To My Readers, if Any There Be...

The answer is I'm fine, thanks for askin.' Just that my blogging tastes seem to have changed, at least for the moment. Maybe they'll change again. In the meantime, if I feel I have something to say, I suppose I will post it here but then link it over to my Facebook page. If you'd care to try to follow me on Facebook, here's a link (I also have a Twitter account but it is even more dormant than this--I really do not get Twitter).

The already-published stuff will, of course, stay up.

Off Again

We're off with the morning plane/across the raging main--hey, somebody has to do it.  And this time I'm not taking much computer firepower with me, which might mean that this will be my most extended blog holiday since I set up shop way back in--what was it, aught six?  I see by the stats that my numbers are way down lately.   That doesn't really mean that I've lost interest in blogging per se.  It probably does mean that I no longer feel the need to be one of those chatterbox wannabees who act as if the world awaits their every word.  I'm more inclined to let it pass for a few hour, maybe even a few days.

No time for that at the moment,  in any event.  I did want to offer some sort of lament/salute to Joyce DiDonato--no, dears, nothing bad has happened to her. But I think I heard her say that last Saturday's performance in La  Cenerentola will be her last in this signature role.  Too bad for us, but I see her point.  I do hope she will continue with other stuff, including that magnificent three-in-a-bed that ends Le Comte Ory.  Never too old for a three-in-a-bed, dear.  Meanwhile, I have a plane to catch...

Wrapping Up

Well, that's it.  I'm done. Finished.  Kaput. Cashed  in my chips.  I've hung up my dialectics; I've parked my doctrines and principles in a rented shed.  Which is to say, after 45 years. I have taught my last class.  I'm over it or, or as we say in the trade "retired."

Well.  Like all such bald assertions, this one is a grotesque oversimplification.  I actually signed the papers 10 years ago but they've let me double dip.  I also am,  I admit, booked to go back into the classroom next Fall but that's a volunteer stint in a different place and so it doesn't quite count. As far as the University is concerned, it is for real in that I suspect I will never again take the King's Shilling to impart knowledge/wisdom  in one of his schools.  

So in the narrow sense, yesterday was the last day.  My Chinese grad students gave me a bottle of wine--"we don't know anything about wine but this one was expensive," they explained (I assured them  that Mrs. Buce and I would quaff it with enthusiasm). Also pictures: I am memorialized in a number of cell-phone photos, by now ensconced (I suppose) in other cell phones all up and down the East Coast of China.  A good bunch, these Chinese grad students, even if I don't have the foggiest notion whether they are (were) enjoying it most of the time.  I choose to assume they must have enjoyed some of it; else they wouldn't have sprung for the wine.

Meanwhile--of course I like to think of myself as unique but I open this week's Economist and find that I am part of what the E calls "a striking demographic trend."  That is:

… for highly skilled people to go on working well into what was once thought to be old age. Across the rich world, well-educated people increasingly work longer than the less-skilled. Some 65% of American men aged 62-74 with a professional degree are in the workforce, compared with 32% of men with only a high-school certificate. In the European Union the pattern is similar.

Well, that would be me, sort of.    I haven't been working full time (only four months a year).  But I'm even older than 74 (in base 12, I'm 65; I feel about as old as my Volvo, so in Volvo years, I'm 20).   But I have been doing it for the sheer fun of it, thankyouverymuch, and the bald truth I might have been  willing to do it even if  I had had to do it for free.  Day to day, I still enjoy (did enjoy it). But the plain truth also is, I'm tired. Moreover, I can tell I've been winging it; too many war stories, never a good sign.

Do I have a bucket list, they ask? Well, sort of, except that most things on my bucket list, I have already done.  I am willing to do some of them again.  I do have a few other projects in mind, and I do enjoy being free to read any damn thing I want. For the moment, I suppose my real bucket list is a coffee shop with Wifi.  Meanwhile, there's this:

Grr

Internet down all over town. I'm helpless, and don't like it.

Sent from my iPhone

Update 530pm: We're back on line thanks to a personable chap who gets to climb utility poles in the rain. I assume (and rather hope) he's got a union.  One of the last manly jobs.  

The Epigraph

It's Paul Volcker, but isn't it also life?

Via John Authers, and h/t Joel.

Welcome, Browser Links...

Yes, that Browser.  Also those from Equitable Growth.  As I've said before, stick around, there's pie.  

I see you came for the Bob Gates post. That's fine, but I've done better stuff than that. Feel free to explore.

Reading: Me and the President

I'm another who has spent more time than he should have this morning measuring his/my own daily reading habits against what Salon so pointedly characterizes as the President's Hack List.  I'd agree with whoever-that-guy-is at Salon that the President's tastes run to the conventional and boring, and it could be an interesting Christmas dinner parlor game (in carefully selected company) to speculate on how far this represents his own tastes and how far the dictates of his spin doctors: myself, I tend to the view converge enough that he himself can't tell them apart, but I am often wrong about this kind of thing.

Anyway, whatever the source, I'm startled at how little overlap between the two of us.  The main point of convergence would be Ezra Klein (inc.) who I,  no mean snarker in my own right, think is a lot better than Salon's snarky dismissal.  The only other overlap is Josh Barro, whom Salon dismisses as the "fantasy" of the "Reasonable Republican."  I don't think that is why I read him; I would say rather that he is genuinely funny and often original--not st all like so many others on the Obama list whose main political identity appears to be "soporific."

Beyond that--you know, on review, I find that my own reading habits have fallen into a shamble lately.  I can identify a bunch of possible reasons.  The simplest is the collapse of Google Reader.  I used to read my morning aggregate the same way Mrs. Buce imbibes her dead-tree New York Times.  Yes, I fired up Feedly as a replacement, but somehow it doesn't seem to work quite the way I remember the other one.  And anyway, the shift was enough to remind me of the emerging plenitude of alternatives.  I have had a Twitter feed for many months although I scarcely ever post (140 characters is just not enough for my subtle and nuanced mind).  For whatever reason, I do find myself checking out what others say there.  I have a Facebook page which has been mostly limited to family snaps and banter with former students, although that seems to be changing (see infra).  I did sign up for Google Plus although I don't suppose I've even looked at it for perhaps a year.    Redditt, Tumblr, nah--hey there has to be some limit to my day.

But beyond mere mechanics: I also join with those who believe that your habits have to change here or you get into a rut. I've said before that I'm spending less time on current events, more on Proust.  Some very good bloggers, even aggregators, just get predictable over time; they're still good, but I don't need them any more. I still read Krugman (I wish Obama read him) but not because I expect to be surprised at what he says: rather, it's more a matter of sheer admiration for his skill as an expositor (confession, I have more than once dazzled a student with some idea or insight that I had just pinched from a Krugman textbook tucked under the table).  I still read DeLong because he is a pretty good aggregator and because, hey, he is (almost) the only bigfoot blogger who ever linked me (I also like the  new site).  I somehow seem to have lost track of Ritholtz--did he get left behind in the move, locked away somewhere  in a a vacated apartment?  And while I think of it, how is Farhad Manjoo enjoying life over at the Wall Street Journal?  Everything okay?

I suppose if I had a current fave, it would be Bruce Bartlett, who uses his Facebook page as a convenient link to all his good stuff.  His taste in music leaves me cold and I do get a little tired of his school yard name-calling.  But he is still the single most clear-headed analyst of tax policy anywhere--and since it all comes down to tax, what more do we need?   

But as I think of it, I suspect the one institutional source I am most likely to read in detail is The Atlantic, particularly The Wire.  If Obama is really looking for a black commentator to read, I can't imagine why he hasn't discovered Ta-Nehshi Coates.  And James Fallows does count as a journalist, right?  He seems to me clear-headed about everything, except for the crazy-assed notion that it is fun to fly airplanes.  And who is this Bump guy?  Does he ever sleep?

Oh, and one final item, although I'm not entirely sure it belongs on this list.  That is: if there is one source I check unfailingly almost every day, and  for which I have no sense of tiring, it would be this.  And no, Mr. President, in case you were wondering, Darrell Issa is not there.

New Epigraph Again

Proust, quoting.  A footnote to the Lydia Davis translation identifies it as Corneille, La Mort de Pompée, act III, scene 4.  But to gets more abstruse than that. The original French Proust says "Seigneur, que de vertus vous nous faites haïr!  But Davis says the Corneille reads "O ciel, que de vertus vous me faites haïr!" Haven't a clue whether the change was a slip on the author's part or a particular point about the speaking character.

Auto-correct kept telling me to say "What virus," etc.  The reader is left to meditate on the meaning of that version.

Who Are These Guys?

Why are so many of my blog hits coming from something called Vampirestat?  I won't link, it sounds like bad news to me.

Oh, So That Was It

From a friend's in-house security detail:

Twitter Fixes Bug That Enabled Takeover of Any Account 
We recently reported on a discovery by security researcher, Henry Hoggard, exposing a cross site request forgery (CSRF) vulnerability in Twitter’s “add a mobile device” feature, that would allow a user to read direct messages and tweet from any account. An exploit of this vulnerability would force users to perform unwanted actions in an application or service for which they are already authenticated. Twitter fixed the bug within 24 hours of Hoggard’s report. According to Hoggard, even before it was fixed, users with their browser’s No-Script extension installed would not have been impacted by this bug. 

I think that happened to me.  Taking my courage in my teeth, I have reopened with, I hope, better security.  I do seem to have acquired (and have killed out) a bunch of new followers with a bunch of cool stuff to sell.   Give me a headsup if you notice anything weird. 

Epigraph

Actually, doesn't describe me at all.   But I just leap at the chance to use the word "unhousled."   Also:

But that I am forbid
To tell the secrets of my prison house,
I could a tale unfold whose lightest word
Would harrow up thy soul, freeze thy young blood,
Make the two eyes like stars start from their spheres,
Thy knotted  and combinéd locks to part,
And each particular hair to stand on end,
Like quills upon the fretful porpentine.

Porpentine, heh.  Must hang out with the mushrumps among the cowcumbers.

I'm remembering-- I think it was Irving S. Cobb--saying that the local hooch around Paducah would stop your watch, snap your suspenders and crack your glass eye straight across.

Source: oh, you know where all this is from.  Or just Google it.

Collier Lives (but Why?)!

For no reason I can divine, a bunch of people seem to be linking to this post.  Hey, guys,  not nearly my best work!

What's a Joint LIke You Doing ....

This is kind of ancient history but it came up in conversation today so I might as well get some mileage out of it. Anyway--back in the 90s I sat on some committees to recommend candidates for judgeships.  Under some sort of rule, we had to ask the candidate whether s/he had ever done drugs.  Most of the  committee members hated the rule--they thought it was crude, intrusive and unhelpful. But hey, rules are rules.  Anyway, answers tended to fall into three categories:

--The short answer is "no." I'm not bragging, maybe I missed out on something important.  But there you are.

--Well, umm, harrumph, ah, but that was many years ago and the records have been expunged.

--Drugs?  What kind of dumb question is that? I was Berkeley in the 70s!  Of course I did drugs!  I drank the bong water!

For valuable prizes,

--Which is most likely to make a good judge?  

--Which is most likely to get the job?

 

That New Epigraph

Sophocles, Antigone, line 332.  There are lots of translations but I prefer my own:

There are many wonders, but none so wonderful as humankind.

I had the great privilege of reciting this line last year while standing center stage in the ancient theatre at Epidaurus.  I was standing next to a professor of Greek.  I don't think he understood a word I was saying, nor that it was Greek.

The passage continues (from Jebb's translation, lifted from Perseus):

[335] This power spans the sea, even when it surges white before the gales of the south-wind, and makes a path under swells that threaten to engulf him. Earth, too, the eldest of the gods, the immortal, the unwearied, [340] he wears away to his own ends, turning the soil with the offspring of horses as the plows weave to and fro year after year.

Update:  I'm thinking maybe Taxmom (infra) wants me to go all the way to 375.  Okay by me:

[343] The light-hearted tribe of birds [345] and the clans of wild beasts and the sea-brood of the deep he snares in the meshes of his twisted nets, and he leads them captive, very-skilled man. He masters by his arts [350] the beast who dwells in the wilds and roams the hills. He tames the shaggy-maned horse, putting the yoke upon its neck, and tames the tireless mountain bull. 

[354] Speech and thought fast as the [355] wind and the moods that give order to a city he has taught himself, and how to flee the arrows of the inhospitable frost under clear skies and the arrows of the storming rain. [360] He has resource for everything. Lacking resource in nothing he strides towards what must come. From Death alone he shall procure no escape, but from baffling diseases he has devised flights.  [365] Possessing resourceful skill, a subtlety beyond expectation he moves now to evil, now to good. When he honors the laws of the land and the justice of the gods to which he is bound by oath, [370] his city prospers. But banned from his city is he who, thanks to his rashness, couples with disgrace. Never may he share my home, [375] never think my thoughts, who does these things!

 Long for an epigraph, but still good.

Housekeeping: Rogue Audio

I'm getting some backchat from fans (sic!) who say that when they try to fire up Underbelly, they get some weird audio-video of John Stewart.

I think I know the problem, though I am not sure I know the solution.  It seems what you are picking up is the tag  end of a post I did the other day about the new Sperber bio of Karl Marx--the author did a bit on The Daily Show, which I collared and posted.

I think I'll just kill the post out.  If the problem persists, feel free to alert me in the comments to this post--all the better if you have a proposed solution.

The World Will Never Be the Same

 Been in the car or chattering with relatives all day so I haven't read much or seen much news (the jury is still out, right). But I did happen upon--wait for it folks, Forbes for October 1, 1950:   And this just in:

BANK WIRE

The staid banking business gets a lift November 1 when bankers from coast-to-coast take to the wire via a teleprinter network linking 142 banks in 36 cities.  Planned and sponsored by a group of New York and Chicago bankers, the system was engineered and developed in 18 months by Western Union Telegraph Co.  Dubbed The Bank Wire it will provide direct, fast and confidential communications.

The system will be used to make money transfers, security purchases, sales, and quotations, letters of credit, and other foreign department business, etc.  Further uses are limited only by the imagination of the bankers and the scope of the banking business (not to mention tariff regulations).

In all, 54 cities will eventually be connected (another 46 banks in 18 cities will be cut in on December 4), with aggregate banking resources exceeding $106 billion.

 There's a map, showing the connection lines (I think it is only the 54).  There is a direct line from Chicago to San Francisco (not LA). No connection to Phoenix or Salt Lake.  And in Florida, only Jacksonville. 

Am I a Gateway Drug to a Life of Crime?

I have a smidgen of digital media that I want to share with a grandchild who lives at the other end of the intertubes.  I was about to press the "send" button when the little gremlin on my right shoulder whispered, "wait a minute, are you sure this is legal?"  Well, no, I am not sure.  And I certainly want to set a good example for the young.  And I wouldn't be popular at Thanksgiving dinner if he popped up as co-defendant in a piracy case.

But then I got to thinking.  Mrs. B often downloads (downloads!) stuff that she then plays on the big screen in the living room.  It is her account.  Must I confine myself to the basement while her stuff is playing?  Is it okay for me to watch because we are married?  But we lived together for ten years before we were married; was it illegal all that time (Did we have digital media back then?  I forget).  

Anyway, the grandchild is not under the same roof.  Would it be okay if he came to visit?  Like, if he was staying the the weekend so his parents could have a holiday, not just coming to watch the media?  Is there a limit on degrees of consanguinity?  What if he was adopted (note to grandchild: no, sorry, you are not adopted)?

And back to me.  During my school-teaching term each spring, I'm away from home three-four nights a week.   Can I no longer watch Mrs. B's media if I am away four nights a week?  Is three okay? Could she bring them to my motel?  Ah, screw it Buce, just send the file.

Whazzappenin' Bro?

I've been taking a bit of down time.  Anything going on?

Rick Perlstein has the Gift of Knowing When he is Well Off

Perlstein on (his) writing life:

The way I look at it, the work I’m blessed to be able to do affords me a cascade of privileges—attention, respect and a middle-class income; all that for safe, dry, indoor work; the grace of spending my days honoring the wellsprings of creativity churning inside me; near-constant affectionate avowals from strangers who trust that the things I tap out on my laptop have afforded them some measure of meaning, pleasure or understanding; that the small quantum of stupid stuff that comes my way never much penetrates. 

 Link. I can relate.  I have never published anything nearly so impressive as Perlstein's histories of modern Republicanism, butI'm 77 years old and the sovereign still sends me checks in exchange for my yelling of half-truths at post-adolescents,.  Pretty cool, say I.

Paths to Enlightenment

Here's a story I don't think I've told before but only because it happened not to come to mind until just lately. Anyway, the time is late 1958 and I am finishing my Army "training" (oh hoh hoh) at Fort Leonard Wood, MO.  One night I drew telephone-answering duty at company HQ (what if President Eisenhower called?). To kill time I was fiddling with my newly-acquired Greek-language textbook, when a couple of MPs showed up with another young man in charge. They instructed me to furnish him with a cot and a corner to sleep in, explaining only that "he would be going home in the morning." The MPs left and we fell to chatting, my new charge and I. He was a tall black youth with medium-light skin, a bit fattish for a basic trainee, and with a ladylike manner. It didn't take long to surmise why he was on his way home but he I was glad for some diversion and we fell into an amiable chat.

At one point idly he flipped open my Greek book and straightway began to read:

ἐv ἀρχῇ ἦν ὁ λόγος, καὶ ὁ λόγος ἦν πρὸς τὸν θεόν, καὶ θεὸς ἦν ὁ λόγος.

In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God, and God was the Word. 

Okay, so it is easy Greek (this was, after all, a beginner book);   But so far as I could tell, his rendition was letter perfect.  I reflected then and there on the bewildering truth that the world was a more complicated place than I had anticipated.

Followup:  Now that I think of it, here's another.  This one takes place nearly three years earlier, Spring of 1955, while I am working as a general gopher for the Associated Press in the reporter's lobby at the House of Representatives in DC.  One day I was lounging in the viewer's gallery gazing down into the well of the House when my co-gopher slipped in beside me.  This young man was, in a word, a yokel: amiable enough and probably more competent at gophering than I, but so green he squeaked--green enough that even I, in the full wisdom of my 19 years, could hear the squeaking.  After a moment, he tipped his head towards a particular corner of the chanber. 

"Look at that," he whispered.  I thought I knew what he meant but I stayed noncommittal.  "Mm?"  I replied.

"It's a --" (and he used a word not currently deployed in polite company).

No words could convey his astonishment.  But he was right  By my memory it was William L. Dawson, of the Illinois First, only the third black to serve in Congress since reconstruction.  "That's right," I said and could think of no safe continuance. So I left my colleague in his stunned reverie.  So what have we learned today, children?  We have learned that enlightenment comes in many forms.