Approximately a third of the world’s food is wasted every year (U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization).
When the pandemic hit, food security became a concern for many people and they began wasting less food. Whether
Jerry's high-pitched nasal voice still shines through, but it's got a little drunk-guy-in-the-corner-of-the-bar-talking-to-no-one-in-particular vibe to it now that it's been slowed down. A tip of the cap to Samer's friend who does not use Twitter for bringing this to our attention. More »
Mix of Japanese new-age/ambient/minimalist music, mostly emanating from the corporate infrastructure of the 1980s asset bubble. FM synthesis, prefab “lifestyle” soundscapes and the illusion of nature in a hyper-urban environment.
Tracklist:
Hiroshi Yoshimura – “Water Planet” from Soundscape 1: Surround
Toshifumi Hinata – “Colored Air” from Reality in Love
Midori Takada – “Mr. Henri Rousseau’s Dream” from Through the Looking Glass
Yas Kaz – “Jungle Book/Windscape” from Jomon-Sho
Yutaka Hirose – “Nova” from Sound Scape 2: Nova
Shiho Yabuki – “Tomoshibi” from The Body Is A Message Of The Universe
Inoyama Land – “Mizue” from Danzindan-Pojidon
Yoshio Ojima – “Sealed” from Une Collection Des Chainons II: Music For Spiral
Yoichiro Yoshikawa – “Nube” from Cyprus
Interior – “Park” from Interior
Yasuaki Shimizu – “Kono Yo Ni Yomeri #2″ from Kakashi
Hiroshi Yoshimura – “Water Copy” from Music For Nine Post Cards
Yoichiro Yoshikawa – “Crater on the Moon” from Miracle Planet
Haruomi Hosono – “(In-store background music for Muji storefront)” from Muji BGM
Kenji Furukawa – “(Untitled Water Recording) from Sound Stream: Mizu
I would very much like to write something in depth on this local crisis, insofar as I have done business and know fairly well the countries directly involved. However, since I am working on closing an investment, I have to be short.
First, relative to Mali itself, it seems to me important to understand that there are at least three ongoing issues that a naive reading of a map would not clarify: (i) Mali might rather inexactly be divided into two countries (geographically and culturally, tracking the ecosystem) - the Saharan part and Sahel fringe (Niger river bend), which is the security situation tracks fairly closely. (a) The map of Mali shows this fairly clearly, the pinched part is the major transition, the huge northern territory above is mostly Sahara - real desert - except for the productive fringe of the Niger river valley. Other than that is oasises. Below the 'pinch' one is in the lower Sahel or the Savanna (i.e. agriculturally productive regions, with higher population densisities). No surprise there are some strong ethnic differences (below the pinch, where the population weight is, rather culturally homogenous, and fairly ethnically / linguistically homogenous (and essentially 100% Muslim, although there is a small Xian minority dating from the 19th century colonial period, oddly best data shows that French colonial rule promoted conversion / solidification as a reaction to the French), particularly in comparison with southern neighbours like Cote d'Ivoire. (ii) The Sahara is a zone that is largely unfriendly to sustained insurgency, if the watering points are controlled. (a) the different histories of Afghanistan and this region for the late 19th century / early 20th centuries illustrate. Afghanistan was never ruled. This region was administered by the French. (b) added to that the Arab supremecist (this is a key point to retain) Salafism does not have roots in the region (and in fact Taureq particularism runs deep - ex the Libyan Tuareg, semi foreigners - Tuareg reaction to Arab driven and generally Arab supremacist Salafist models - It would be incorrect to say that Salafist / Jihadist thought has no local (Sahel/Mali) roots. It does, historically (c. 17th-19thc), BUT for most of the Malian non-Tuareg zone, it has little mass relevance and zero roots (contra Nigeria, where it is driven by Nigerian issues). In stark contrast to AfPak region where there were indigenous quasi Salafi movements (the Deobandis, etc). - Maghrebi, particularly Moroccan, Sufi Tariqa (orders), like the Tijani, are influential (c) the North South ethnic divide (which is stark, and massively population weighted to the South, tracks well to the intervention; however weak the Southern based military is in short term, there is massive popular dislike towards the North. (iii) Politically, in region France as lead has a good intro, given the role in resolving the Cote d'Ivoire crisis, that played well into Malian needs - economic - as well as politics. It was also a legitimately positive effort, in context. (iv) the Saharan Maghreb states, of which Algeria, Morocco, Mauritania are more and more nervous about the Libyan blowback (although it must be noted privately or publicly, everyone agrees that Qaddafi going is a long-run good thing, no in-region observer really mourns him).
I've spent the last couple of weeks contemplating California's Monterey shale, which has been widely discussed recently as the country's next Bakken-style oil play, or even bigger. The Bakken shale has turned North Dakota into the second-biggest oil-producing state in the US, at the same time that development of the Eagle Ford shale has been shoring up Texas's claim to the number one spot. So far, The Golden State has largely missed out on the shale revolution, despite having shale oil resources estimated to exceed the rest of the US combined. The scale of the opportunity makes it an intriguing subject, but I find it particularly interesting, because the Monterey is deeply intertwined with the long history of the California oil industry, in which I spent the first half of my career.
The Monterey shale is hardly a new prospect. One of the first documents my search turned up was a 1905 USGS report on its fossil content, noting its oil potential. First production from this shale apparently occurred a decade earlier. Moreover, it appears that the Monterey formation, which underlies many of the state's conventional oil fields, is actually the "source rock" for those fields: the zone from which the hydrocarbons trapped in their reservoirs originated. So the estimated 400 billion barrels or so of original oil in place in the Monterey have presumably already yielded a substantial share of the roughly 29 billion barrels of oil that California's oil fields have produced to date.
Development of this play doesn't just lag shale projects elsewhere because of California's well-known environmental sensitivity. The geology of this deposit also differs significantly from that of the Bakken and other east-of-Rockies shale plays, partly due to its relative youth, as well as the effects of the Golden State's seismic activity. Its oil-bearing strata are thick and often jumbled up by past earthquakes. One expert characterized this as signifying that the Monterey wasn't a "resource play" but a "structural play." So unlike the Bakken or Eagle Ford, individual wells carry higher risks of failing to yield commercially useful output. It also makes it less likely that steady efforts in the Monterey will result in an easily replicable recipe for unlocking the entire deposit.
That brings us to fracking, which is surely as controversial in California as anywhere, even though, as in many other locations, it's been done safely and with little fanfare for decades. The state recently announced preliminary fracking regulations, but this may have less impact on development of the Monterey shale than one might suppose. That's because this formation seems to be less amenable to fracking, or at least to the combination of horizontal wells and multi-stage fracking that's been a game-changer elsewhere. Other techniques, such as acid injection, may prove more useful.
However it is eventually unlocked, the Monterey shale offers significant benefits to California. Start with the fact that the state's oil production has been in steady decline since the mid-1980s. Together with the depletion of Alaska's North Slope field, that has meant that the US West Coast, which was once a net exporter of oil, now imports increasing quantities of oil--half of it from OPEC--to meet local demand. That trend has continued even as the import dependence of the rest of the country has fallen substantially due to higher production and receding demand. The Monterey could slash California's imports, while adding billions of dollars a year to the local economy and to the shaky state budget, along with lots of good jobs.
It could even provide environmental benefits. Restoring oil self-sufficiency would reduce the risk of spills from the tankers bringing in imports, while refilling existing infrastructure. And if the Monterey yields oil similar in quality to the light, sweet crude now being produced from the Bakken and Eagle Ford shales, it could actually cut both greenhouse gas emissions and local pollution by reducing the refining intensity required to turn the state's current diet of heavier crudes into ultra-low sulfur gasoline and diesel fuel.
I suspect from my research in the last few weeks that anyone betting on an imminent explosion of oil output from the Monterey shale is likely to be disappointed. The process seems likely to be slower than elsewhere, though with a bigger potential payoff. But that doesn't make it irrelevant to a state that has set its sights on being at the forefront of the transformation to cleaner energy sources. California still consumes 1.8 million barrels per day of petroleum products, and it will burn many more billions of barrels on its way to its chosen future of electric vehicles running on wind and solar power, and trucks and buses burning compressed or liquefied natural gas. Developing the Monterey shale won't solve all of California's energy challenges and might create a few new ones, yet it could prove another timely contribution from a local oil industry that has been a major driver of the state's economy for well over a century.
hoping for continued creative uses of executive power on this front
President Obama surprised pretty much everyone when he spent a considerable part of his inaugural address talking about the need to confront climate change. It suggests a willingness to tackle the issue in ways that go beyond what was accomplished in his first term.
I’ll be watching three big areas on the domestic front. The first, and the most politically challenging test, will be how he uses existing Clean Air Act authority to go after carbon dioxide emissions from existing power plants. Some creative plans have been surfacing – you’d be well served to read Dan Lashof and his NRDC colleagues’ recent paper, which outlines one of those, here – that could allow the EPA to make substantial cuts to emissions in ways that are flexible enough to pass a serious cost-benefit test.
Figuring out how to advance such a plan amidst significant energy-sector uncertainty remains a real hurdle. Indeed facts on the ground have changed so quickly enough that the emissions that NRDC projects will occur in 2020 as a result of its proposed policies are now very close considerably closer to what the EIA projects will happen without any policy at all. (Update: The NRDC study uses a two year old baseline that projected power sector emissions of 2301 tons in 2020; the EIA 2013 AEO now projects 2081 tons; and the NRDC policy case projects 1796 tons.) This particular change, of course, argues in favor of more aggressive standards, and reinforces the fact that rigid regulation can result in lost opportunities. But the prospect of equally large changes in the other direction (i.e. changes that make cuts more difficult) will undoubtedly be on policymakers’ minds as they work through various options. The president will also need to be prepared to fend off congressional attacks on EPA authority if he decides to go down this road in a strong way.
The second area I’ll be watching is spending on energy innovation. This may be the most promising area for near-term bipartisan compromise, however limited, on Capitol Hill. But success in attracting support on this front is far from a given, particularly given continuing focus on the budget deficit. The fact that some new innovation spending seems possibly doable with enough political muscle, but unlikely to move forward without some sort of White House push, makes it a useful test for whether the administration has the ability to move anything climate-related forward in Congress.
The last area to watch is much broader. While pressing forward on near-term initiatives, President Obama will need to lay the groundwork for longer-term action. The reality is that none of the front-burner decisions – on EPA regulations, innovation spending, or the Keystone XL pipeline – will get the United States on the sort of long term path that it needs to be on. And some potential near-term decisions – particularly on oil and gas infrastructure, including Keystone and other issues – could make it more difficult to forge a broad enough coalition to curb U.S. emissions down the line.
What President Obama did yesterday, by weaving action on climate into a history of how Americans have tackled big problems in the past, and talking at some length about the problem, was an important start in trying to build the broad understanding of climate risks that could help support a future push for more substantial action. It will become easy in the next few years to focus only on tangible wins that have near-term payoffs. But to fully evaluate whether Obama succeeds in his second term agenda, it will be essential to keep an eye on the long haul.
At some point during every Nuggets home game, team mascot Rocky attempts to make a backward, half-court shot. The crowd gets into it, the scoreboard operator puts Rocky's half-court shooting percentage on the jumbotron for all to see, and Rocky hams it up on the rare occasion that he sinks one. It's kind of a thing. More »
this has seemed increasingly true for a few years now... cool factoid though: the "exception," the one mineral/hydrocarbon resource that humans have exhausted is... GUANO
"Oil is a finite resource but the gloomsters were very wrong on their timing. I'm not trying to insinuate any great insight into the business even though, at one time, I could spot undervalued reserves with one whisk of my slide rule. It's just that human beings are creative enough that with one notable exception we have never exhausted the resource of even one mineral or hydrocarbon."
Notre Dame's Manti Te'o, the stories said, played this season under a terrible burden. A Mormon linebacker who led his Catholic school's football program back to glory, Te'o was whipsawed between personal tragedies along the way. In the span of six hours in September, as Sports Illustrated told it, Te'o learned first of the death of his grandmother, Annette Santiago, and then of the death of his girlfriend, Lennay Kekua. More »
Alisa Valderrama, Senior Project Finance Attorney, New York
Three recent publications present compelling reasons why private financing for green infrastructure is going to be a hot topic in 2013, and likely for decades to come.
1) Cities are speaking up, increasingly loudly, about their aging storm and sewer infrastructure, and the need for financing to help deal with polluted runoff problems. “Increased stormwater runoff” was the most-cited concern, with “stormwater management” coming in at a close second in a recent study released by MIT and ICLEI surveying 468 cities worldwide (a majority in the U.S.) asking about which climate-related threat most concerned them. Although federal funding for clean water infrastructure has been declining for decades, with Philadelphia’s Mayor Nutter chairing the US Conference of Mayors event later this month in Washington DC, urban stormwater management needs and green infrastructure finance in particular is likely to garner much-needed attention in our nation’s capital in 2013. (Check out this recent PBS Newshour segment highlighting how a few cities are confronting their stormwater management challenges.)
2) Continuing drumbeat of data confirming extreme weather. Yesterday, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) released its State of the Climate Report— showing that while 2012 was the warmest on record in the United States, it also brought the second-highest number of extreme weather events in more than a century. While an average season has 11 named storms, the number of named North Atlantic storms marked the third consecutive hurricane season with 19 named storms for the region and tied with 2011, 2010, 1995, and 1887 as the third busiest year for North Atlantic tropical cyclones. NOAA’s report provides excellent factual basis for cash-strapped cities’ concerns about flooding and stormwater management.
3) Recommendations of High-Profile 2100 Commission Make it Plain. The findings of the NY State 2100 Commission (which hasn’t even officially been released yet (though NYTimes did post a draft on Monday) make a strong case for innovative financing for green infrastructure. The Commission, Chaired by Rockefeller Foundation President Judith Rodin, was formed by Gov. Andrew Cuomo in the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy and was charged with making recommendations for how New York in particular should plan for a future with increased frequency and magnitude of storms as well as population growth.
An entire chapter of the report is dedicated to the need to upgrade and expand existing infrastructure, and there is a substantial focus on “green” or “natural” infrastructure solutions. A few recommendations are worth highlighting in terms of their foresight and laudable strategic thinking in terms of how those “next generation” infrastructure projects will get financed. Specifically, the report indicates the need for an “enabling policy environment” for innovative public-private partnerships and “pay-for-performance mechanisms” to finance those infrastructure projects.
***
With any luck, the mounting evidence from cities, scientific authorities, and expert panels will make it increasingly hard to justify a business-as-usual approach to the financing and technological approach to managing stormwater in coming years. However, the needs of cities, weather trends, and policy recommendations are only part of the answer. Further details are needed, as well as concrete examples of cities deploying innovative strategies for green infrastructure finance.
NRDC, as part of the NatLab consortium together with its collaborators The Nature Conservancy and EKO Asset Management Partners, will be releasing a report later this month that we hope will continue to advance the case for both innovative public policy and private investment in green infrastructure. Our report seeks to provide concrete guidance as to specific strategies that cities can deploy to attract private capital to help fulfill green infrastructure needs. This report builds on our initial February 2012 report, and the updated and expanded report will be the first of its kind to address the specific economics of green infrastructure finance on private land, while also providing detailed analysis of the role that project aggregation, offsite mitigation programs, private-public partnerships, and use of vacant lands can play in stimulating much needed private investment in green infrastructure.
The newest wake-up pill has all of the benefits of caffeine and amphetamines with none of the down sides. It has elicited so few complaints of side effects from users -- they claim it has no side effects at all except for the occasional slight headache -- it's the closest thing to a miracle the pharmaceutical world has seen since Viagra, if Viagra didn't sometimes cause blindness, heart attacks and five-hour erections. It's called modafinil, and it's FDA-approved to treat narcolepsy. But the drug has gained a dedicated off-label following as a "lifestyle drug." Doctors all over the country are reporting record numbers of sudden narcoleptics showing up in their waiting rooms. (As it turns out, you can get diagnosed as a narcoleptic online.)
EVs had kind of a rough 2012 but I feel like 2013 is going to be nicer
Nissan announced that US pricing for the updated 2013 Nissan LEAF electric vehicle (earlier post) will start at an MSRP of $28,800 for the newly-added entry-level S grade—an 18% reduction from the $35,200 MSRP of the 2012 LEAF entry model, the SV. The entry-level 2013 LEAF S becomes the lowest priced five-passenger electric vehicle sold in the United States.
Under the new pricing, the 2013 LEAF SV—now the mid-level model—carries an MSRP of $31,820, while the top-end 2013 LEAF SL has an MSRP of $34,480. The 2012 LEAF SL had an MSRP of $37,250. Depending on location, some consumers may purchase the 2013 LEAF for as low as $18,800 with qualifying federal and state tax credits, putting the LEAF on par with gas-powered vehicles of its size.
MSRPs of 2012 LEAF and 2013 LEAF
Model
MY 2012 MSRP
MY 2013 MSRP
Δ
LEAF S
–
$28,800
-18% relative to '12 SV
LEAF SV
$35,200
$31,820
-10%
LEAF SL
$37,250
$34,840
-6%
Nissan recently began US assembly of the 2013 Nissan LEAF at its manufacturing plant in Smyrna, Tenn., a localization initiative that further drives efficiencies by leveraging already-existing equipment and processes while also reducing exposure to fluctuations in foreign currency. The battery packs that power LEAF are built in an adjacent facility in Smyrna while the vehicle's electric motor comes from Nissan’s powertrain plant in Decherd, Tenn., further supporting efficient manufacturing.
Eligible consumers can take advantage of a $7,500 federal tax credit, and some states and municipalities offer additional incentives. For example, California residents can get a 2013 Nissan LEAF for as low as $18,800 after the federal tax credit and state rebate of $2,500.
Nissan will also continue its lease offer for the 2013 LEAF, allowing consumers to lease the electric vehicle for as low as $199 per month for 36 months, which includes tax credits and destination charges.
Now in its third model year, the Nissan LEAF has nearly 50,000 cumulative sales worldwide. For 2013, the LEAF features numerous customer-focused upgrades. LEAF is powered by an 80 kW AC synchronous motor produced at Nissan’s Powertrain Assembly plant in Decherd, Tenn. The 2013 LEAF’s output is 107 hp (80 kW), with 187 lb-ft (254 N·m ) of torque. Energy is supplied by an advanced 48-module lithium-ion battery made at the new battery plant in Smyrna, Tenn.
The 2013 Nissan LEAF is offered in three models, the LEAF S, LEAF SV and LEAF SL.
The standard features in the S include 6-way manual driver’s seat; 4-way manual front passenger’s seat; trip computer (instant and average energy consumption, driving time, outside temperature and autonomy range); Automatic Temperature Control (ATC); center console storage; and 3.6 kW onboard charger. Other standard equipment includes Nissan Intelligent Key with Push Button Start; Bluetooth hands-free phone system; power windows with driver’s window one-touch auto up/down; power door locks with auto locking feature; remote charge door release; variable intermittent windshield wipers; AM/FM/CD with MP3 playback capability; and a 12-volt power outlet.
LEAF SV models are upgraded to 16-inch aluminum alloy wheels; a 6.6 kW onboard charger; cruise control; auto dimming rear view mirror; energy-saving hybrid heating system; an upgraded 6-speaker sound system; 7-inch color LCD display; Pandora link for iPhone users; Nissan Navigation system with CARWINGS telematics; and B-mode setting for increased regenerative braking.
LEAF SL adds leather-appointed seats; 17-inch five spoke alloy wheels; DC 480V fast charge port; automatic on/off LED headlights; fog lights; photovoltaic solar panel rear spoiler; and HomeLink Universal Transceiver.
The incremental aerodynamic and energy management improvements in the updated 2013 LEAF are expected to improve the range over previous model years. Final range estimates for the 2013 Nissan LEAF are awaiting EPA test cycle verification.
You learned it in preschool, and now it’s back in a more grown-up way. From cars to kids’ clothes to cold hard cash, sharing is caring more than ever before. The sharing economy builds and leverages social bonds, creates a more democratic marketplace, reduces the sheer amount of stuff we need to buy, and creates more resilient communities in the process. It’s the bastard child of market disruption that began on the web decades ago (Napster, anyone?), but it’s a child with a conscience.
The kind of “collaborative consumption” we see in services like Zipcar and Airbnb has the potential to revolutionize the way we live our lives. But it’s not all bartered canning equipment and blissful couchsurfing, folks — the sharing economy is a serious moneymaker for individuals and companies who “share” their stuff for a price. Investors, who prefer the wonktastic phrase “underused asset utilization” to “sharing economy,” say the market amounts to $100 billion to $500 billion worldwide, and it’s growing fast.
Here’s a breakdown of the various sharing philosophies, a few of the reasons that sharing is blowing up right now, and some ways that you can get in on the action. Just drag your pointer over the pictures for more info.
Over the holidays, after the shootings in Newtown, I was in a conversation on Facebook in which I reiterated my point from earlier in the year that in the United States, gun ownership and gun practices are culture, and as such, not likely to be quickly or predictably responsive to legislation or policy in any direction. I don’t say this to characterize guns (or anything else that falls into the big domain of “culture”, e.g., distinctive everyday practices and forms of consciousness) as something which should not be subject to official, governmental or institutional action, nor as something we cannot change. But as I said last summer, purposeful changes to culture towards a clearly imagined end are very difficult to accomplish.
In the course of that conversation, a colleague and I moved towards one of the comparisons I had in mind in making this caution, namely, the composite, complicated set of ideas and practices in much of contemporary sub-Saharan Africa that get somewhat misleadingly lumped together as “witchcraft”, “sorcery” or similar terms. Scholars studying Africa take great pains, for good reason, to offer nuanced, contextual accounts of witchcraft practice and discourse that among other things, argue that the label itself derives from European colonial ideology and racialized ideas about “primitive societies”–a history which shapes contemporary understandings both inside and outside of Africa. However troubled the history of the label, there’s still a living, contemporary domain of African practices and beliefs that needs a name, and it’s a domain that’s entangled with the history of European imaginings of Africa and Africans. So for the moment, with many cautions, sorcery or witchcraft it is.
At least in southern Africa, I think folks reach for a single word not because it’s all the same thing, but because there’s some connected “deep” ideas that express themselves in a wide variety of ways and contexts. In fact, not only is each manifestation of those ideas different, you can actually see the deeper thinking mobilized by antagonists in various struggles, pulling in different directions. Witchcraft is a way to talk about why things happen in the world, in particular (but not exclusively) why bad things happen. As I’ve come to understand it, there’s two particularly key propositions: that most of what happens to individual people, whatever changes their situation or status, stems from their social relations (both direct personal relationships and generalized sociality) and that such events or changes are worked or brought about through invisible spiritual means, whether that means personified or animate spirits or more abstract and generalized spiritual force.
So if I become ill or suffer misfortune (on one hand) or experience a striking positive change in my individual circumstances (on the other), the interpretation that refers back to witchcraft or sorcery assumes that either change is a consequence of my social relations, transmitted into my life through the mobilization of invisible, indirect spiritual power. This sounds very abstract, and it is, which explains to some extent why these views are so adaptable to varying circumstances. They’re assumptions that can’t be easily shaken or discarded even by people who don’t believe in any of the specifics. It’s extraordinarily difficult to comprehensively dissent from background ideas or interpretations that most people you know share in some measure. It is, on the other hand, very possible to shape these ideas to fit a wide variety of aspirations and circumstances. The underlying concepts can allow people to come together for community healing, or to create a powerful social consensus against the misdeeds of the few. “Witchcraft” lets people describe and condemn exploitation and tyranny, but it also can mystify and empower exploitation and tyranny. It can give malicious family members and community malcontents new languages and possibilities for hurting others, or serve as a way to imagine and explore one of the deepest puzzles of human existence: why bad things happen to good people. Invoking sorcery can be a way to stifle initiative and creativity, or a way to complain about stagnation and suffering.
——–
In 1993, a man named Gian Luigi Ferri entered an office building in San Francisco, went to the 34th floor offices of the law firm Pettit & Martin and went on a shooting rampage, killing eight people and wounding six before committing suicide. It’s never been clear exactly why he chose the firm as his target. Materials he left behind were mostly incoherent, but he blamed law firms in general for the failure of his businesses.
At the time of the shooting, my father was the managing partner of the Los Angeles branch of Pettit & Martin. (The firm dissolved in 1995, which many outsiders attributed to the impact of the murders, but as I recall it, the firm had underlying financial and managerial issues that had little to do with the shooting.) I remember speaking with him not long after the killings. His emotions, understandably, were unusually raw and vivid. Though he was prone to verbal displays of temper, he was normally quite precise and controlled about how and when he allowed that to show in his professional and public life, and he was never physically intimidating either at home or work. On the other hand, as a former Marine, he was quite proud of his physical health and strength, and believed that if he were physically threatened he would be able and willing to defend himself without hestitation. As an adult, I once saw him unblinkingly and calmly stare down a man who was menacing the two of us with a knife, leading the other man to apologetically back away. As far as I know, he didn’t keep a gun in our house, though he was comfortable with and knowledgeable about guns. He had gone hunting with his father as a boy but told me a number of times that he had no taste for hunting as an adult.
What I remember as we talked about the shooting in San Francisco is that he believed, ardently and sincerely, that if he had been in the San Francisco offices that day he would have found a way to stop the gunman. He would have tackled him or disarmed him or found a weapon. I don’t think this was empty chest-thumping on his part: he was serious and sincere and very willing to concede that maybe he would have died in the attempt. But he maintained that he would have tried.
My father was speaking the language of American witchcraft. And in saying this, I do not for one minute mock or dismiss him or his counterfactual imagining of that horrible day. Gian Luigi Ferri was one kind of American sorcerer, and my father was another. The two deep cultural ideas that we hold to that manifest around guns and gun control alike–and around many other things besides guns–are as follows: 1) that individual action focused by will, determination and clarity of intent can always directly produce specific outcomes and equally that individuals who fail to act when confronted by circumstances (including the actions of other individuals) are culpable for whatever happens next and 2) that there are single-variable abstract social forces that are responsible for seemingly recurrent events and that the proper establishing structure, rule or policy can cancel out the impact of that variable, if only we can figure out which one is the right one.
I’ll come back to #2 in a bit, because as I’ve put it here, it may not sound like a generalized American belief, but instead just the institutionalized faith of social scientists and policy-makers. #1 is probably easier for most Americans to recognize. Some of that is a generic liberal, Enlightenment idea about the sovereign individual, but the idea has a peculiar emotional and cultural intensity in the United States, a historical rootedness in a wide variety of distinctively American experiences and mythologies: the gunfighter in the West, the evangelical who saves both self and community, the engineer who finds a way to keep failure from being an option, the deification of the Founding Fathers as extraordinary individuals, Thoreau’s call to disobedience. It goes on and on. It’s a deep and abiding idea that expresses itself in otherwise antagonistic ideologies or very different local cultures across the country. That each of us can act as independent individuals, of our own accord, with deliberate intent, and change what would have been. Or in failing to act, be held responsible for what actually did happen. That idea can come to rest on very different moments and practices–or on fetish objects of various kinds.
Including guns. This is what it means to engage “gun culture”, and why that is such a difficult thing to do. Because there are other men (and women) like my father who believe as he did that if they were present at a moment of violence or trauma, they would find a way to stop it. For many of them, a gun provides that assurance. And while you can say that it probably would not turn out that way, or that there is just as much possibility of an intervention making things even worse, this is just going deeper into the weeds. Because it’s not just the people imagining that they would save everyone who are the issue, but the killers, who are just as affected by a faith in individual action, often after a life in which they’ve been comprehensively denied any other way to believe in the consequentiality of their personal agency.
Maybe it’s possible to surgically remove guns from this latticework. But maybe it’s the bigger weave that’s the issue. Look at all the ways we acknowledge, encourage or make affordances for this deeper belief about ourselves, about why and how things happen in the world, and you begin to see a different challenge. There’s a reason why contemporary Africans who would just as soon defect from anything resembling witchcraft discourse find it hard to do. If I wanted to offer a different view about why anything, everything happens in the world, to explain that causation and consequence flow from accidents, from unmanageable interactions, from partial or dispersed forms of personhood and subjectivity, from systems and institutions, or many other similar formulations, I would be up against not just gun owners but gun control advocates, in general. Up against most Americans in their most intimate experiences and understandings of daily life and self-conception. Indeed, up against myself. Not only am I as much affected as anyone else, like many Americans (and others around the world), I rather like this way of understanding causality and consequence. I like it both intellectually and romantically, as an ideal and a structure of feeling. Even as I know that it is in some sense defective as an actual explanation and as an aspiration, and that it generates and sustains many practices that I dislike or oppose.
This is where idea #2 kicks in. The one problem with a pervasive belief that what happens to us is the consequence of our individual actions (or failure to act) is when we see in our larger national or global culture that some of what we attribute to the willful actions of individuals seems to be recurrent, patterned, widespread. This is a common problem for every deeply vested local or particular cultural vision of selfhood and society. Witchcraft discourse in southern Africa talks about both individual acts of sorcery and about the question of whether (or where) sorcery is systematic or generalized and how to relate the two. What I’d argue is that Americans work out this distinction by believing that recurrent or patterned actions are the result of the relationship between a single social variable expressed as individual actions and a single particular political design that permits or encourages that expression. That sounds modern and bureaucratic but its American roots lie in constitutionalism, in the proposition that concretely correct social designs or covenants can express–or suppress–any given will to act. That respect for religious freedom, for example, can arise from William Penn setting that as an initial condition of his colony rather than, as Peter Silver and other historians point out, an emergent result of many social interactions that did not have religious freedom as an objective, including settler mobilization against Native Americans. This can be a secular vision or a religious one, or both and neither. The Devil can serve as as an explanation just as well as guns or video games or lack of mental health care or media attention.
We believe that we can fix problems that we describe and perceive as singular issues. We tinker endlessly with machinery that seeks to identify the single establishing rule, the single malformed covenant, the single enabling policy that expresses or stifles individual action. That produces killers who mass murder children or produces saviors who would protect them. How quick we are to rush to our snipe hunts, running through dark woods. We’re told, often, that we break apart conjoined, messy problems temporarily, so that experts can study and understand, so that policy can be made, but that somehow we will reassemble it all at some point.
That point never comes because just as with our faith in our individual action, a successful reassemblage hits us hard in our deeper cultural understandings of why bad and good things happen. We don’t have a good language for intentional social or political action to achieve progress that bows to a messier, more partial, more complex-systems understanding of the world and all the things in it. We may have an intellectual vocabulary for that, but not yet (maybe not ever) a deeply felt, emotional experience of it. I feel sometimes as if I’m groping for that new sense of self and society, trying to get it to take root in myself, but just for myself, I have to figure out how to speak it and imagine it in a way that doesn’t sound like fatalism or resignation, and in a language that has everyday resonance. (Which this essay certainly does not.)
So we go on thinking that when the moment comes, we’ll do the right thing, and that in between, we’ll someday find the law, the policy, the rule, the Constitutional amendment that will keep individuals from doing some particular wrong thing, that will push some abstract force or some Satanic provocation under the national rug once and for all. Just as witch-finding and healing, condemnation and consensus, never somehow seem to prevent or check either the personalized force of sorcery or its pervasive spirit.
Kris Humphries walked to the locker room with 1:36 left in the fourth quarter and the Nets up 16, and some fans near the walkway thought they'd give Humphries some dap. One did not get what she expected:
Hat tip to the always fantastic Daily Thunder for catching this.
LONDON, Jan 2 (Reuters) - The runaway oil rig that ran
aground in Alaska on New Year's Eve dragged the two vessels
trying to control it more than 10 miles (16 kilometres)
shorewards in just over an hour before the crews cut it loose to
save themselves in "near hurricane" conditions.
Tibetan Buddhists could buy meat, but they couldn’t order it, “since that might lead to an animal being killed” for them specifically. What, then, were Tibetan Buddhists to do? How could they eat meat without being involved in butchery? How could they consume flesh, yet prevent themselves from being implicated in killing? Simple. They did what I, as an American shopper, was already doing. They got someone else to do the killing for them. In the Tibetan case, writes the Dalai Lama, much of it was left to local Muslims. I understood the comfort we find in not knowing, or in knowing and not looking or thinking. But I could find no virtue in it. If there was some kind of cosmic accounting system at work, it seemed to me that such willful ignorance should accrue extra bad karma, not less.
Cerulli, Tovar (2012-02-14). The Mindful Carnivore: A Vegetarian's Hunt for Sustenance (Kindle Locations 1069-1075). Pegasus Books. Kindle Edition.
when people consider the status quo as a proposal, but do not know that it actually is the status quo, people seem just as quick to find reasons why it cannot work, or is a bad idea. This is dramatically different from their eagerness to defend the status quo, when then know it is the status quo. When people don’t know that something actually works now, they assume that it can’t work.
This habit of pattern matching to find easy reasons to reject implies that would-be innovators shouldn’t try that hard to respond to objections. If you compose a solid argument to a particular objection, most people will then just pick from their many other objections. If you offer solid arguments against 90% of the objections they could raise, they’ll just assume the other 10% holds the reason your proposal is a bad idea. Even having solid responses to all of their objections won’t get you that far, since most folks can’t be bothered to listen to them all, or even notice that you’ve covered them all.
Of course as a would be innovator, you should still listen to objections. But not so much to persuade skeptics, as to test yourself. You should honestly engage objections help you refine, or perhaps reject, your proposal. The main reason to listen to those with whom you disagree is: you might be wrong.
Handel$$$ "F.M. SCHERER, Harvard University: The dominant pattern in the 17th century, as Handel got started, was, you either worked for the church or you worked for the nobility.
PAUL SOLMAN: Harvard's Mike Scherer has written a classic on classical music and economics: "Quarter Notes and Banknotes." Opera was the road to independence from the patronage of court and clergy, he says..."
A couple months ago I was lamenting that 2012 had shit for good drone records. The words of a madman, clearly. This year was chock full of goodness, although to be honest, nothing this year is quite as good as my favorite drone record from 2011, Nicholas Szczepanik’sPlease Stop Loving Me, which will always be the best thing ever. Still, there’s tons of amazing drone this year and it was damn near impossible to keep it trimmed to a tidy 10.
I know genre-specific lists are already niche enough, but I decided to give myself a couple new rules to help narrow my focus. First was defining “Drone Record,” which I hadn’t really done before. If you know the site, then you’ll know my drone tag is liberal. I throw that fucker on everything. But to me, for a record to be on a list of drone records, its top-level genre has to be drone. If I was cataloging it by genre, it would have to go under “Drone.” Not “Noise,” not “Black Metal,” not “Doom,” not “Folk.” Those could be sub-genres, just not the main one. This cleared out a lot of records. It meant I couldn’t include Horseback’sHalf Blood (probably my favorite non-drone record this year), Gates’Eintraum, Sutekh Hexen’sBehind The Throne, etc.
Second, I decided no reissues or box sets. I’ve sorta followed this one in the past, but I didn’t want highly publicized massive tomes like William Basinski’sThe Disintegration Loops or Pauline Oliveros’ epic 12 disc Reverberations stealing the thunder here.
As you know, I only write about the most top notch shit that gets me super psyched. Every drone record that came out this year and I reviewed should be on this list. So go digging through the drone tag and find the rest that just barely missed the cut. They’re all #11.
10.Moonshine Blues – Through (Hidden Vibes)
“Floating in the grey and rapt in heartache, while sheets & swells of euphoria shimmer in the dark, dragged to the edge of oblivion and left alone…”
One of the best drone releases this year is free. So go download this bleak beast right now and you can feel totally guilt free doing so. And it came out of left field, too. Self released (on his own label), solo Ukrainian guy making some sad fuckin jams, usually as Endless Melancholy, but venturing out into more “ambient” territory as Moonshine Blues. He’s got this blues drone thing down pat and it was more or less an experiment. A+ dude.
Gloomy. As. Fuck. The kind of sadness reserved for royalty eulogies & the internal monologue leading to suicides. Long torturous tracks that take the cake for most depressing drones. And super fucking gorgeous.
8.Concern – Misfortune (Isounderscore)
“…nervous nondescript fumbling & fidgeting to keep busy while the drones flutter, then a huge blissful shimmering cloud of hand-wringing uncertainty, slightly transparent and hovering right in front of the sun.”
Edgy box harp drone that’s as jangling as it is soothing. When a drone record has a certain novelty (like an atypical instrument as the primary focus) I usually get sucked in regardless, but this one is outstanding in its own right. A bittersweet swansong from Concern, Misfortune being the last release under that moniker. One of two Isounderscore releases on this list because that label is 100% quality.
A unique book release with no physical music included. Marino did the photos for the book and Weathers’ tunes come via download. I honestly can’t get enough of Weathers. Everything he does is magic. The absolute perfect blend of folk & drone, he fucking nails it every time. His banjo can do no wrong and his voice is probably the only one that should be allowed to sing over drone.
The supergroup to end supergroups (this time it’s true I promise). Jefre Cantu-Ledesma, Evan Caminiti, Jon Porras, Gregg Kowalsky, Marielle Jakobsons, and Maxwell August Croy to name about half of them, all working in perfect unison, somehow making harmonies that I still can’t wrap my head around. Long form drones that some work years to achieve, these guys kicked out while they all still have their regular bands & shit going on. Unreal.
5.Kyle Bobby Dunn – In Miserum Stercus (Komino)
“…the soft subtleties & elegant dances are still the core, but instead of charming or uplifting, we’re given somber & melancholic, tones dipping into ethereal, haunted dreams…”
Nope, not Bring Me The Head Of…, this one is better because it’s darker and a more unique addition to KBD’s discography. Plus it’s just better. The most beautiful misery I’ve ever heard, overwrought but without tension, intimate & devastating, delicate & harrowing. This is Dunn at the top of his fucking game.
4.EUS, Postdrome, & Saåad – Sustained Layers (BLWBCK)
“Dense and soaring, black anvil clouds rolling over open plains, always on the edge, seeing the sun rays glow and the grey mass shift, an impending fury that always threatens, never breaks…”
This is beyond gloom. This is as dark as you get before you hit black ambient. It would be downright terrifying if it wasn’t so fucking majestic. And I’d never heard of any of these three guys or the label before. Totally opened my eyes to a new minimal darkness. Supremely awesome.
3.Nicholas Szczepanik – The Truth Of Transience (Isounderscore)
“…a wonderful long form rhythm, it starts out menacing, all horror movie suspense style, with percussive gong-like warnings and imitation bowed cymbals, turning into a loud and blissfully unnerving swirl that eventually fades to nothing…”
Szczepanik put out 3 records this year (this, We Make Life Sad, and Luz, a collab with Frederico Durand as Every Hidden Color). And Szczepanik is probably my most favoritest droner right now so why & how the fuck did I chose just one? First, not only did he take the number one spot last year but he was on that list twice (his Ante Algo Azul series couldn’t be skipped). And while this is a totally biased & subjective list, I still feel the need to be a little fair to everyone who’s not Szczepanik. I mean, if he put out 10 records, chances are they’d comprise the whole list, so I tried to restrain myself and only picked one. While Luz is incredible, it didn’t hit me the way his other two did. And We Make Life Sad is one of the most personal and unique albums this year, truly amazing, but I thought I could exclude it due to it being less droney than The Truth Of Transience. Oh, and because Transience is fucking stunning. Out of the three, this one unquestionably wins the gold.
2.High Aura’d – Sanguine Futures (Bathetic)
“…a foggy midnight journey through the middle of the ocean, with distant muffled canons fighting off some ancient sea beast, mythical & literal sirens wailing, calling with sweetness & alarm, chimes and clatter rattling in the still darkness…”
How the hell did High Aura’d make a record this goddamn good? Seriously, this is amazing in so many ways. Dark & minimal rumblings that breathe soft and threaten your life. I literally can’t imagine him ever making a better record than Sanguine Futures and it’s only his third outing as High Aura’d. I’m pretty sure he will at some point, though, because this dude gets exponentially better with each release. But even if he doesn’t, this is a black star that’ll forever outshine so many other records.
1.Superstorms – Superstorms (Experimedia)
“Crushed bits and burnt clouds, a blurred fury dipped in bliss, sunsets viewed through a grit lens, a trillion grey sky pixels fractured with the glow shining through, brittle static & warm drones blown out, scratched out, washed out…”
There’s a lot of dark & depressing shit on this list (tough times this past year) but the Number One sidesteps my masochism in favor of something that resonates so profoundly with me. Superstorms crafts the kind of drone that I feel is at my core, the kind of drone I crave more than any other: gritty, blissful, and fucking loud. I feel most at peace when records like this are so loud they obscure everything else in my brain. I can barely stand how fucking awesome Superstorms is. Serious next level drones. I’ve never heard anything else quite like it. I hope that you like this even half as much as I do because FUUUCK I love it too fucking much and the world would be a better place if everyone shared in this stupidly perfect love.
As in most recent years, energy was constantly in the news in 2012. A post attempting to catalog every noteworthy story or event would be quite long. However, a few big trends stand out. For starters, it's a near-certainty that the average US gasoline price will set a new record for the second year running, in both real and nominal terms. Americans are responding by choosing more fuel efficient cars. Meanwhile, fundamental shifts emerged from obscurity into the awareness of policy makers and the public. US energy exports have become a mainstream topic of conversation, and the goal of energy independence--a concept with debatable meanings--has acquired renewed respectability after spending a couple of decades on the fringes of energy policy debate. Perhaps more significantly, our views of climate change and future oil supplies--once aligned--have diverged.
For renewable energy it has been the best and worst of years. Global overcapacity in solar equipment manufacturing drove down the costs of solar panels, at least partly counteracting reductions in government incentives, especially in Europe, and making solar power more competitive. The US is on track to add a record 3,200 MW of solar capacity this year, while China could add 5,000 MW. However, solar manufacturers' rapid expansion depressed their margins and extended last year's string of solar bankruptcies, with firms like Abound Solar, Konarka, Solarwatt, Q-Cells and others forced to restructure or liquidate in 2012. A similar, if less dramatic wave is working through the more mature onshore wind industry, which faces the expiration of a key US incentive, the Production Tax Credit, or PTC on December 31. In anticipation of that loss, wind developers have added 4,728 MW of new capacity in the US through the first three quarters of 2012, the most since 2009.
Energy played a complex and possibly decisive role in the US presidential election. Remarkably, President Obama successfully co opted his opponent's energy platform by embracing an oil and gas revival that his administration had done little to help and much to hinder, even though it appeared to conflict with his emphasis on renewable energy and climate change mitigation. Meanwhile, the shale gas revolution was creating hundreds of thousands of direct and indirect jobs and lowering energy costs across the economy, contributing to US manufacturing competitiveness. The resulting economic growth, while still below the level of other post-war recoveries, apparently helped the President make his case for a second term.
The inherent tension between surging US oil and natural gas production and concerns about climate change--fanned by Hurricane Sandy--reflects a major shift that occurred this year, at least as an influence on future energy policy. Recall that until recently, memories of past energy crises, combined with the influential Peak Oil perspective, shaped our expectations of resource availability and future production. This narrative of hydrocarbon scarcity complemented prescriptions for a rapid transition away from fossil fuels as the only viable solution to climate change, supporting a shared goal of a more sustainable energy economy based on renewable energy, smart grids and electric vehicles. The exploitation of unconventional oil and gas resources in previously inaccessible source rock--shale gas and "tight" or shale oil--poses significant challenges to both strands of that argument.
First, it undermines the notion of energy scarcity for at least the next decade, and probably well beyond. US natural gas production set a new record this year, and US oil production returned to levels not seen since 1997, putting increased pressure on OPEC's control over global oil pricing. Nor does the US have a monopoly on these unconventional resources. Canada looks like the next big shale gas play, with China and South Africa possibly not be far behind. The technologies that enabled the US shale gas revolution and its oil offspring are being transferred around the world.
Yet we also learned that US energy-related CO2 emissions have fallen back to 1992 levels, largely because of a dramatic reduction in the use of coal in power generation. While renewable energy sources like wind and solar power deserve some of the credit, natural gas-fired turbines--driven by cheap shale gas--have added three times as much net generation since 2007 as non-hydro renewables.
Shale gas and oil might not provide a long-term solution to global warming, but they could at least buy us the time to develop the innovations like improved electric vehicle batteries and low-cost grid-storage that will be necessary if renewables are to displace fossil fuels across the entire spectrum of their use--and dominance. They could also provide the time to develop and deploy the next generation of nuclear power, including small modular reactors.
I'd like to thank my readers for your continued interest and encouragement and wish you a happy holiday season.
opening the door for a possible Scott Brown return is annoying, but a stronger climate advocate at State is not
John Kerry, likely future secretary of state.
If Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.) becomes secretary of state, as is expected, he’ll be the most ardent climate hawk ever to hold the office. But how much will that matter?
Kerry has been pushing for national and international solutions to climate change for two decades, and he understands that it’s a geopolitical problem, not just an environmental one. “Global climate change is a security issue on a planetary scale,” Kerry told Grist in 2007. In a speech on the Senate floor this past June, he said, “Climate change is one of two or three of the most serious threats our country now faces, if not the most serious, and the silence that has enveloped a once robust debate is staggering for its irresponsibility.” Just this week, Kerry introduced a bill that would help communities become more resilient so they can better withstand the weather disasters brought about by climate change.
“No senator since Al Gore knows as much about the science and diplomacy of climate change as Kerry,” said David Goldwyn, an international energy consultant who served as Clinton’s special envoy and coordinator for international energy affairs. “He would not only put climate change in the top five issues he raises with every country, but he would probably rethink our entire diplomatic approach to the issue.”
Kerry has been engaged with climate policy since he attended the first major U.N. climate summit in Rio de Janeiro in 1992. He was coauthor, along with Sens. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., and Joe Lieberman, ID-Conn., of sweeping legislation that would have capped U.S. emissions of greenhouse gases, although the bill fell apart before making it to the Senate floor. In 2007 he and his wife, Teresa Heinz Kerry, coauthored a book, This Moment on Earth: Today’s New Environmentalists and Their Vision for the Future. …
While many lawmakers speak passionately about climate change, Kerry has also logged years doing the thankless behind-the-scenes work of climate diplomacy and in the process has earned the respect of the rest of the world on the issue.
He was the only U.S. senator to attend key U.N. climate-change negotiations in Bali, Indonesia, in 2007, and Poznan, Poland, in 2008. At a major climate summit in Copenhagen, Denmark, in 2009, Kerry arrived before President Obama and Secretary Clinton and spent time in back-room meetings with ministers from China, India, and several European countries to help pave the way for final negotiations.
Still, Kerry takes a realpolitik approach to fossil fuels. Here’s what he told Grist in September when asked about the “all-of-the-above” energy strategy being promoted by Obama and the Democratic establishment:
Look, I’m the most ardent advocate up here for doing something about climate change, but you’re nevertheless gonna have to use fossil fuels. The question is, can you use them in clean and manageable ways? The answer is, Yes, you can, if you make the right sort of requirements. …
If you’re going to use X amount of fuel and you’re using it in a clean way, it’s better to have it produced from the United States than to be dependent on other countries. So, do you want to expand it overall? No. Overall you want to find alternatives in renewables and other things. But you have to do what you have to do to meet our energy demand. You have to have scrubbers, you have to have standards, you have to take old power plants out of service and put in new power plants with higher standards. There are ways to do fossil fuels responsibly. And if we don’t do that, it’s gonna be catastrophic.
What would that sort of thinking mean when it comes to the proposed Keystone XL pipeline? Climate activists are anxious to find out. The State Department will decide in 2013 whether to approve the northern half of the pipeline, which would carry tar-sands crude from Alberta across the U.S-Canada border and down toward the Gulf Coast. Enviros were pleased that U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice took her name out of the running for secretary of state; she has investments in pipeline builder TransCanada and other companies with a stake in Keystone.
Kerry has said very little on Keystone, and has been cautious in what he has said, perhaps not wanting to ruffle feathers while seeking the top job at State.
In 2011, in his role as chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Kerry promised a careful review of the pipeline proposal but didn’t say he was opposed: “There’s a lot at stake here and I’ll do my best to leave no question unanswered including every possible economic and environmental consideration before a final decision is made.” That statement came after Friends of the Earth accused him of failing to “lead in investigating the oily influence scandal surrounding the Keystone XL pipeline.”
Romm gives Kerry the benefit of the doubt on the Keystone question:
I’m not sure Kerry could become Secretary of State fast enough to influence the Keystone XL pipeline decision, but it is hard to believe he would not have raised this issue with the President, since a go-ahead decision would immediately undercut the Administration’s credibility on the climate issue both at home and abroad.
Still, whether the issue at hand is Keystone or international climate negotiations, how much power does a secretary of state in the Obama administration really have?
Ultimately, foreign policy is decided in the West Wing. “This is an administration where most of the policy-setting in international relations is done inside the White House,” as Karen Tumulty of The Washington Postrecently put it.
Kerry could be a critical advocate for climate action within Obama’s Cabinet, but ultimately it’s the president who will make the big calls on climate deals, Keystone, and so much else.
Forgoing cement in favor of a sustainable process that creates a silky smooth, vibrantly textured wall with a subtle microcrack pattern like that of porcelain.
I don't know much abt jazz but Hank is one of my favorite music writers about anything. early 2k13 resolution: listen to more jazz and read more Hank
I've posted a list of my favorite 2012 jazz recordings at the Jazz Journalists Association site. As you'll see, it's a little unwieldy: 15 numbered choices, plus 11 extras. I'd almost rather not order these at all, but so far, I've submitted rankings to two year-end polls (one jazz-only and one where all genres are in play), and I wanted to maintain some consistency between my various lists. Really, though, I view this as a non-hierarchical set. I consider all these picks honorable mentions, in a non-consolation-prize sense; this is the jazz that captured my attention this year, and each of these albums comes highly recommended. Below are some thoughts on eight of the selections, presented in an intuitive order not related to the rankings of the aforelinked list; I'll post comments on the rest soon, probably in two more installments. I've included Spotify and Bandcamp embeds, as well as video links, when available.
Ravi Coltrane Spirit Fiction [Blue Note]
I'll begin with this album, and devote extended space to it, because (A) it slipped my mind as I was hastily compiling my year-end lists—one or two worthy records always do—and (B) I've been re-enchanted with it over the past couple days. Before hearing Spirit Fiction, I was only vaguely familiar with Ravi Coltrane's work; I think I may have skimmed through his 2009 full-length, Blending Times. I can't tell you how this compares, but as an entry point, it's stellar.
Normally I like my albums of a piece, i.e., recorded in one session—or at a few close together—with stable personnel, but Spirit Fiction makes a strong case for a different model. The record flip-flops between tracks by two different bands: Coltrane's working quartet with pianist Luis Perdomo, bassist Drew Gress and drummer E.J. Strickland, and a quintet with trumpeter Ralph Alessi, pianist Geri Allen, bassist James Genus and drummer Eric Harland. Joe Lovano, the album's co-producer, sits in on two tracks by the latter, and though this all sounds like a bit of a jumble, the pieces flow together beautifully.
Interestingly, the quartet focuses on free jazz, in the literal sense (i.e., jazz that's free, rather than Free Jazz; compare progressive rock and Progressive Rock)—a strategy that's also employed, as I'm now reading, on Blending Times. There's only the faintest connection here to the ecstatic jazz launched by Coltrane senior; these improvisations are nimble, lyrical, responsive—almost like a more overtly jazzy version of what you hear on the Spontaneous Music Ensemble's Karyobin—with the players sort of skipping over and around each other as they gradually cohere into grooves. In contrast, the quintet tracks (three of which are by Alessi) are tight, swinging and refreshingly nonformulaic; "Who Wants Ice Cream," e.g., starts with a magical little Coltrane/Alessi duet before the full group kicks in. A few other pieces also atomize the personnel: "Spring and Hudson"—a Coltrane/Strickland duet—and "Fantasm," a remarkable Coltrane/Lovano/Allen reading of a Paul Motian composition that does right by the title. Rather than distracting you, the variety helps you focus. Listening straight through, you don't know what's coming next, and the changes in personnel, ensemble texture and performance strategy re-engage the ear.
Basically, Spirit Fiction is the kind of record that proves to me that there really is no contemporary jazz mainstream, per se, at least not a uniform one; any artist who matters, and I'm now fully convinced that Ravi Coltrane does, comes off like a movement of one. Coltrane isn't a soul-baring searcher like his dad; he's far humbler and more emotionally cool than that. But at the same time, there's nothing staid or rote about what he does; it's accessible without being particularly conventional. Spirit Fiction doesn't reach out and grab you; instead, it subtly draws you in, gradually waking you up to an aesthetic that's far richer than it seems on the surface, one that wants to present the leader against various backdrops, to showcase him as a consummate interactor. (Again, it's a small miracle that the album hangs together, and doesn't feel at all haphazard.) I have no idea what to compare this record to, and I find that exhilarating. Hear this.
(In case you're keeping track, tracks 1, 3, 4, 7 and 11 are by the quartet; 2, 5, 8 and 9 are by the quintet, with the latter also featuring Lovano; 6 is the Strickland duet; and 10 is the Lovano/Allen trio.)
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George Schuller's Circle Wide Listen Both Ways [Playscape]
Schuller is another artist I woke up to this year; I knew that he was Gunther's son, and that I'd enjoyed his brother Ed's bass playing in the ’80s Paul Motian quintet, but I'm not sure I'd ever heard him before this record showed up in the mail. And like Spirit Fiction, Listen Both Ways is the kind of record that doesn't fit into any convenient jazz subcategory; it's nonformulaic without feeling eccentric in any obvious or gimmicky ways, and it's unabashedly beautiful without seeming saccharine. Unlike Spirit Fiction, Listen Both Ways is very much the sound of a single ensemble, made up of really strong, distinctive, seasoned players who—the leader included—are probably less well known than they should be: saxist Peter Apfelbaum (for me, he might be the star of the record; he's got this gruff yet songful tone that reminds of me of Dewey Redman at his best), guitarist Brad Shepik (I first heard him with Dave Douglas's Tiny Bell Trio, probably the first "downtown" jazz group I saw live), vibist Tom Beckham and bassist David Ambrosio. Most of the music is by Schuller, and it's got this airy, folkish yet still propulsive and engaging quality—much like the leader's drumming. Sometimes, as on "Store Without a Name," the aesthetic reminds me of Paul Motian—sort of this ghostly, free-floating mass of melody; other times, as on Margo Guryan's "Edwin," it's more playful and boppish. But what's present overall is a very strong engagement with the material; the forms aren't terribly unconventional, but this isn't just a band playing heads and soloing. Both together and as a unit, these players are putting forth something personal and intimate. As with Spirit Fiction, it's easy to call Listen Both Ways worthwhile jazz, but it's hard to peg it with any easy signifier beyond that.
In contrast to the two names above, I knew Tim Berne's work really well coming into Snakeoil; so this one wasn't so much about surprise as it was about appreciating a subtle reframing. (More on that in my Time Out NY preview.) Over the past few years, Berne has been working hard with his current quartet (Oscar Noriega on clarinets, Matt Mitchell on piano and Ches Smith on percussion, an ensemble formerly known as Los Totopos), and though his writing for this group doesn't differ hugely from the multivalent prog-jazz he put forth in projects like Hardcell, the band has found its own way into the material. As you hear on Snakeoil, the upshot is kind of a "chamber" version of the Benre aesthetic—not defanged, by any means, but especially engaged with moody, lyrical improvisation. You'll find some of the prettiest Berne to date on pieces like "Spare Parts"; these performances still have his trademark robot-ballet momentum, but the band seems to always be pushing toward a pensive, abstract place, which they do without losing a sense of purpose. Not exactly something new from Berne, in other words, but fresh enough to be entirely worthwhile.
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Darius Jones Quartet Book of Mæ'bul (Another Kind of Sunrise) [Aum Fidelity]
Book of Mæ'bul parallels Snakeoil in two ways: (A) It presents an often gritty alto saxophonist-composer in a relatively refined light, and (B) it also features Matt Mitchell and Ches Smith, contributing the same sort of elegant adventurousness that they do on the Berne recording. But this album serves a very different function in the Jones discography than Snakeoil does in the Berne one. Tim Berne has issued many, many full-lengths, whereas Jones is still a relatively young recording artist; Book of Mæ'bul is, by my count, only his third LP as a leader (in addition to a duo with Matthew Shipp, a couple records with Little Women and a new one as part of the Grass Roots collective). I enjoyed Jones's last two records, 2011's Big Gurl (Smell My Dream) and 2009's Man'ish Boy (A Raw and Beautiful Thing)—especially the latter, which featured the monster tandem of Cooper-Moore and Bob Moses—but I think he's reached a new level with Book of Mæ'bul. No one who's heard Jones over the past few years would dispute that he's one of the more searingly soulful young saxophonists playing today, a worthy heir to the original Free Jazz giants, but with this record, he shows that he's after much more than straight catharsis. Here, you really hear Darius Jones the writer, sculpting poetic melodies—opener "The Enjoli Moon" breaks my heart, and deserves to become a new standard—living with them, and then, when he gets the urge, blowing them to bits. Music like this makes me think of the classic Sonny Sharrock manifesto: "I've been trying to find a way for the terror and the beauty to live together in one song." To me, Book of Mæ'bulrepresents Jones's own quest for that same aesthetic grail. Fortunately, the musicians in his quartet grasp this entirely. To me, this group sounds like a potential heir to the late David S. Ware's fabled quartet; there's a similar kind of caress-then-crush duality going on in. I can't wait to hear the next chapter.
///// Federico Ughi Songs for Four Cities [Skycap]
Eri Yamamoto Trio The Next Page [Aum Fidelity]
More personnel overlap here: The band on drummer Federico Ughi's Songs for Four Cities features both Darius Jones and pianist Eri Yamamoto—whose own 2012 full-length also made my list—not to mention the aforementioned Ed Schuller. The Ughi was a real sleeper for me; unlike the records above, and many other records I chose, this one didn't benefit from any sort of PR push whatsoever. I doubt I'd have heard of it at all if it weren't for my weekly TONY duties; I checked out Songs for Four Cities after I noticed a listing for a record-release show at Firehouse Space (a show I unfortunately didn't get to see). Before this, I had a sense of Ughi as a staunch free-jazzer, mainly affiliated with William Parker, Daniel Carter and other Vision Festival mainstays, as well as with guitarist Adam Caine, an old friend and former bandmate of mine who currently works with Ughi in a rousing freeform duo known as The Moon.
But while there are moments of old-school ecstatic-jazz catharsis on Songs, that's not the prevailing vibe here at all. No, on the contrary, this is one of the warmest, most straightforwardly approachable records I've heard in 2012, jazz or otherwise. The Songs in the title is no accident; the pieces here—inspired, as the title would suggest, by four cities around the world where Ughi has lived—feel as elemental as deep, old hymns, and as catchy as great ’70s soul. Once you've heard tracks like "Tolmin" and "Claygate," I can pretty much guarantee they'll be looping in your head. And the band plays the material with such loving respect; the themes aren't just improvisational fodder, stated and then jettisoned; Jones and Yamamoto, both proud guardians of melody in their own work, really dig into these compositions, nurturing them, seeing to it that they bloom. I'm thinking of moments like Yamamoto's solo on "Claygate"—it's just so lush and bluesy and fun and heartfelt, so extremely not about hip jazz sophistication, geared entirely to bringing out the essence of Ughi's writing and sharing it with the audience. Again, there are hints of free-jazz fire in this music, as on "When We Cry," during which the band reaches a hectic, increasingly abstract crescendo, but even here, it's not at the expense of the tune. The straighter pieces are what really put this one over the top for me, though; every time I put this record on, I marvel at its unpretentiousness—how it's not some knowing gloss on a sort of pop-jazz aesthetic (and I use pop-jazz in a totally non-pejorative sense), but a fully realized embrace of that idea, the notion that jazz, whatever its "school," should be about the song first and foremost, and about how improvisation grows from that like a flower from soil. Whatever your particular tastes, you need to hear what Ughi and his band are doing here.
Here's some video from a 2011 gig by the Songs for Four Cities band.
Much of what I've written above also applies to Yamamoto's own 2012 release, The Next Page. I've enjoyed her last couple discs on Aum Fidelity, but this latest one seems to me like a definitive statement. As with Songs for Four Cities, there's something wonderfully out-of-step about Yamamoto's aesthetic as a bandleader. A good illustration of what I mean: I had The Next Page on in the kitchen the other day, and my wife asked if I was listening to A Charlie Brown Christmas. I laughed and told her that that was exactly what I thought of when I first heard this record. (Maybe my recent appreciation of Yamamoto's work is no coincidence, given that I woke up to Vince Guaraldi's trio in a big way earlier this year when I wrote about drummer Jerry Granelli.) I think the Guaraldi comparison is fully apt here, and fully complimentary. Again, as with the Ughi, this is an unfashionable record: unfashionable in its plainspoken devotion to song. I mean Yamamoto and her bandmates (bassist David Ambrosio, who's also on the George Schuller record above, and drummer Ikuo Takeuchi) no disrespect when I say that pieces like "Whiskey River," a particularly warm and bluesy piece here, sound almost like themes for vintage sitcoms, the kind of music that might play as a camera pans down a row of inviting Brooklyn brownstones in autumn.
This is the kind of jazz that's extremely easy to take for granted, even to condescend to. (Indeed, I guess you could accuse me of the same in light of that sitcom description, but I'm just honestly reporting the images this record conjures for me.) Reviewing this album on PopMatters, Will Layman wrote, "But in a field of new jazz piano trios operating at the heights of Glasper and Moran, Iyer and Taborn, Shipp and Parks, Yamamoto’s group on The Next Page seems too sweet and too pleasant to grab a listener’s ear and demand that it listen." In a way, I think that's exactly what I enjoy about the Yamamoto aesthetic, i.e., its alleged too-pleasantness, which doesn't seem excessive at all to me. On the whole, I respect and enjoy the work of the pianists above—as readers of this blog might know, I'm particularly partial to Taborn, Shipp and Moran—but to me, it seems narrow-minded to portray jazz piano as some kind of arms race, a contest to see who can sound the most contemporary, whether it be via hip repertory choices, engagement with cutting-edge pop forms or staunch avant-gardism.
I'm not sure exactly when this gig ended, but for a long while—I'm talking years—Yamamoto and her band played weekly (maybe even more frequently?) at Arthur's Tavern in the Village. I've never been there, so I can't tell you exactly what it's like, but I do know that Arthur's isn't a jazz haunt, per se, like, say, Smalls is. My sense is that it's a neighborhood bar, where the music plays more of a background role. Or at least, that's how I imagine it, hearing The Next Page. This is music that fits into and shores up life, rather than music that demands intellectual engagement. It doesn't flatter the listener's urbane sophistication, so it's only logical that it wouldn't be a critics' favorite. (Hey, I like brainy jazz as much as the next person, enough so that I've been accused of "recondite hipsterism" in the past; the inclusion of, say, Steve Lehman's record on my year-end list shows you that I'm still very enticed by progressiveness, when done well, that is. Also, I should say that part of the uphill battle for Yamamoto in particular might be that she records for Aum Fidelity, which many consider synonymous with classically styled free jazz. She's also appeared on albums by William Parker and Whit Dickey. Maybe there's an unfair expectation that her own work will follow up on that thread.) On the other hand, The Next Page sounds really good and gives you a genuinely warm feeling—much the way "Linus and Lucy" does. In these areas, it succeeds mightily, and I think that's all one can ask of a record: that it choose a direction and head that way wholeheartedly. The Next Page is a simple pleasure, but it isn't a shallow one. Much like on the Ughi record, Yamamoto, Ambrosio and Takeuchi are really singing songs here, together, and I think jazz could use a bit more of that.
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Steve Lehman Trio Dialect Fluorescent [Pi Recordings]
Since I mentioned the Lehman above, I'll head here next. I wrote at length on Lehman and this record in a June profile for TONY, so I'll keep this relatively brief. Part of what attracts me to Dialect Fluorescent is how smartly it contrasts with Lehman's previous LP as a bandleader (not counting sessions co-led by Rudresh Mahanthappa and Stephan Crump), 2009's octet release Travail, Transformation and Flow. As I wrote in the TONY piece, Travail is a contemporary masterpiece, an example of "what you point to when someone asks you what NYC jazz sounds like right now." Dialect Fluorescent is also a very right-now kind of jazz record, but one achieved with a totally different set of tools, namely the incorporation several standards (not to mention the theme from Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory) and the use of a slimmed-down ensemble. Simply put, this trio, with bassist Matt Brewer and drummer Damion Reid,cooks in a way that a record like Travail couldn't. In 2009, I wrote about a live performance by Fieldwork (the collective trio of Lehman, Vijay Iyer and Tyshawn Sorey), dubbing their aesthetic robojazz. There's a similarly prog-minded virtuosity at work on Dialect, but the pure funk is closer to the surface here. To me, this record is as much about the super-dry, unforgiving sound of Reid's kit as it is about Lehman's tart-toned lines; it's about daredevil busy-ness, but with tons of space left, as on pieces like "Foster Brothers." Travail was about Lehman the composer; this one's more about the athleticism, the breakdance. And simply by virtue of it being a trio release, the sidemen aren't really sidemen anymore; they're right there with Lehman, pushing, prodding, stutter-stepping. You have to be in a certain mood to dig this one: caffeinated, almost—primed for hyper-awareness, as you would be when stepping up to an addictive yet fiendishly challenging arcade game. But when that feeling strikes, Dialect Fluorescent is the perfect musical counterpart.
The Healer is, again, a totally different kind of jazz record than any of the others I've listed: not complex and acutely engaged like the Lehman, or homey and inviting like the Yamamoto. I think of this album as an exercise in vibe cultivation. Going into this record, my impression of Lonnie Smith was more or less a caricature: classic soul-jazz organ dude, wears a turban, etc. He's the kind of artist that almost invites you to underestimate him, pigeonhole him, align him with a sound or an era or a motivation, to file him away with a "Yeah, I get it." As with the Yamamoto, though, it's a mistake to consider approachability and shallowness to be synonymous. This record blindsided me and swallowed me up. I'm not familiar enough with Smith's recent career to know how long he's been gigging in a trio format with guitarist Jonathan Kreisberg and drummer Jamire Williams—the band featured here, as well as on 2010's Spiral—but this group has achieved a rare kind of mojo: somewhere between laid-back funk, chopsy fusion and spacey psychedelia. On pieces like "Backtrack," the three musicians enter a kind of slow-burning group trance: humid, slinky, almost impossibly patient. These are the kind of grooves you wish would go on forever, vamps where in the macro sense, nothing much of consequence is happening, but where the tiny details have mind-altering potential if you let them work on you. Yes, the aesthetic here is very retro, as though a crate-digger's samples had come to life, but obviously Smith comes by it honestly, having been at it since the ’60s; Kreisberg and Williams, meanwhile, groove like a dream. Every time I put this record on, I want to drift away with it (see esp. the molasses-slow version of "Chelsea Bridge"); if you're a sucker for the intersection of funkiness and trippiness, I think you'll feel the same. I should mention too, that the disc is far from uniformly placid: "Beehive" burns like the rare-groove equivalent of Mahavishnu Orchestra. It's all just badass, super-authentic and, to me, pretty much irresistible.
Check out the EPK here, and a Spotify stream below.
A forensic database of electrical sounds is thus being developed by UK police, according to the BBC. "For the last seven years, at the Metropolitan Police forensic lab in south London," we read, "audio specialists have been continuously recording the sound of mains electricity. It is an all pervasive hum that we normally cannot hear. But boost it a little, and a metallic and not very pleasant buzz fills the air."
Any digital recording made anywhere near an electrical power source, be it plug socket, light or pylon, will pick up this noise and it will be embedded throughout the audio.
This buzz is an annoyance for sound engineers trying to make the highest quality recordings. But for forensic experts, it has turned out to be an invaluable tool in the fight against crime.
Even with—or, in fact, because of—slight fluctuations in the level of local electric power, such recordings can reveal sonic traces of where and when they were recorded; these barely audible details act as "a digital watermark," the BBC explains, secret audio artifacts that put "a date and time stamp on the recording."
You can thus acoustically prove that someone was in a certain part of, say, London at a certain time of day, and that a given audio recording is thus genuine (or faked), due to the exact signature of what electrical networks in that part of the city had been doing at the time.
It's like cosmic microwave background radiation, an immersive soundtrack—a sea of acoustic metadata—hidden in the built environment, detectable electronically, droning all around us at a volume usually below human hearing.
Jerry's high-pitched nasal voice still shines through, but it's got a little drunk-guy-in-the-corner-of-the-bar-talking-to-no-one-in-particular vibe to it now that it's been slowed down. A tip of the cap to Samer's friend who does not use Twitter for bringing this to our attention. More » 
At some point during every Nuggets home game, team mascot Rocky attempts to make a backward, half-court shot. The crowd gets into it, the scoreboard operator puts Rocky's half-court shooting percentage on the jumbotron for all to see, and Rocky hams it up on the rare occasion that he sinks one. It's kind of a thing. More » 
Notre Dame's Manti Te'o, the stories said, played this season under a terrible burden. A Mormon linebacker who led his Catholic school's football program back to glory, Te'o was whipsawed between personal tragedies along the way. In the span of six hours in September, as Sports Illustrated told it, Te'o learned first of the death of his grandmother, Annette Santiago, and then of the death of his girlfriend, Lennay Kekua. More » 
[Image: Random sound file using Sound Studio].