Chillun'

Ran across this sweet photo of two of my children the other day—Stephen and younger sister, Elizabeth. They were both participating in a wedding (early-mid 1980's) and were snapped by the wedding photographer. I only had the hard copy 8x10, and scanning it reduced a bit of the color—but not the soft effect the photographer used.

Citizen Legislators

On January 12, Representative Tim Johnson of Illinois issued a press release announcing the introduction of the Citizen Legislator Act in Congress. His goal is to return the Congress to the idea of citizen, rather than professional, legislators. The following are key elements of his bill:

Limits days in session to five per month or 60 business days per session.

Halves the salary of Representatives and Senators.

Permits members to have jobs outside of Congress so long as they do not derive their income as a result of the privilege of their office, such as speaking tours, lobbying, consulting, etc.

Allows members to choose benefit plans to reflect their lower salaries and allows them to opt out completely for a private option.

Cuts member office allowances, committee and leadership budgets in half.

Prohibits any grandfathering out of the new salary requirements and benefit packages for current members.

Cuts member salaries an additional 10 percent for every five business days Congress exceeds 60 business days in a session.

Given the fact that our current legislators would be voting to reduce their own pocketbooks, perks, and power if they voted for this bill, the chances are slim it will make it out of committee. And given the fact that life in 2012 is a lot more complicated than in the 1780's, Johnson's specific recommendations may be unrealistic. But it's definitely a step in the right direction. After all, anything would be an improvement over the Congress we have now. (Read more about the Act at Rep. Johnson's web site.)

Apple Trailers Speed Boost

I'm a big fan of the Apple movie trailers web site for keeping up with new movie releases. Each trailer has three streaming options (format sizes) plus four download options. The three streaming options are Automatic (smallest format), 480p (next largest format), and 720p (largest streaming format).

Traditionally, I have always used the 480p format since the 720p format took too long to stream an adequate buffer before play would begin. But a week or so ago I noticed that the 480p stream had slowed to a crawl; it was basically unusable. I had to revert to the small Automatic option just to watch a trailer without waiting forever for the stream to buffer in 480p. The problem seemed to be isolated to the Apple trailers since no other web sites suffered from slowdowns.

But today, things are different. The entire 480p stream now downloads in a few seconds, and the 720p is so fast that playback begins almost immediately. I can now watch trailers in the HUGE 720p HD format that I couldn't before.

I can only assume that the temporary slowdown was due to Apple working on the servers that deliver the streams (?). And that the huge speed boost is due to some streaming upgrade on their end. If anyone has a better explanation, let me know.

Friday 1-20-12 UPDATE: Friday evening, streaming of trailers has reverted to the former sluggish rate described above.

USSC to POTUS: "Butt out!"

In a rare unanimous decision (all the more significant in this case), the U.S. Supreme Court told the President of the United States to take his hands off the internal functions of churches in America. The government claimed that a Lutheran church exercised "employment discrimination" when it terminated the services of its minister. No so, the Court said unanimously. Here is part of Chief Justice Roberts' opinion: (Link)

“Requiring a church to accept or retain an unwanted minister, or punishing a church for failing to do so, intrudes upon more than a mere employment decision. Such action interferes with the internal governance of the church, depriving the church of control over the selection of those who will personify its beliefs. By imposing an unwanted minister, the state infringes the free exercise clause, which protects a religious group’s right to shape its own faith and mission through its appointments. According the state the power to determine which individuals will minister to the faithful also violates the establishment clause, which prohibits government involvement in such ecclesiastical decisions.”

Doing Vegan Right

James McWilliams is associate professor of history at Texas State University, San Marcos, and a frequent writer on food matters—and a vegan. In this excellent The Atlantic article—"The Evidence for a Vegan Diet"—he responds to numerous recent articles by foodies who bewail their failed attempts to thrive on a vegetarian or vegan diet. His point: You have to do it right. Besides the abundant scientific data supporting the benefits of a plant-based diet, stories of people who did it right and transformed their lives are powerful.

This is an excellent article. I especially love his opening paragraph:

Here is a comprehensive list of what I ate, in one form or another, on the day I wrote this:

Kale, mustard greens, carrots, celery, onions, mushrooms, quinoa, amaranth, pinto beans, beets, parsnips, turnips, yellow peas, brown rice, kimchi, purple cabbage, butternut squash, blueberries, a banana, hemp seeds, flaxseed oil, snap peas, an apple, cashews, almonds, pumpkin seeds, pistachio nuts, garlic, broccoli, raisins, granola, avocado, polenta, salsa, a few saltines, a piece of raisin toast with apricot jam, tofu, coffee, olive oil, harisa, chickpeas, tomatoes, a small handful of chocolate chips, a couple of beers ... and a vitamin.

How to Get People to Give Blood

In his delightful memoir, A Year in Provence, English author Peter Mayle tells how he and his wife gave blood in their village to help a desperately ill child. I have written in this space on my experiences giving blood to the Red Cross where I live. If the Red Cross followed the French model—at least the way they do in the town of Gordes—they'd probably get a lot more donors:

In England, the reward for a bagful of blood is a cup of tea and a biscuit. But here, after being disconnected from our tubes, we were shown to a long table manned by volunteer waiters. What would we like? Coffee, chocolate, croissants, brioches, sandwiches of ham or garlic sausage, mugs of red or rosé wine? Eat up! Drink up! Replace those corpuscles! The stomach must be served! A young male nurse was hard at work with a corkscrew, and the supervising doctor in his long white coat wished us all bon appétit. If the steadily growing pile of empty [wine] bottles behind the bar was anything to go by, the appeal for blood was an undoubted success, both clinically and socially.

Some time later, we received through the post our copy of Le Globule, the official magazine for the blood donors. Hundreds of liters had been collected that morning in Gordes, but the other statistic that interested me—the number of liters that had been drunk—was nowhere to be found, a tribute to medical discretion.

Uke Revival

In the early part of the 20th century, ukuleles were everywhere, having not yet been displaced by guitars as the most popular stringed instrument. The Martin guitar company made thousands and thousands of ukes—so many that they didn't even give them serial numbers which makes the vintage models hard to date and value today. But Martin stopped making them eventually when their popularity waned.

But a genuine, power-and-fire ukulele revival is under way. Martin started making them again a few years ago and now can't keep up with orders. And with Martin cranking them out again, boutique builders are cashing in as well, and popular rock 'n roots musicians are adding them to their repertoire (Dave Matthews, Eddie Vedder, Mumford and Sons, et al).

The hottest boutique uke builder right now is Mya-Moe Ukuleles in White Salmon, Washington, a husband-and-wife team (with a couple helpers) that is building drop-dead gorgeous instruments. You have to see the woods to believe them—here and keep clicking through them 600 plus ukes in the gallery.

Here's Irish singer-songwriter Lisa Hannigan doing one of her songs with her Mya-Moe:

Brevity

Blaise Bascal, the French polymath, is supposed to have once written, "I have made this letter longer than usual because I lack the time to make it shorter."

This counterintuitive statement illustrates what most of us know from experience (and what Strunk and White teach in The Elements of Style): It's much harder to write fewer words than more.

Put another way, writing is really rewriting and editing (cutting). I certainly violate the "less is more" principle in this blog (and conversation) but cannot afford that luxury in my work—as I have learned the hard way: A book contract once called for 80,000 words and I turned in 104,000—and was asked to cut 24,000 words. (In my defense, it was a marketing issue: The manuscript I turned in would have been more expensive to print and would have raised the cost of the book, hurting sales. Welcome to book publishing!)

For several years, I have written a series of pieces for a client that have to be exactly 130 words in length. Sometimes I turn in 129, sometimes 131—but 130 is the target. By the end of today I will have written 1,164 of these pieces, or a total of (approximately) 151,320 words. (That's enough words for a nice two-volume set on the history of something. It also demonstrates that the impressive two-volume history of something you've longed to write can be done—130 words at a time.)

Writing to an exact word count has been a great teacher. With word-count functions available in word processing software today, writing for an exact word-count target is a greatly under-utilized teaching tool. If teachers would assign their students the daily task of writing "your number one goal for today in exactly 17/23/29/31 words"—or some similar, short exercise—they would go a long way toward teaching students how to write well; how to choose, substitute, eliminate, and prioritize their words.

Just a thought.

(Delete that last line.)

Twelve Percent Less in Five Years

Mark Bittman, food columnist for The New York Times, talks about the reasons for a great trend in the U.S.: meat consumption is down 12 percent in the last five years. His conclusion: It has nothing to do with availability, prices, or any other external reason. Rather, people are eating less meat because they are choosing to eat less meat. Link.

Thought for the Day 16.0

From Seth Godin's blog:

One option is to struggle to be heard whenever you're in the room. Another is to be the sort of person who is missed when you're not.

The first involves making noise. The second involves making a difference.

At Least I Wasn't Texting

I had a two-hour drive on the freeway last night and had my camera with me so took a few time exposures of trucks passing by. Is it against the law to take pics while driving . . . yet?

Vegan Body Builders

New York Times article on vegan body builders here. (Thanks, Stephen.)

National Treasures

For the last several years, I have waited religiously for the broadcast of the annual Kennedy Center Honors awards ceremony. It is the best two hours of television I know of.

The Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C., honors five members of the artistic community—music, comedy, dance, theatre, film—in a gala ceremony that celebrates their achievements. Even if I am not already familiar with, or a fan of, each nominee's work, the 20 minutes devoted to each is an incredible, and always moving, introduction to their work. They are honored with a short movie retrospective of their work, then by performances by their peers that illustrate their achievements. It's a black tie event and the audience is filled with all manner of recognizable artists who come to honor their friends and peers.

The ceremony is held in the fall and broadcast a few weeks later on CBS. The production value is of the highest quality and a pure pleasure to watch. It is a celebration in the truest sense of the word. The productions seem to get better every year -- yet I rarely hear them mentioned by John Q. Public. I think lots of folks are missing something special. (There are tons of YouTube segments from past Kennedy Center Honors presentations.)

The 2011 awards went to saxophonist Sonny Rollins, Broadway actress Barbara Cook, singer-songwriter Neil Diamond, cellist Yo-Yo Ma, and actress Meryl Streep. There is always one representative from the "popular" music field that really gets the crowd on their feet, and this year it was Neil Diamond.

Following is the segment of this year's show honoring Diamond featuring performances by Rafael Saadiq, Jennifer Nettles, Lionel Ritchie, and Smokey Robinson. A couple of things that will help you enjoy the last song, "Sweet Caroline," that won't be immediately evident: "Sweet Caroline" is sung in the middle of the 8th inning at all Boston Red Sox home games, and it was inspired by Caroline Kennedy, the host of the honors show, when Diamond saw a picture of her when she was a little girl. You'll understand when you see it. Enjoy . . . and tune in next year! (And hats off to Meryl Streep for her engagement with every moment of the performances—not just Neil Diamond's, but all the honorees.) (There's a 2-3 second blank space in the video, but it continues.)

If You Don't Laugh out Loud at This . . .

If you don't laugh at Fred Armisen's question (he of Saturday Night Live), you probably don't laugh at The New Yorker cartoons either. My first thought after reading this—after laughing out loud—is that it would make a great New Yorker cartoon. See the whole newyorker.com article here.

This week, Margaret Talbot writes about Carrie Brownstein and Fred Armisen, the comedic masterminds behind IFC’s “Portlandia.” We sent Gabriele Stabile to photograph the pair in New York. “Fred’s apartment has wonderful northern light, beautiful views of the Upper West Side, and an unbelievable vacuum-cleaner robot,” Stabile said. “One of the publicists showed up at the shoot eight and a half months pregnant, and Fred asked, ‘Does your husband know?’ When you’re around people who are seriously funny you realize how bad your jokes are.” Here are a few outtakes from Stabile’s shoot.

Thought for the Day 15.0

Once plants and animals were raised together on the same farm --
which therefore neither produced unmanageable surpluses of manure, to
be wasted and to pollute the water supply, nor depended on such
quantities of commercial fertilizer. The genius of American farm
experts is very well demonstrated here: they can take a solution and
divide it neatly into two problems.

-Wendell Berry, farmer and author (b. 1934)

Fans and Their Objects

Nobody writes better, more sensible songs—and plays a more-muscled, yet articulate, acoustic guitar—than Darrell Scott. His Kentucky holler roots feed his songs and create a knowing rapport with his fans. I would love to have been part of the audience at this intimate performance of one of his best— "It's a Great Day to Be Alive." It must be so heartening for singer-songwriters to realize that their fans know the words to their songs.

In the song above, Scott plays a lovely koa Taylor guitar, but in this one he plays one of Stefan Sobell's gorgeous acoustics. He is a fabulous guitar player!

It's No Wonder . . .

It's no wonder thousands and thousands of women read Dee Drummond's blog every day (and some men, like me). She writes, and lives, "funny" and "funnier."

Why I Like FORBES

I like Forbes magazine for many reasons, and have for years. The magazine is not afraid to integrate a biblical worldview into their capitalist commitments, knowing that only capitalism allows the creation of excess to fuel charitable and other non-profit efforts. (As is often said, capitalism is the worst system in the world—except for all the others.) They print a favorite Bible verse, sent in by readers, on the back page of every issue. Rich Karlgaard, the publisher, is an active churchman who often mixes his spiritual insights with his business sense in his editorial column.

And they are willing to publish articles like this: "The Christmas Conspiracy: Spending Less = Giving More" by Keith Levy—an article that champions movements like Advent Conspiracy and Living Water International:

English Christmas

Amazed Again

I posted this video back on February 3. I recently emailed the link to a friend (we were discussing a magic trick) and in the days following I got tons of blog visits from people that he shared the link with and who they shared the link with, etc. It really is an entertaining magic trick if you missed it back in February. Just for fun, if you like it send the link to some friends so I can see how the virus spreads over the next few days. Once people see this they seem compelled to send it to friends: "Hey, watch this!" (P.S. I saw a video on YouTube that explains how the guy does the first trick -- and here's how he does the card trick.)