huckabee is expected to make an announcement relative to next year's race on his FNC weekly show tomorrow. He remained tight-lipped; he would have to be since once he announces, Fox News would have to suspend his regular news contributions (as it already has for former Speaker Gingrich). It's possible Huckabee is going to swerve me here and announce he's not running, but I suspect that he will announce his running (or the formation of an exploratory committee): he has to realize he has co-led most recent polls (and I can't see him kicking himself years from now from blowing an even better chance than 2008), and he has offered pointed criticisms of Obama and Romney in a manner I would consider as going beyond typical analysis.
The Presidential approval ratings continue to drift down, as I predicted, post-UBL: Rasmussen has Obama at 47% approval and Gallup at 50%. More important, with respect to the Gallup poll, is that the net approval is shrinking faster than approval, likely mean the independents are already moving back to a disapproval stance from undecided to approval.
McCain: It's Time To Shut Up About "Torture"
I have been a steadfast supporter of McCain and, in fact, I didn't like Congressman King's focus on the role of waterboarding as instrumental in UBL's killing. But McCain has this irritating habit of making it impossible for me to defend him. One example is his use of class warfare rhetoric from the Senate floor in the discussion of the original Bush tax cuts. I can only conclude that it was political payback stemming from Bush's defeat of McCain in 2000 for the nomination, but it came close to killing off his chances for the nomination in 2008 with media conservatives furious at McCain over immigration and the Bush tax cuts (even though McCain since Bush's reelection quickly went in the other direction, stressing his connections to Bush--which served McCain on a silver platter for Obama, more than happy to stress McCain's connections, in his own words, to a president with a 30% approval rating). McCain did things I would never do with electoral ambitions--and I haven't even run for dog catcher. Even if you're going to oppose tax cuts for, say, fiscal conservative reasons, you don't speak in terms straight from the opposing party's propaganda.
My position on harsh interrogation techniques is based on a number of considerations; for example, Al Qaeda isn't exactly a signatory to the Geneva Convention in any event, and no acts of good faith by the US are going to be reciprocated. These are people whom killed nearly 3000 innocent civilians on 9/11 almost 10 years ago. I also never believe it's a good idea to reveal your hand. The fact that McCain is falling into repeating the propaganda for those describing the CIA's use of a carefully restricted form of waterboarding as "torture" (the treaty on torture does NOT define specific techniques like waterboarding; it defines torture in terms of effects inconsistent with our restricted version). Waterboarding is not all-or-nothing; no doubt this is a lesser version of waterboarding, but for all the "torture" KSM received, he is in remarkably good health.
I think McCain is trying to get political benefit from the injuries he suffered as a prisoner of war. But his unjust treatment under the North Vietnamese does not give him a political trump card on the issue. There's a difference between a soldier and a terrorist. Obama is incoherently asserting we have to use the same interrogation techniques, which begs the question.
Former Attorney General Mukasey says McCain is simply wrong on the facts: harsh interrogation techniques did provide some useful information. I believe that's accurate; as to how much was obtained by what technique and its significance in the capture of UBL is largely unknowable. Clearly the amount of information was insufficient in the sense we didn't locate UBL immediately.
McCain seems to argue at one point that we are America and America's image is important; if we don't engage in harsh techniques, we prove ourselves worthy of that laudable image. Again, this seems like a strange concession to Obama's convoluted foreign policy. For example, some could argue that the liberation of Iraq (which McCain supported) had a far harsher effect on international opinion than our treatment of 3 Al Qaeda detainees, one of whom cut off the head of a journalist without reading him his rights.
Fukushima Nuclear Incident Update
The Hiroshima Syndrome blogger published the third of his thrice-weekly posts. Earlier this week it was necessary to remedy some malfunctioning instrumentation. One of the key findings is that the water level was lower than expected. Long story short, water probably boiled off significantly in the first day following loss of power and steam was released (resulting in the hydrogen explosion); recall that Prime Minister Kan insisted on venting. Fuel damage may have been more severe than expected, but the blogger argues that as the fuel melted so did the boron control rods, creating a soup of sorts he calls "corium" which was never fissionable. He also noted that that increasing the coolant flow to reactor pressurized vessel for reactor 3 has attenuated temperature and pressure.
IAEA notes:
- weekly summary: airborne radiation levels continue to be steady/decreasing, seawater levels are in the acceptable range, and over 93% of recent food samples were within safety levels. Only a couple of cities in Ibaraki prefecture still have distribution restrictions (e.g., spinach). Takahagi prefecture has some tea-related exceptions, and Fukushima prefecture has the usual assortment of restrictions involving shiitake mushrooms, bamboo shoots, sand lance fish, etc.
NEI notes:
- weekly update: The referenced worse-than-expected melting in reactor 1 is ironic in the sense that the amount of injected water in primary containment is probably unnecessary with the corium likely solidified at the bottom of the vessel. They suspect some leakage has occurred from the reactor but they have not located the source (e.g., piping in the feedback coolant loop). There doesn't seem to be a leak in primary containment. Unlike spent fuel pool 3, there is little if any debris in spent fuel pool 4. In terms of a few school areas with exposure to a certain unsafe radiation level in Fukushima prefecture, burying the topsoil by 20 inches attenuates radiation exposure by 90%.
Political Humor
"The Libyan forces fighting Moammar Gadhafi only have about three weeks of funding left. It’s kind of hard to intimidate an evil tyrant when you’re like, “We will fight you until the end! Of May!” - Jimmy Fallon
[They used the money to buy one of Fed Reserve chair Ben Bernanke's helicopters... It comes with free refills.]
"President Obama's approval rating has hit 60 percent, its highest in two years. So he can pretty much count on reelection if he can just kill bin Laden two more times in the next 12 months." - Conan O'Brien
[No, but the President's reelection committee may have just hired SNL alumnus Chevy Chase to remind voters in a series of campaign ads that UBL is still dead...]
Musical Interlude: My Favorite Groups
Chicago, "25 or 6 to 4".
