Purely by coincidence, I stumbled on two discs with original versions of tracks I know first from their presence on the classic album News for Lulu, a live trio performance by Bill Frisell, George Lewis and John Zorn featuring compositions by Sonny Clark, Kenny Dorham, Freddie Redd, and Hank Mobley. Another interesting discovery was the [...]
Through the Wire
"Hey, I'm just happy to be here…"
November 22nd, 2004
Pleasures
A scattering of things which have made me happy lately: Incremental searching: I recently switched to using Firefox instead of Safari, largely for this feature. Now it drives me crazy to search using a conventional search dialog. Of course, i-search has been creeping into many other applications (iTunes, Apple’s Preview when used as a PDF [...]
November 19th, 2004
Better than C-Span
After seeing a reference in an XML.com “Hacking Congress” article, I finally spent a little time poking around GovTrack.us. Wow, this is really cool. Once you set up an account, you can track people or issues and receive updates by email. I set up to track my elected representatives and all bills about elections and [...]
November 19th, 2004
WNUR Jazz Show, 12 November 2004
I think if I’m not actually done with my next show, then i haven’t lapped myself — but I’m posting this from the studio just to squeeze by. I don’t think I’ve mentioned it in this commentary, but Gato Barbieri has really been toasting my bread for the last several months. I came across the [...]
November 11th, 2004
WNUR Jazz Show, 4 November 2004
I started this week off with an excerpt of a long live piece by Hamiet Bluiett’s late 70′s quartet featuring Fred Hopkins, Don Pullen, and Famoudou Don Moye. I hadn’t heard them as a group before, but it’s a very nice album, although the sound quality leaves a little to be desired. This track is [...]
November 7th, 2004
An Other Thing
In his recent post, John Perry Barlow tells a story and makes a good point. You can go to his site for the whole story, about a discussion he had with a Bush supporter after the election. Below, the point: At the very least, I need to take the other side seriously. Dismissing them as [...]
November 4th, 2004
Faith-based Initiatives
Joe in politricks
A bit late, I’m finally getting around to reading the September Harper’s. Unfortunately, they still don’t post content, so you’ll have to find your own copy to read two remarkable articles. Update: thanks to Jason for letting me know that Harper’s did put Naomi Klein’s piece online. First, Lewis Lapham’s article about how the Right [...]
November 3rd, 2004
Electoral Vote Experiments
Ever since the 2000 fiasco, I’ve been thinking about the electoral college. I had pretty much settled on the idea that the best route would be not to try to abolish the electoral college itself, simply because of the challenge of passing a constitutional amendment, particularly over a kind of esoteric issue. Rather, I have [...]
November 3rd, 2004
WNUR Jazz Show, 28 October 2004
We inadvertently started off with a triple-whammy of cello. I still sometimes have trouble figuring out the kind of electric vibe Brandon Ross’ guitar brings to the Murray/Hopkins quartet album — it seems to connect to that 80′s vein of free/fusion which Murray and Hopkins also worked out in some Henry Threadgill groups. Sometimes I [...]
November 3rd, 2004
Aftermath
Well, it’s finally over, and I really do think it’s over. No matter how hardnosed the Kerry campaign want to act, the numbers do not point to a possible win unless they find something to challenge besides waiting for the provisional ballots to be counted. I was inclined to be a bit depressed by the [...]