Terpsichore, by George Hrab

A month ago, I attended the album release party for the seventh studio album by George Hrab, the musician (until a little over a year ago, we was the drummer for the Philadelphia Funk Authority and podcaster who has a dedicated following within the overall skeptic community.

This was actually the second release party of his that I attended, with the first being an unplanned visit to Bethlehem for the album Vitriol when a friend of mine called me up and said that I should hear this guy’s music. I loved that album when it came out more than twenty years ago and I have considered myself a fan ever since.

This new album is called Terpsichore, the Greek muse of dance. In the run up to the release of this album, George (or “Geo” as he likes to be called) spoke of it in concept and style to the music that he (and I) grew up on in the 80s. Music that might not necessarily be written as dance music but which still makes you want to get up and dance.

It’s interesting. In this day and age of streaming music, with digital downloads and Spotify and YouTube, the very idea of the album feels like it has evolved. At the risk of sounding like I’m old (well, I am 51 now, and I did hire the Philly Funk Authority to play at my 50th birthday bash a year ago), I miss the days when you could hear a song on the radio and then head down to the local record store to pick up the album. Yes, the idea of a single existed back then, but I usually bought the whole album anyway and hoped that the rest of the album was as good as the song I’d heard on the radio.

So it’s refreshing to actually have a new album complete with liner notes with inside jokes aimed at other members of the band, and artwork that you pore over the details as you know and acknowledge that everything on the album was exactly as the artist wanted it to appear.

I don’t think it’s an understatement when I say that this album is Geo’s strongest album to date. It’s a coherent piece of work, with each song flowing neatly into the next. If you listen to the album Vitriol, there comes a point where he makes a comment about flipping over the CD, a tongue-in-cheek reference to the heady days of vinyl music.

Although this album is not available in vinyl (you can, however, buy it on CD, digital download, and thumb drive), there is clearly a “side 1” and a “side 2” in its styling. There are four short instrumental pieces (“Terpsichore I” through “Terpsichore IV”), that appear like they would belong on the first side of an LP or cassette version of it, to the point that I question whether he’ll eventually pursue a vinyl pressing of the album. (And if he reads this review, I wonder if he has anything to say about this observation…)

I love all of the songs on this album. If you were to ask me to pick a favorite song, I’m not entirely sure I can. It’s just that strong a work. Force me to pick my favorite songs, I’ll say “Insomnia”, “White Noise”, and “Drowning ≠ Drowning”. But all of the songs are smartly written, catchy, and appropriately emotive for their themes.

Five stars for Terpsichore. If you haven’t already bought your copy, go to his Bandcamp page and buy this album now. You won’t regret it.

The fate of Twitter

About two years ago, I bought a few shares of Twitter stock. In the time I owned it, it did fairly well for me. When Elon Musk first announced his plan to buy the stock, its value jumped; when he tried to back out, the value fell (but not to a level below my original investment). I got in on the stock at a good time.

For the record, when Twitter asked its shareholders to approve the sale of the company to Elon Musk, I voted against it. Not that my vote mattered that much in the end. My vote against was partially financial: the proposed per-share sale price, although profitable from my vantage point, would be the end of my profits; I wanted to hold the stock longer, pure and simple. It was also political: Musk has a history of saying stupid things (some of which have harmed the stock prices of the companies he owns).

I held my stock right up until Elon bought the company, at which point he took it private and bought out all of its shareholders. I netted about $20 in profit per share. I still haven’t decided what to do with my proceeds.

When it comes from the way the company is being run, under its new ownership, it’s hard to tease out the truth from the lies. In that regard, it’s not that different from the actual content on the platform from before the world’s richest man bought it. (Does he still hold that title?)

The one thing that’s abundantly clear is that, although he fancies himself the next coming of Steve Jobs, he clearly doesn’t measure up to the late, great leader of Apple.

As far as technology companies are concerned, Twitter is kind of unique. The issues the company faces (regardless of who’s running it) don’t really concern the technology per se, as much as they concern the policies, procedures, and safeguards they put in place in support of the technology.

That’s the real lesson of the so-called Twitter files: people trying to do the right thing, to varying degrees of success. And it’s stuff we already knew long before Musk started releasing them.

And now, with fewer people on the payroll to do the right things, the policies and procedures will eventually be unmanageable. That fault lies entirely with Elon Musk himself. The only question is how long it will take.

In the end, I think the perfect metaphor for the fate of Twitter lies in the account of conservative commentator Don Bongino. Every day, he tweets the same two statements: “It’s {date} and Joe Biden is the WORST president in US history,” which he then follows with “Cue unhinged lib responses to this tweet in 3, 2, 1,… go!” In other words, Twitter has become all flash and no real substance. No nuance, no real room for honest discussion, no fun. Repetitive, redundant, and ridiculous.

To some degree it was always this way. But this is where the philosophy of management matters. I suspect that two years from now, Twitter will collapse under its own financial issues and become largely insolvent.

That wasn’t worth $20 per share. Not to me anyway.

This is the best they can do?

You have to go back nearly ten years now in to find the episode of the Skeptics Guide to the Universe podcast, in which they interviewed Don McLeroy, the Texas school board member whose denials of the reality of evolution brought him national attention.

If you listen to that old interview, and have even the most remedial understanding of how science works and how to regard things skeptically, you can’t help but listen to his words and think, “Is this the best the creationists can do?”

Sadly, yes. That’s what you get when you’re in denial of reality in service to some entrenched belief system. As Tim Minchin once sang, “I don’t believe just ’cause ideas are tenacious it means they’re worthy.”

I thought of that episode of the SGU this week, following an encounter I had on Twitter.

(Side note: I don’t know how long I’ll remain on Twitter; that’s the stuff of a future essay that almost definitely will be written soon…)

I don’t really do much on Twitter, to be honest. I mostly use it to troll certain right-wing blowhards, most notably Bill Donahue of the Catholic “League”. Longtime readers of this blog know that he’s one of my favorite targets, especially since the death of Ed Brayton.

It all started with a long and rambling essay that Bill wrote entitled The Politics of the World Cup. The very first sentence of this essay demonstrates Bill’s extremely tenuous grasp of reality, where he avers that “Sports was one of the last bastions of political neutrality, which explains its longstanding appeal, if not charm.”

If you go back to Ancient Greece and look at the reasons for holding the Olympics and the way the city-state sponsors rallied around the victors, you know that this statement is at best wishful thinking and at worst, an outright lie.

When Bill posted the link to his entry on Twitter, I responded by saying that “The first sentence of this essay is factually and historically incorrect (read about the origins of the Olympics in Ancient Greece for example) and then it goes downhill from there.”

This caught the attention of one of Bill’s occasional defenders on twitter, who accused me of being a hater and not having “higher intellect”:

When someone is a hater (especially of the Catholic Church) higher intellect is lost on them.

— cse63 (@chris63127) December 2, 2022

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Okay. It seems strange to jump into a debate by calling me an idiot, but, whatever. I decided to get snarky in my response:

How do you go through life with such a facile weltanschauung? And that’s before we get into the non-sequitur of your presumed causality here or your attempt at an ad hominem attack on me.

For the record I hate nothing and nobody.

— Jim G. Phynn (@jimgphynn) December 2, 2022

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(Okay. I’ve long liked the word ‘weltanschauung.’ If it’s not obvious, it’s German and it literally means world outlook. A bit stronger than worldview, but similar in meaning… The German language has given us a lot of fun words, including one that was the subject of an entry on this blog a few years ago…)

My correspondent felt compelled to continue:

So what's you're definition of trolling someone or something? Having much luck convincing practicing Catholics the error of their ways when it come to the Catholic League? My guess a no. But keep trying maybe someday you'll snag a CINO.

— cse63 (@chris63127) December 2, 2022

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All right. After this, I felt compelled to play along. I am doing it because I want to call out BS where I see it, as the public record can’t allow certain unfounded views to remain unchallenged and if nobody else is doing it, why shouldn’t I? That said, the “you’re” in this tweet probably says more than the rest of the line. So I said:

I look at the excesses of the Catholic Church — both today and historically — and don’t see why anyone would *want* to be Catholic. That’s not an argument for atheism. Everything the Vatican offers can be found in other faiths without the baggage.

— Jim G. Phynn (@jimgphynn) December 2, 2022

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Some people don’t know when to give up. He said this in response:

It's too bad over 4 billion people have decided your opinions of the faith are meaningless huh? I'd say you're making some decent strides. Keep up the good work. And when you've finally convinced a practicing Catholic the error of their way (according to you) let me know.

— cse63 (@chris63127) December 2, 2022

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Um…. Just as Bill’s original statement deserved challenging, so did this one.

Are you saying that literally half the planet is Catholic? Methinks you need to check your stats.

— Jim G. Phynn (@jimgphynn) December 2, 2022

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Mind you, I think by now any casual observer would recognize that I’m being far more polite to Chris than he is being to me. He’s called me stupid and ineffective. And, apart from my being verbose in my initial response, I’ve been civil yet firm the whole way through.

At least he corrected his number while maintaining his attacks on me personally:

You're right I was incorrect. 1.3 billion. That's still a lofty number who disagree with your opinion. You have still have some serious work to do. Like I said let me know when you're able to convert one practicing Catholic to you're side especially when it comes to the CL.

— cse63 (@chris63127) December 3, 2022

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Since he’s not giving up on his questioning of whom I might have convinced to leave the Catholic Church, I said this in response:

I already have. Years ago actually.

— Jim G. Phynn (@jimgphynn) December 3, 2022

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Out of respect for privacy, I’m not going to name names but I will say “Dated her.” And that’s not getting into people who might have initially brushed me off but later thought about it and maybe reconsidered, even if they never told me. I suspect that’s why Jehovah’ Witnesses haven’t come to my door in more than a decade despite the fact that I live literally within walking distance from a JW meetinghouse.

Chris’s sarcasm and illogic drip from his response here:

Good job. Probably a Catholic In Name Only. They are low lying fruit every claims they're able to "convert". That's one down 1.3 billion to go. At your rate of efficiency it will take you… well I think you know you're pissing into the wind. Keep at it though, you'll get there!

— cse63 (@chris63127) December 3, 2022

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All right. Let’s ignore the fact that I’m certainly not the only voice “pissing into the wind,” as Chris put it. His complete lack of understanding of statistics bothers me far more than his attacks on me, so I said:

I think you’re trying to have it both ways with your stats. On one hand you say that there’s 1.3b Catholics but the ones I’ve converted were CINOs. Surely some % of the 1.3b shouldn’t count by your standards? Note that at least 60% use birth control despite church teachings.

— Jim G. Phynn (@jimgphynn) December 4, 2022

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And, as we stand, he’s tried to get one final word in:

I honestly doubt you've converted anyone CINO or not. In the end you can play your numbers game all you want. There are over a billion Catholics who don't care about your opinions when it comes to the faith. You're a nobody in the world who believes you're smarter than you are.

— cse63 (@chris63127) December 4, 2022

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By his own standards, doesn’t that mean there’s over 6 billion non-Catholics who don’t care about his feeble defenses of an archaic institution that is shedding membership faster than an English sheepdog sheds its fur in the middle of the summer? And why is he obsessed with my intelligence? Not once in this entire back-and-forth have I said “I’m smarter than {fill in the blank}.” Sure, I might have been snarky with verbosity in the one response, and I could have said the same thing with shorter words, but this guy doesn’t get it.

Simply put, Bill Donahue isn’t exactly a good advocate for the organizations he supports. And my Twitter correspondent isn’t very good either. Their arguments essentially amount to a giant nothingburger, and if I represented the organizations they defend, I’d just as soon say “Thanks but no thanks. We can do better without your help.”

It’s not too late to make a correction

Back in December, 2019, I wrote a blog entry in the lead-up to what we now know as Donald Trump’s first impeachment trial, wherein I ranked all of the presidents in order of how impeachable their actions were.

It recently came to my attention that I made a mistake in one of the entries in that blog entry. When I ranked Harry Truman as our 37th most impeachable president, I said that he had fired General William Westmoreland. That was an error. in fact, he fired General Douglas MacArthur.

I apologize for any inconvenience this error may have caused.

The world is now a little bit less just…

I’ve written a few times about the blog Dispatches from the Culture Wars, most recently a year ago this past March. I have a tremendous amount of respect for Ed Brayton, who wrote and maintained that blog.

In recent years he had some serious health issues, and, last weekend, he announced on Facebook that his health had deteriorated to the point that he was going into hospice. His last blog entry, which he posted on Monday, was as much a sign of hope for the improvements in humanity that he knew he would not witness. Anyone who cares about social justice, should regard it as a call to arms, a challenge, a motivation to do what is necessary to allow humanity to live up to the potential we all know that we have.

My twitter and Facebook feeds today were filled with the news that we knew would be inevitable: that Ed Brayton had died. And, at the age of 53, he was way too young to go.

Ed first hit my radar when I heard him as a guest on the now-defunct Reasonable Doubts podcast. He has been on other freethinking podcasts and even had his own podcast to supplement his blog. I met him in passing four years ago at the Reason Rally. And I legitimately enjoyed reading his essays and musings. I didn’t know him personally as so many others did, but he still touched me, and I’m deeply saddened by the fact that his voice has now fallen silent.

But as is true for many thought leaders, the legacy will remain. And even though the life itself is now over, the hope for justice remains.

Let us push forward. It’s what Ed himself tried to do until his body failed him.

Podcasting Revenue

I understand that it costs money to produce a quality podcast, and the most widely available source of that money, is the listener base. After all, if you have 100,000 listeners, and if you can get 1% of your listeners to chip in as little as $1 per episode, you’re still bringing in $1,000.00 each time you release a new mp3 of your podcast.

I also understand that it’s important to sweeten the pot a little bit for the people who might be inclined to contribute. Offering extra goodies and swag depending upon the contribution level.

But I have a message for podcast producers: do not assume that added podcast content (especially unedited versions of interviews that were edited for the general listenership) will serve as an incentive to getting people to donate. For me, at least, it’s a disincentive.

It’s the main reason why I don’t subscribe to the The Skeptics Guide to the Universe, despite my hearty appreciation and approval of the content.

And the reason for it is simple: I don’t have the time to listen to the podcasts I’m already subscribed to. Not if I want to devote the proper attention to the content as I feel it deserves. I’m barely above water as it is, and I have to listen to those podcasts sped-up to the extent that the player allows. (Which makes the “Who’s that noisy” segment of the SGU impossible even if I were actually listening to that show in time to send in my guess…)

About a year ago, I wrote of my growing disenchantment with the Freakonomics podcast. I still don’t think they’re as good as they once were. In the past year, they had a series of multiple episodes talking about the lives of CEO’s, which was marginally interesting but when they sent out bonus episodes every week for more than a month consisting of the unedited interviews they had conducted for the series, I soured on the greater show even more.

This past week, they announced they’re making changes to the show, including offering a premium subscriber benefit of, you guessed it, bonus content. I’m obviously not going to do that. The dedicated listening time simply isn’t there.

I’m going to give them a few more weeks to see if the show gets better, given the changes they’re proposing. If not, I’m going to unsubscribe completely. Then we can see if I have more time to listen to the other podcasts I enjoy…

Two Editorial Notes

There are two things I need to say about my post the other day about Trump’s recognition of Jerusalem as the capitol of Israel.

First, I don’t know why my iPad’s autocorrect feature changed “Levant” to “Levantine” but I decided to keep it that way. I guess it doesn’t really matter.

Second, the link at the end to the Rapture Ready bulletin board no longer goes where I intended it to go. The moderators of that board merged the original thread with a couple of others talking about the same topic. Here is the merged thread.

Freakonomics is losing its luster

I remember reading the book Freakonomics by Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner when I had to fly to Nebraska for work.   I thought it was an interesting, occasionally fascinating read.  The most controversial aspect of the book is that it postulates that perhaps the reason why violent crime plummeted in the early 1990s, was because of legal abortion starting in the 1970s.   

While I can think of easily a hundred reasons why a woman’s right to choose abortion should be kept legal, I like this argument only because it gives conniptions to those who oppose abortion.   But regardless of that point, I thought it was a fascinating study in looking for real connections that might not be immediately obvious.  

Dubner has been the host of a weekly podcast based upon the book (and its less compelling follow-up, Super Freakonomics) for nearly seven years.  I’ve been listening to the podcast almost since its inception.   And it has had some fun moments in these past seven years: the story of a fake restaurant that exposed the fact that wine “experts” probably don’t know what they’re talking about, extreme foodies who make bizarre meals like turning a whole T-bone steak dinner into something the size of a bean, even getting ahead of some trends, like the service oriented economy and streaming music services.   

A couple of weeks ago, I had a blog entry inspired by an episode of the podcast.  But that episode is a part of a disturbing trend right now.   Four of the last five episodes were not really up to the standards I’ve come to expect of the show.  

It started with the kid gloves with which Dubner interviewed former Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer.   Whatever else Ballmer is or is not, he’s not a great steward of the companies he has run.   The culture he created at the software behemoth almost ruined the company, and it’s still struggling to get out of that.  The interview completely glossed over his tenure at Microsoft other than to needle Ballmer over his prediction that Apple’s iPhone wouldn’t sell.   

Then came the interview with Steve Hilton.  (Maybe Steve Dubner just likes people who shares his first name…)  I don’t need to rehash my comments from my earlier blog entry but the kid gloves were on again, not just for not calling Hilton on his myopia, but also for not criticizing him for leaving his country in the aftermath of the vote he orchestrated to the results he sought.

I’ll give a pass to the next episode, which was dedicated to the CRISPR gene editing tool.  Insightful and neither overly optimistic nor filled with scare tactics.  We need more science communication like this.  

The next two episodes were both released this past week, and by the end of the second part, I was ready to throw something at Dubner, when he interviewed Charles Koch.  While this interview did grant some insight into why I agree with him and his brother on some issues (most notably immigration) and even why he occasionally pursues tax policies that would cost him more money than he pays now, I can’t accept some of the places where Koch should be held more accountable, despite Dubner’s mysterious silence.  

The first and most glaring part of Koch’s position is how often progress is stymied by “special interests”, both from the left and from the right.   Given the lack of detail he provided in terms of what qualifies as a special interest, I have to assume he meant anyone who doesn’t want what he wants.  We all have interests and we all think we’re special.   I’d like to think my interests (fortification of the wall between church and state, being good stewards of the environment, not allowing the free market to run roughshod over those most in need) aren’t really all that special and, to be blunt, in the best interests not only of me and my family, but also in the best interests of the country.   

The second part is his pride in being opposed to legislation like Sarbanes-Oxley.   This law was passed after the accounting scandals in companies like Enron and WorldCom.   Indeed, all financial regulations that are codified in the law — be they the laws passed in the 1930s under the New Deal, or the regulations on Wall Street in the 1980s, or more recent laws like Sarbanes-Oxley — are there because the people we trusted with our money, were doing things that were, at best, untoward with that money.  

You can argue that that’s true of all laws: they’re generally passed because someone did something they shouldn’t have done even though it was technically (up to that point) legal.    In the state of Delaware, it’s illegal to go fishing on horseback.   You can almost see how that law came about: someone (probably a male-type person) did just that, but the horse got spooked when he caught a fish.   He got injured, possibly losing his fishing pole in the process, and sued for damages and/or a new fishing pole.   The law almost writes itself after that.  

Koch also pointed to HillaryCare as a reason why he first became politically active in the 1990s. While I’m not trying to argue that Hillary’s proposals back then were perfect, I don’t quite understand why health care should be treated as a commodity to the extent that it is.  But that’s the stuff of another blog entry, especially given the current debates on capitol hill.  

Next week’s Freakonomics episode will be a repeat of an episode first aired a couple of years ago.  I hope Dubner turns the ship around on this podcast, since the quality of the shows has not been good of late.  I don’t mind listening to people I disagree with.  I do mind when they’re not challenged on such obvious topics as what we’ve seen with Ballmer, Hilton, and Koch in the past month.   

Yay me!

I could probably write an entire blog entry about the blogs and podcasts I read and listen to regularly. But I’d like to talk about one in specific.

I have been listening to The Skeptics Guide to the Universe for about two years now. It’s a weekly conversational style between five well-known people in the science/skepticism community. (Steven Novella, Jay Novella, Bob Novella, Evan Bernstein, and Rebecca Watson)

One of the regular features of this show, is a listener-response segment called “Who’s That Noisy”. It used to be that they’d play a sound clip of something and challenge their listeners to guess what it is. Late last year, they switched the format from universally sound clips, to also putting math and logic puzzles into the mix as well.

I have never been able to figure out what the sound clips are, so I appreciated the expansion into logic puzzles.

This year, they added a new bit to this segment: if you’re among the correct guesses to the puzzle/sound, they will put your name into a drawing and pick one of those correct guesses at random. At the end of the year, all of the randomly chosen names will be thrown into one final drawing, the winner of whom will get to have a spot on the show itself.

And I got last week’s puzzle correct, so my name was in the drawing. And my name was chosen from among the correct guesses! More news on this to come.

What was the puzzle, you might ask? It’s pretty straightforward:

If I have two children, one of whom is a boy born on a Tuesday, what are the odds that I have two boys?

Scroll down for the answer…

13/27. We’ve got the following permutations for two children:
The first child is the boy born on a Tuesday and the second child is a boy born on any day of the week. (7 possibilities)
The first child is the boy born on a Tuesday and the second child is a girl born on any day of the week. (7 more possibilities)
The first child is a girl born on any day of the week and the second child is the boy born on a Tuesday. (7 more possibilities)
The first child is a boy born on any day of the week other than Tuesday (The Tuesday would have been captured in the first grouping) and the second child is the boy born on a Tuesday. (6 possibilities).
Going through all of those possibilities, there are 27 possible permutations of children where one was a boy born on a Tuesday, of which 13 have two boys…..

Now we just need to see if I win the drawing at the end of the year. We shall see….