Seen at the Classic Car meetup

This guy has a real sense of humor.

Carlo Gesualdo da Venosa - Se la mia Morte Brami

One of the most innovative composers of the seventeenth century is also one of the notorious.  Carlo Gesualdo, Prince of Venosa and Count of Conza was a Renaissance Man.  Given a religious education as a child (as a younger brother he was not going to inherit the family lands and titles), but his brother's death brought him back to Naples.  Falling hopelessly in love with his cousin Donna Maria d'Avalos, he married her.  All seemed to be perfect in the young Prince's life.

But it wasn't.  Donna Maria strayed, carrying on a two year love affair with Fabrizio Carafa, the Duke of Andria.  It seems that everyone knew about this except for Carlo - although you have to wonder if he wouldn't let himself know.  But everything comes to light in the end.

And so it was on this date in 1590.  Suspecting his wife, he made a show of going on a hunting trip.  Coming back suddenly and unexpectedly, he discovered the two lovers in flagrante.  He stabbed both of them to death and unceremoniously dumped their bodies in the public square.  He was brought to trial but charges were dismissed.  It was a different time.

His musical compositions were marked with a unique tonal quality, along with an almost painful emotionalism in the lyrics of his madrigals.  It's not clear whether he is more famous for this experimental musical style or for his infamous past.  It may be the combination of the two that attracts interest.

I wonder what the after Halloween specials will be?

Jamey Johnson and Alison Krauss - Seven Spanish Angels

Willie Nelson and Ray Charles did this song.  This cover is from a tribute concert for Willie when he won the Gershwin Prize.



Seven Spanish Angels (Songwriters: Troy Seals, Eddie Setser)

He looked down into her brown eyes,
Said, " Say a prayer for me."
She threw her arms around him,
Whispered, "God will keep us free."
They could hear the riders comin,
He said, "This is my last fight.
If they take me back to Texas,
They won't take me back alive."

There were seven Spanish Angels,
At the alter of the Sun.
They were prayin' for the lovers,
In the valley of the gun.
When the battle stopped,
And the smoke cleared.
There was thunder from the throne.
And seven Spanish angels,
Took another angel home.

She reached down and picked the gun up,
That lay smokin in his hand.
She said, "Father please forgive me,
I can't make it without my man."
And she knew the gun was empty,
And she knew she couldn't win.
Her final prayer was answered,
When the rifles fired again.

Honor

Word.

Go read it, and send it to everyone that you know.  I'm so sick of all the G** da***d lies.  We're surrounded by them and swim in them all day, every day.  Peter is right - this isn't about Trump.  It's not even about this Republic.  It's about basic values, starting with speak the G** da***d truth.

If only they could find something that might fix this

The polls are worthless

Rick emails to point out an analysis of the "outlier" poll that has shown Trump consistently ahead of Clinton.  It uses a different methodology than the others, one that may control for the unique unknowns of this campaign better than the others.

Or not.  We'll see.  Personally, I think that all of the polls  are worthless, for two reasons:

1. We've known for months that there is a significant Bradley Effect in play in this election cycle.  When people think that their voting preferences will result in social consequences, they conceal their true choices from pollsters, throwing the polls off.  We see massive social consequences for Trump supporters in many areas - being labeled "racist" or "deplorable", having signs stolen from yards, etc.

We don't know - and cannot know - how big this Bradley Effect will be.  The Brexit campaign polls were off by almost 10% for exactly this reason.  If the effect is that large here, we're looking at a Trumpslide.  But the size of this is entirely unknown.

2. We don't know what voter turnout will be.  We see lots of enthusiasm among Trump supporters, with Trump rallies being measured in the tens of thousands.  We don't see that for Clinton.  On the other hand, Clinton likely has a well oiled Get Out The Vote effort, one that the Republican Party seems to be trying to deny to Trump.  How many Trump supporters turn out is unknown, and unknowable.

Both of these factors mean that the inputs to the polls (all the polls) are based on what's essentially conjecture.  Since the inputs are garbage, the outputs are garbage.  The numbers are worthless, because nobody knows the key factors that will determine the outcome.

But it's worse than this, actually.  The polls are worse than useless because almost all of them are being used to shape the public's perceptions of who is winning.  The pollsters - like the Media - are pushing one side; they've essentially weaponized the polls.

I plan to ignore all the polls because I simply don't trust the motivations of the pollsters, or the assumptions regarding respondent truthfulness or turnout.

Self-Driving cars?

It's not clear that car makers can deliver a working navigation/entertainment system:

Documents in a class-action lawsuit against Ford and its original MyFord Touch in-vehicle infotainment (IVI) system reveal that the company's engineers and even its top executive were frustrated with the problematic technology. 

The documents from the 2013 lawsuit show Ford engineers believed the IVI, which was powered by the SYNC operating system launched in 2010, might be "unsaleable" and even described a later upgrade as a "polished turd," according to a report in the Detroit News, which was confirmed by Computerworld.

Keep polishing that techno-turd!  I mean, what could possibly go wrong with extending this to autonomous vehicles?

Even Henry Ford's great grandson  experienced significant problems with SYNC. In one incident, Edsel Ford was forced to wait on a roadside for the system to reset and could not continue to drive because he was unable to use the IVI's navigation system, the report stated.

Other than that, I mean.

Self-driving cars: cool idea, good luck with the execution.

Saving baseball from ESPN

The Czar of Muscovy casts his cold, dread eye on the disaster that is ESPN coverage of the Baseball pennant race:

ESPN is the worst; their utter disdain for the game of baseball positively drips. Announcers who never played the game stall for time by reading meaningless statistics about players they don’t know at all.

This is a pet peeve of mine, and underscored by the recent retirement of one of the greatest all time baseball announcers, Vin Scully.  The Czar is correct that the current broadcasters make baseball boring, in a way that it isn't when you are either (a) at the game or (b) have a decent announcer.  Being at the game is best, of course; the Czar describes this:

If you’re a smart enough person, you recognize that what happens between pitches is just as interesting as what happens during and after. Players and coaches read subtle signs from the batters, who adjust their positions carefully; batters spot these set ups and change their swing to counter them, and the whole thing is like 10-to-13-way chess. Secret signals go out from both benches, warning a fielder to expect a fly ball, and warning the batter not to swing at this next pitch.

There is always something happening on the field.  Players adjust their positions with each pitch, as the strike count changes.  Those in the know are nodding their heads - the fielder's positions very often clue you in on where the ball will be hit.

Alas, the new generation of baseball fans will never learn this from the sad sacks on ESPN.  So where can they turn?

If you have a young baseball fan (say, 11 or 12 years old) - or if you are one of my young Gentlemen Readers with a new Lady Friend who is bored with the game, Jerry Remy's Watching Baseball is the place to start.  It is a book on baseball tactics (not strategy, but play-by-play tactical analysis) that he developed as an all star player for the Red Sox and then honed as a long time color commentator for New England Sports Network.  He's broadcast thousands of games, and this comes out in his book.

Unusual for a baseball book, Remy breaks down the pitcher vs. hitter situation for each of the strike-ball scenarios: no balls or strikes, one ball and no strikes, all the way up to a full count.  Each is different - what the pitcher is trying to do and what the batter is looking for varies with each pitch, and Remy lays this process out in an easy to absorb manner.

I guess that at this point I should modify by earlier advice.  If you have an 11 or 12 year old boy who's mildly interested in the game, this will be something that he will read cover to cover.  If you are one of my young Gentlemen Readers, perhaps you should read and learn this.  Rather than giving it to your Lady Friend, you can take her to a game and whisper sweet baseball nothings in her ear when the count sone ball and two strikes.  But you know what a hopeless romantic I am.

Remy also covers what the fielders do which is as interesting (if not more so) than the pitcher vs. hitter mano a mano passa double.

It is an entirely different class of analysis that you'll get from ESPN.  Those of you in New England who occasionally tune into a Red Sox game will be nodding in agreement right about now.

So don't give up on our National Pastime just because the networks are so wretched.  Yes, ESPN fired Curt Schilling (what the heck did he ever know about pitching, anyway?).  But there's nothing that says that you can't turn the volume down to zero and give some real play-by-play analysis of your own.

That guy needs a stud finder

And a new TV.

Missed

The end of Progressivism?

This is very interesting:

Over the last year or so, though, it’s become increasingly clear to me that one of the great tides of American politics has turned and is flowing out to sea. For almost precisely two hundred years, this country’s political discourse has been shaped—more powerfully, perhaps, than by any other single force—by the loose bundle of ideas, interests, and values we can call American liberalism. That’s the tide that’s turning. The most important trends shaping the political landscape of our time, to my mind, are the descent of the liberal movement into its final decadence, and the first stirrings of the postliberal politics that is already emerging in its wake.

There's a lot of background here about where progressivism came from (Harvard, 'natch, but back in the 1820s) and the ground from which ground it grew (New England Congregationalism - the institutional church of the Puritans - along with Unitarians, a religious sect for the intellectuals of the day).  What's interesting is how closely this dovetails with what Moldbug posted quite some time ago:

The "ultracalvinist hypothesis" is the proposition that the present-day belief system commonly called "progressive," "multiculturalist," "universalist," "liberal," "politically correct," etc, is actually best considered as a sect of Christianity.

Specifically, ultracalvinism (which I have also described here and here) is the primary surviving descendant of the American mainline Protestant tradition, which has been the dominant belief system of the United States since its founding. It should be no surprise that it continues in this role, or that since the US's victory in the last planetary war it has spread worldwide.

...

The "calvinist" half of this word refers to the historical chain of descent from John Calvin and his religious dictatorship in Geneva, passing through the English Puritans to the New England Unitarians, abolitionists and Transcendentalists, Progressives and Prohibitionists, super-protestants, hippies and secular theologians, and down to our own dear progressive multiculturalists.

The "ultra" half refers to my perception that, at least compared to other Christian sects, the beliefs of this faith are relatively aggressive and unusual.

...

And when we look at the real-world beliefs of ultracalvinists, we see that ultracalvinism is anything but content-free. By my count, the ultracalvinist creed has four main points:

First, ultracalvinists believe in the universal brotherhood of man. As an Ideal (an undefined universal) this might be called Equality. ("All men and women are born equal.") If we wanted to attach an "ism" to this, we could call it fraternalism.

Second, ultracalvinists believe in the futility of violence. The corresponding ideal is of course Peace. ("Violence only causes more violence.") This is well-known as pacifism.

Third, ultracalvinists believe in the fair distribution of goods. The ideal is Social Justice, which is a fine name as long as we remember that it has nothing to do with justice in the dictionary sense of the word, that is, the accurate application of the law. ("From each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs.") To avoid hot-button words, we will ride on a name and call this belief Rawlsianism.

Fourth, ultracalvinists believe in the managed society. The ideal is Community, and a community by definition is led by benevolent experts, or public servants. ("Public servants should be professional and socially responsible.") After their counterparts east of the Himalaya, we can call this belief mandarism.

That's a pretty good description of progressivism.  But the Archdruid posits that this movement is running out of gas:

Let’s take current US immigration policy as an example. This limits the number of legal immigrants while tacitly allowing unlimited illegal immigration.  There are solid pragmatic reasons for questioning the appropriateness of that policy. The US today has the highest number of permanently unemployed people in its history, incomes and standards of living for the lower 80% of the population have been moving raggedly downward since the 1970s, and federal tax policies effectively subsidize the offshoring of jobs. That being the case, allowing in millions of illegal immigrants who have, for all practical purposes, no legal rights, and can be employed at sweatshop wages in substandard conditions, can only drive wages down further than they’ve already gone, furthering the impoverishment and immiseration of wage-earning Americans. 

These are valid issues, dealing with (among other things) serious humanitarian concerns for the welfare of wage-earning Americans, and they have nothing to do with racial issues—they would be just as compelling if the immigrants were coming from Canada.  Yet you can’t say any of this in the hearing of a modern American liberal. If you try, you can count on being shouted down and accused of being a racist. Why? I’d like to suggest that it’s because the affluent classes from which the leadership of the liberal movement is drawn, and which set the tone for the movement as a whole, benefit directly from the collapse in wages that has partly been caused by mass illegal immigration, since that decrease in wages has yielded lower prices for the goods and services they buy and higher profits for the companies for which many of them work, and whose stocks many of them own. 

That is to say, a movement that began its history with the insistence that values had a place in politics alongside interests has ended up using talk about values to silence discussion of the ways in which its members are pursuing their own interests. That’s not a strategy with a long shelf life, because it doesn’t take long for the other side to identify, and then exploit, the gap between rhetoric and reality.

If there's a single theme to the current election season, it's a revolt against hypocrisy:

The current US presidential election shows, perhaps better than anything else, just how far that decadence has gone. Hillary Clinton’s campaign is floundering in the face of Trump’s challenge because so few Americans still believe that the liberal shibboleths in her campaign rhetoric mean anything at all. Even among her supporters, enthusiasm is hard to find, and her campaign rallies have had embarrassingly sparse attendance. Increasingly frantic claims that only racists, fascists, and other deplorables support Trump convince no one but true believers, and make the concealment of interests behind shopworn values increasingly transparent.  Clinton may still win the election by one means or another, but the broader currents in American political life have clearly changed course. 

It’s possible to be more precise. Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump, in stark contrast to Clinton, have evoked extraordinarily passionate reactions from the voters, precisely because they’ve offered an alternative to a status quo pervaded by the rhetoric of a moribund liberalism. In the same way, in Britain—where the liberal movement followed a somewhat different trajectory but has ended up in the same place—the success of the Brexit campaign and the wild enthusiasm with which Labour Party voters have backed the supposedly unelectable Jeremy Corbyn show that the same process is well under way there. Having turned into the captive ideology of an affluent elite, liberalism has lost the loyalty of the downtrodden that once, with admittedly mixed motives, it set out to help. That’s a loss it’s unlikely to survive. [emphasis mine - Borepatch]

That last is the key condemnation of the movement.  It was always a philosophy for the intellectual "elite", but the last several decades have seen it used to entirely capture public policy - policy that has been exercised solely for the financial benefit of that "elite" and at the expense of what in a simpler day were called "the masses".

And the masses have woken up to the fact that they are being fleeced by the "elites".  The reaction from both groups is entirely predictable:

Over the decades ahead, in other words, we can expect the emergence of a postliberal politics in the United States, England, and quite possibly some other countries as well. The shape of the political landscape in the short term is fairly easy to guess.  Watch the way the professional politicians in the Republican Party have flocked to Hillary Clinton’s banner, and you can see the genesis of a party of the affluent demanding the prolongation of free trade, American intervention in the Middle East, and the rest of the waning bipartisan consensus that supports its interests. Listen to the roars of enthusiasm for Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump—or better still, talk to the not inconsiderable number of Sanders supporters who will be voting for Trump this November—and you can sense the emergence of a populist party seeking the abandonment of that consensus in defense of its very different interests.

Read both of the linked posts, which do a better job explaining the current political dynamic than anything I've seen in ages.

Quote of the Day - Red Sox edition

Long time readers know that I am a Red Sox fan from way back.  Chris Lynch gets Quote Of The Day, describing how things have changed for Sox fans over the last few years:

I am saddened by the thought that there are children as old as three in New England who have never seen a Red Sox World Series win in their lifetimes.

That's pretty funny, right there.

Wikileaks, Vladimir Putin, and the American election

The Democrats claim that the Wikileaks emails can be traced back to Russia and Vladimir Putin's attempt to discredit the Democratic Party in order to influence the election.  I think that's partially true, but stops short of the mark.

Peter has a post up that delves deep into the emails and what it says about the current American political establishment:

What I've found stunning over the past couple of days is the clear, unmistakable evidence coming out of Wikileaks that the establishment does, indeed, regard the people - those who live with that daily reality - with contempt, disdain and derision.  We've always known this in theory, of course, but I've never before seen it admitted so plainly and with such bland assumptions of superiority. 

His is deeply thought out and lays out the landscape clearly.  You need to go RTWT and then come back, because I'm discussing what Mr. Putin's motives might be.

On the surface, it makes no sense at all for the Russians to leak these emails.  They are very, very damaging to Hillary Clinton, but there is no doubt that she would be a pushover to a leader like Putin (and the Chinese, and the Iranians, and so on).  We know this because we've seen this - her tenure as Secretary of State was a foreign policy disaster.  The United States is much weaker internationally now than before she stepped into that role, and there's no reason to think that she would be any more competent as President than as SecState.

So if Putin wants to weaken the United States (and allow Russia to fill some of that power vacuum), aren't the Wikileaks emails counter productive?

Tactically, perhaps.  But strategically, undermining the existing establishment political class will cause disruption like the world has never seen.  Remember, this is a global revolt against the elites - at least in the West.  Brexit was only the opening salvo - the Trump phenomenon here as well as movements like France's Front Nationale, Germany's Alliance fur Deutschland, and nationalist parties all over Europe are all a reflection of the discontent that Peter describes so well.

And now imagine a Hilary Clinton administration that wins by a narrow margin, with wide spread voting irregularities and a sense not just that the Democratic Party used dirty tricks against Trump, but the the Republican Party joined in as well - what claim to legitimacy can the new government claim?  What sort of follow on political movements (dare we say Revolutionary Cadres?) can we expect both here and in Europe?  How is the U.S. Government supposed to govern?

The punch line, of course, is that all Putin has done is to expose what the global Western political elites have been doing all along.  It's not Putin that's brought the West to the point of crisis - it's the Western political establishment itself.  To blame Putin for trying to exploit this situation is to blame a compass for point north.

And so, Hillary is quite right to complain that the Wikileaks disclosures are Russian attempts to influence the election.  Where she goes wrong is thinking that her complaints will change the attitude of the electorate, either before or after the election.

What a miserable, short sighted, venal, and corrupt excuse for an "elite".  That's the problem.  Expecting Hillary to be able to fix short sighted, venal, and corrupt is to expect a compass to point south.

So what about Trump?  Perhaps the fix is already in, driven as much by the GOP as by the Democrats.  They likely think that they will have the last laugh.  What they ignore are the chortles wafting on the breeze from the Kremlin.

Government about to regulate Internet Of Things security

This is a mess, and the mess is so bad that government intervention might actually help:

The European Commission is drafting new cybersecurity requirements to beef up security around so-called Internet of Things (IoT) devices such as Web-connected security cameras, routers and digital video recorders (DVRs). News of the expected proposal comes as security firms are warning that a great many IoT devices are equipped with little or no security protections.

The problems with IoT security are legion: devices are very cheap and so profit margins are razor thin, leaving little desire to invest in good security.  The owners are non-technical and may not even care if the devices are compromised so long as they continue to work.  Things are likely to move to web-based control protocols, meaning that ISPs won't be able to help by blocking management protocols like Telnet and SSH.

This is a real mess, and looks like it will get a whole lot messier.

If everyone thinks you're a jerk, then maybe it's you ...

Paraphrasing Tolkien on the two candidates

Trump speaks foul but feels fair - his position on the issues is clearly stated and hasn't changed in a meaningful way.

Hillary speaks fair - she has that polished politician's way with words.  But the feeling of foulness simply doesn't stop.

This is a Change election, with the vast majority of the electorate convinced that the country is on the wrong path.  The establishments (of both parties) have been determined to serve up More Of The Same.  The howling that you hear is all about the "principle" of who is moral enough to occupy the Oval Office.

Remember, when they say it's all about the principle, it's all about the money.  The Donor Class is determined to get its Trade Agreements and Open Borders, and that money flows to a legion of establishment politicians and talking heads.  And so the shrieks rise to the heavens.

Trump is taking serious flak.  That means that he's over the target.

A brief history of the recent Republican Party

2010.  Republican Establishment says: OMG! Obamacare is horrible and will ruin the country!  Vote for us so that we can take control of the House of Representatives and stop him!

[GOP wins the House; nothing happens]

2012.  Republican Establishment says: OMG!  Obama is out of control!  But RomneyCare was awesome in Massachusetts, because reasons.  Vote for us so we can ... well, something!

[Nothing happens]

2014.  Republican Establishment says: OMG! Obamacare really stinks, and the IRS is attacking people, and things are really going to Hell in a hand basket.  Vote for us so that we can take control of the Senate and stop Obama!

[GOP wins Senate; nothing happens]

Last weekend.  Republican Establishment says: OMG!  Trump says mean things!  We can't vote for him.

What a pathetic bunch of sad sacks.

Various composers - Renaissance Music

The Queen Of The World and I went to the Renaissance Faire yesterday.  It's great fun, but the point is fun, not historical accuracy.  As you might expect, I notice the music.  All yesterday, I would mutter under my breath at the music being played.  And so, here's some true Renaissance music from various composers, from the Sixteenth century.  This is the sort of music that would have been familiar to Henry VIII (who was a composer in his own right - a true Renaissance Man).

Your Saturday Stinker

Seen by the Queen Of The World on the Book of Faces.  It's her fault.