Rock 'n' Roll

What is the most concise practical working definition of Rock and Roll (no Pete Townshend dissertations)? I took a stab at it with help from brother Dave and his friend Allan:

Rock and Roll Music-

1. Is blues-, rockabilly-, skiffle-, Doo-wop-, ska-, or electronic-based.

2. Is meant to be played loudly and has a definite melody, a prominent bass line, and a strong beat (the characteristic "backbeat")

3. Is divided into songs of from 1 to 20 minutes in length.

4. Utilizes drums (or a drum machine) and at least two of the following instruments: guitar, saxophone, electronic organ, bass guitar/string bass.

Do I need to add more criteria? Or does someone have a shorter definition?

D’YOU KNOW WHY YOU’RE HERE?

Bo slumped in a chair in the corner, trying to make himself invisible. This was not easy, as he was a little taller than average and a little more handsome than average, but he tried anyway, since he also felt he was a little smarter than average. Of course, he had been in the castle many times before, more than he could count, he was sure . . . but only ever in the Great Hall, never before in this room. Unlike most of the castle, which was cold, dank, damp, and drafty, as castles are wont to be, the King’s Private Council Chamber was sunny, warm, and almost . . . cheerful. He knew, and dreaded, that he would be called upon near the end of the tedious agenda to speak for himself before the Grand Duchess and the King’s Private Council. There was a more important matter under consideration now, however, and all eyes were presently on the Grand Duchess.

The Grand Duchess was the daughter of the late King, whose name was never spoken without adding “The Great” immediately afterwards. He had reigned a long time, had been wise and kind, benevolent to his subjects and, without exception, beloved by them. He had won the Great War and brought such peace and prosperity to the country that even the most pessimistic Councilor was forced to admit that he could not forecast the day the current Golden Age might come to an end. The Grand Duchess had been a mere girl when her father died, so naturally a regent was appointed from the council to administer the royal duties until the Grand Duchess came of age. Unfortunately, the Council was less than confident in the idea of a female ruler, and the Regent had gotten a little too used to wielding such great power, and was very reluctant to give it up. So, the one chair that sat empty in the crowded room with its bright windows and fine tapestries was the King’s chair—the informal throne, made of gilded wood and satin, with just a few jewels scattered here and there on it. In point of fact, the Grand Duchess was now a mature woman, with heirs of her own, hardly the callow girl of years past. Yet, the Regent clung to power, with the Council backing him up, and some who were in the room that day swore they could see a small cobweb accenting the purple of the throne’s fine fabric.

The Grand Duchess was pleading the case for ending the interregnum, unsuccessfully again, it seemed, as Bo’s thoughts drifted off. He was from a good family, though not a noble, much less a royal one. His kin walked the line between the merchant class and the nobility without falling on either side, like a line of children playing “follow-the-leader” on a fence rail. But Bo had trouble holding up even this marginal reputation. No one ever called him a “slacker;” chiefly because the word hadn’t been invented yet. The reason for his presence among the King’s Council was that he had gotten the Grand Duchess’s daughter, the Marquessa, in a family way, or “great with child,” as they said in those days. Though he loved the Marquessa, his instinct was to run from responsibility and return to his life of drinking, fighting, gambling, carousing, and general dissipation. His friends supported this philosophy—“ace of spades before maids,” they would always say. If he abdicated this unwelcome responsibility—he would have said “buggered off” from it—she would be all right. After all, no one was more privileged and comfortable than the Royal Family, and a b-----d child was not automatic cause for shame in this kingdom. Because of his relatively low position, he could even go back to being the knavish lout he had always been with only the mildest of consequences. The alternative was to raise his hand in allegiance to the Crown and declare his intent to marry the girl. His family was barely adequate to ally with the Royal Family. There was no question of him ever being King, or more properly Prince Consort to the Queen, as the Marquessa had two elder sisters, the Princess Royal and the Archduchess. The choice was his—freedom with the slightest bit of shame and the twinge of lost love (which he would no doubt get over presently), or a gilded, nay, literally golden cage for the rest of his life.

He was getting bored, though his belly was tying itself in knots every time he thought of his predicament. His eyes fell on the symbol of the land’s religion hanging on the wall. It was a simple shape, one that any child could draw, and it hung on the walls of homes, shops, churches, and schools great and small throughout the land. He thought back to his own days of religious instruction, when he doodled the shape over and over with quill pen on his parchment while daydreaming through the lessons. He did remember some of the stories, though. There was the goat herder who became a warrior, then a general, then a king. There was the orphan girl who became queen of a foreign land and saved an entire race of people. There was the farm boy who spoke with the Almighty and found the Nine Sacred Scrolls, the basis of the whole religion, in a wheat field. There were second sons who outshone their elder brothers, and there were couples too old or too young to have children who birthed great nations. The scriptures were filled with stories of the Almighty passing over the great and powerful to entrust the fulfillment of His plans to the weak, flawed, and simply not very impressive souls of this earth. His teachers taught him that the Almighty had a plan that everyone was a part of, but that we could not know its full extent while we were on this earth. Even the famous apostate whose books were so popular among students at the University once said, “Peculiar travel suggestions are dancing lessons from God.” Bo knew that lots of people didn’t really believe that, or at least they didn’t act like they did, most of all Bo himself.

Then Bo thought of his own family. Great-Grandfather was a soldier, who had won a small medal for fighting in the Battle of the South in the Great War. His name wasn’t on the grand War Monument in the palace square, but his brothers, Bo’s great-great uncles were. They had fought in the Battle of the North. The Battle of the North—all the land knew of the exploits of the brave soldiers who fought in it, even the smallest schoolchild. Songs and stories, even whole libraries of books had been written to celebrate it. And of course there was the War Monument, or more precisely, “Memorial,” that Bo could just see in the distance through the large window to his left, its black marble gleaming in the sun. You see, not one of the brave soldiers who fought in the Battle of the North survived. They were glorious in their lost cause, and it was the tales of their bravery that bloody day that finally rallied the land and the King’s remaining forces to win the Battle of the South and every battle that followed until the Great War was won.

Great-Grandfather brought back a foreign bride from the wars, and they started a family. Their son, Bo’s grandfather, took after his mother. He didn’t look quite like all the other folks people were used to seeing in the land. He had big ears and spoke with an accent. His skin was even a different color from what everyone was used to seeing. But he was wise, he made friends easily, and he could speak with the power of the wind and the thunder, and did very, very well for himself, thank you.

Then Bo thought of his dear Mother. One day, when Mother was a young woman, long before Bo was born, even before she had met Father, she was out by herself hunting, for she was the sort of woman who wasn’t impressed by being told what she could or couldn’t do. Well, she almost didn’t make it past that day, for she survived being struck by lightning. “True story,” he would tell his friends. What saved her was that her beloved horse reared up and threw her off; the first time he had ever done that. A second later, he took the brunt of the lightning bolt, giving up his life to save hers.

It struck Bo, as an ardent gambler, that the odds were astronomical that he, and probably many others in the room, should have ever come to exist in the first place. And even more so for the baby his darling Marquessa was carrying, for he had met the young mother-to-be quite by accident. One of his less loutish friends came to him one day and said “Hail, friend Bo, hast thou an engagement for this afternoon?” “I have a full slab of mutton on my plate, why dost thou ask?” “Kind Bo, cancel all thy plans at once, as I shall call on a fair young maid of good family this day, and I’ve just discovered that her bosom friend is paying her a visit.” “So?” “So her friend is just as fair a maid, methinks, and of equally fine family, and will not suffer her friend to bear mine attentions, without being properly entertained by a fine young gentleman herself.” “Only for you, kind friend, only for you, but thou now owest me mightily!” Bo was surprised to find that his “blind date” was a Royal, and even more surprised at how quickly their longing glances at each other developed into the heat of young passion that is as old as time.

Which brings us back to Bo’s predicament. He thought of the last time he had seen the lovely Marquessa, her face a bit pale and tight, but her eyes smiling at him through the tears. It would be the last time he would see her until their wedding day, if he raised his hand. If he didn’t raise his hand, who knows when or if he would ever see her again? At that moment, he decided to do the right thing, partly out of love, partly out of curiosity, and partly out of the sense that he could be a part of something very much bigger than himself.

He heard his name called, and he bristled slightly as he thought he caught the Grand Duchess wrinkling her nose at him. A few minutes later, right hand in the air, his beloved became his betrothed, and the palace bureaucrats began to plan a simple garden wedding.

Bo, now the Marquis, and the Marquessa started their family, and it was happier than most, though far from perfect. His mother-in-law, the Grand Duchess, did become Queen, on her next try. She and Bo actually came to get along fairly well. Years passed, and their three children started their careers. Their younger son became a great physician who discovered a cure for the plague that had ravaged the land throughout history. Their daughter, the apple of her father’s eye, became the first woman to sit on the Queen’s Private Council, a more difficult feat even than becoming Queen, for it was earned by talent and hard work, not by right of birth. In fact, she also had the honor of becoming Regent for one of her young cousins when the Princess Royal died, and ever after had the title The Wise and Good added to her name. And what of their first son, Bo the Younger, the fruit of that night of teenage passion long ago, the one Bo worried about most because he reminded him a little too much of himself?

He became, of all things, a great religious scholar and archeologist, who had discovered the Tenth Sacred Scroll in a completely unexpected place, saving it from oblivion. The scroll was deemed authentic, and as it was translated, filled in the missing pieces of the people’s faith, tying the disparate pieces of the Nine Scrolls together into a coherent whole and igniting a new age of spirituality in the land. Bo the Younger would smile as he read, edited, and approved each day’s translation, because there was so much there that reminded him of what his father, Marquis Bo the Elder, used to tell him, worrying about how he would make his way in life: “If you get something good that you don’t think you deserve, live the rest of your life with honor, and you will eventually deserve it. None of us knows the plans the Almighty has for us.”

On the day the last of the Tenth Scroll was translated and brought to him, Bo the Younger smiled broadly and began laughing out loud, so loud that he startled his secretary, as he read the closing verse. We don’t understand the language today, of course, but the thought was neatly paraphrased by William Shakespeare in our own words:

Our indiscretion sometimes serves us well,

When our deep plots do pall: and that should teach us

There’s a divinity that shapes our ends,

Rough-hew them how we will.

Regarding Bush's commutation of Scooter Libby's sentence:

A. there was no underlying crime, because 1. There has been no hard evidence that Valerie Plame was even a covert employee at the time,and 2. She was "outed" by Richard Armitage, not Dick Cheney, as insistedby Democrats, and not even by Scooter Libby, as later insisted byDemocrats when it became clear that their insistence that Dick Cheney had done it did not "make it so."

B. Patrick Fitzgerald's (incidentally, that name is the punchline of an offensive Irish joke) investigation of the entire White House and prosecution of Libby was a politically motivated "fishing expedition" that was destined to continue until they could fry the biggest fish possible. Again, the priority was to bring down Cheney, but no cigar(I promise, no gratuitous Clinton references).

C. Libby had been ordered to report to prison immediately, without consideration for the fact that the conviction is under appeal. I think that is manifestly unfair, and if I were in that position would have welcomed my boss's boss intervening. It seems to me that it is the rule rather than the exception for non-violent convicted felons to remain free on bail pending appeal.

Culture of Life II

As a perfect bookend to Bush's threat to veto any stem cell bill sent to him, the Supreme Court last week upheld a law banning partial birth abortions. On the surface, this seems like an arguably reasonable move. After all, partial birth abortions are described by the right-to-life lobby as brutal - I won't give a description, but you can look it up if you are interested. And the court didn't rule on a woman's right to an abortion, just the processes used. But if you dig a little deeper, it starts to look look like this was a terrible decision, to the extent that I can't understand how any of the justices could have voted to support it based on the facts.

The best data I can find is that there are fewer than 3000 partial birth abortions in the U.S. every year. So at most this law would prevent 3000 abortions. But it won't. In most of those cases partial birth abortion is not the only option, but rather the option the doctor has determined is the best one for the mother. So now doctors are left with fewer options for performing safe abortions on women who want them. There may be some small number of abortions that are not performed, but we are in the realm of rounding error. The total number of abortions will stay about the same, so upholding this law essentially did nothing to help save unborn fetuses.

The majority opinion mentioned that some women who have the procedure done may later regret it. That was one of their arguments for upholding the law - that someone may later regret their choice. Thank you for looking out for all the women too stupid, confused, or emotional to make their own, best decisions. You know, some people move their kids to an area where the schools aren't very good, and then later regret it. Perhaps if some city passed a law prohibiting parents from moving the court would uphold that law as well. Some people smoke, and then later regret having done so. Maybe the court will uphold a ban on cigarette sales.

And then there's the issues of partial birth abortions being so brutal. But are they really any more brutal than other abortion procedures? And why does it matter? The fetus is removed and destroyed. Regardless of the procedure, the outcome is the same. Why would a fetus care how it is removed? You know who does care? The doctor performing the procedure, who now can't use his best judgment to perform the task.

So the ban doesn't really lower the number of abortions being performed, it doesn't save any fetuses, it's not better for the women having the procedure performed, it's certainly not better for the doctors. So who exactly does this law benefit, and why would the court choose to uphold it? I can only reach the same conclusion I did in my previous post: this isn't about saving the lives of unborn children. It's all about politics, and controlling the actions of pregnant women, and apparently their doctors. There's no other logic behind spending time and money going to the Supreme Court rather than dealing with 400,000 embryos, or working on birth control education, or helping adoption agencies, all of which would save lives and help ensure a quality of life. This isn't about saving babies or helping people.

Culture of Life

Bush is continuing his threats to veto another stem cell bill that was passed by the Senate earlier this week. He's calling for a culture of life. That sounds nice. You know what else would be nice? A culture of rationality, sanity, a willingness to help stop suffering, and avoiding pointless pandering to special interest groups. Wouldn't that be nice too?

Let's take a look at what we know and don't know: The current bill passed by the Senate deals with the use of frozen human embryos for stem cell research. Nobody knows how many frozen embryos exist in this country, but in 2003 the Rand Corporation estimated the number at 400,000. These embryos are created at fertility clinics for people who want to be artificially inseminated. Because of the risk and complexity of the procedure, many more embryos are created than can actually be implanted, so there is always an excess. All these embryos are frozen, and maintaining them in this frozen state costs money. The Weill-Cornell clinic in New York has stated that 54% of their patients ask that excess embryos be destroyed. They no longer have a use for them, don't want them donated to research, don't wnt them implanted in other women, and they don't want to pay to store them indefinitely. 43% donate them to basic science unrelated to stem cells, and 3% offer them to other infertile couples. Let's assume these numbers extrapolate to the rest of the country. (If anyone has better data, I'll be happy to use it.) That means that 1/2 of these embryos are being thrown away, and only 3% of them are will potentially become viable fetuses.

That means that 97% of these embryos have no chance to become living, breathing, human beings. So Bush, and others opposed to human stem cell lines, appear to be saying that because they value the "culture of life" so much, they'd rather see these embryos end up in the trash than have them cure disease or reduce human suffering. Culture of waste, culture of cruelty, culture of close-mindedness, or culture of disease would all seem to be more apt descriptions.

Bush would rather pander to the position of his base, the religious right, than do what's best for people suffering from terrible diseases. If embryos are in fact little human lives, how is it not far more wasteful to simply discard them than to use them to save other lives? And if the stem cells that could be generated from those embryos can save lives, aren't we also sentencing those with illnesses that won't be cured to shorter lives, and more pain and suffering? Let me ask those who agree with Bush - what is the better use of a an embryo that is destined for the trash can? What would Jesus do? What should Bush do?

And speaking of being pro-life, it's always struck me as odd that pro-life protesters spend all their time picketing family planning clinics who perform abortions but not fertility clinics producing hundreds of thousands of embryos that will be destroyed. If a fertilized embryo really has the same rights as a fetus or a baby, as pro-lifers contend, these discarded embryos represent a huge loss of human life. So why are they not appealing to congress to shut down fertility clinics? Why no demands for federal funding to keep the embryos frozen indefinitely? Why is nobody insisting that the owners/parents of these embryos shouldn't have the right to determine their fate? If they can't toss aside born children, why are they allowed to create excess embryos knowing most of them will be flushed away in the hopes of creating one child? Why aren't pro-life activists focusing their efforts on all the poor frozen embryos?

The reason, I believe, is that the pro-life movement really isn't about saving the lives of unborn children. It's about controlling people's bodies, and determining who has the right to terminate a pregnancy - the mother or the government. It's also about getting other people to think with a similar mindset to theirs. They aren't concerned about parents deciding to throw away a few dozen embryos. But they are very concerned about someone deciding to remove a single embryo from her body.

signed on

Okay, it's me, Dad. I'm now signed on.

Torture Me

I was recently I was engaged in a discussion about the war in Iraq and the question about the U.S. torturing prisoners came up. My take is that torture should be clearly defined by the U.S., and outlawed. Bush has been unwilling to do either of these, and won't even state that the U.S. won't torture as a matter of policy. This is bad for two reasons: firstly, it makes the U.S. no better than other countries that torture people. We're supposed to have the moral high ground. We're supposed to be the good guys. We're the ones who should be setting the standard for how POWs are treated. If we can't treat other POWs well, how should we expect others to treat ours?

The second, and more important reason, I want to see an anti-torture policy is that not having one puts U.S. soldiers at risk. (I'm hoping that our Sr. military officer family member will eventually weigh in on this.) I'm not going to suggest that torture of American POWs will end when we have a an anti-torture policy. But our enemies may be less inclined to torture as freely and willingly an enemy who is known to treat their own POWs compassionately and fairly. It also fans the flames of anti-U.S. hatred, which makes it easier for terrorists to recruit more terrorists. The more terrorists there are, the more U.S. troops are going to get killed. So if you connect the dots, I think Bush is causing harm to U.S. troops by not agreeing to a torture ban. John McCain said that we need to have clear interrogation guidelines, and that by not doing so we are harming, rather than helping, the war on terror, and I agree with him.

"But wait," you say. "Bush signed a bill last year that included the McCain anti-torture language." Yes, he did. But he also didn't. McCain attached language to an appropriations bill that tried to define what torture is, what interrogation
practices the U.S. would use, and made breaking these rules a crime. While McCain was trying to win support for his torture ban, Bush had threatened to veto any legislation that would restrict what interrogation techniques the U.S. could use. And Cheney worked to get the Senate to drop their support for McCain's language. But in the end McCain prevailed and the bill passed with 90 votes in the Senate.

After signing the bill, Bush issued a signing statement that effectively granted him the right to set aside the McCain provisions whenever he wants to. So Bush signed a bill that outlawed torture, but then immediately issued a signing statement saying that he could repeal that law and torture people on an as-needed basis.

The McCain language referenced the Army Field Manual interrogation practices. After Bush signed the bill, the Army issued a new field manual with some of these techniques blacked out as classified information. Did they change the content, or just hide some of it? Bush was clearly not interested in defining torture or in stating that it was not something the U.S. would engage in, and U.S. troops are going to suffer more at the hands of our enemies because of it.

Welcome...

...to the Diverse Family Blog, named so because of our diverse opinions and backgrounds, and because I got to do the naming. The idea is that each of us will be able to post on whatever topics we want. Others (including non-family members) can comment on posts. Once we get settled in I'll get a post or two up to get some discussion rolling, or one of you can do so.

I would like to suggest a few simple ground rules to help keep things civil:

• Please don't use personal attacks, unless absolutely necessary or deserved.
• Keep the profanity to a minimum. You never know who will be reading this, and we don't want to appear as profane as some of you actually are.
• Let's try to be as civil as possible. Remember that we all need to see each other occasionally, and it would be nice to not launch into these discussions/arguments at our next sighting.
• Keep in mind that Andy is usually correct about most things. And when he's not usually correct, he's probably still right. You could save a lot of effort by simply agreeing with him (me) up front.
• Please be respectful of each other's privacy don't "out" them in terms of their full names, work locations, or any other personal details.
  

So there you have it. Happy posting.