A two state solution?

It's rare that I see something this courageous on mainstream tv, but the folks at 60 minutes pulled it off. After the Gaza invasion I noticed a lot of people who hadn't harbored strong opinions either way about the Israel/Palestine dialectic expressing revulsion at what was occurring, and I think this refreshingly honest news segment reflects that. What is going on in the occupied territories is wrong, it needs no mitigating addendum. As someone who deeply cares for peace, both for Israelis and Palestinians, I think it is high time for us to get honest and start discussing uncomfortable topics. Dogmatically held corners of real estate, both ideological and geographical, tend to be more like quick sand.

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Stanley Milgram

You might not know the name, but you know this man's work. Social psychologist Stanley Milgram conducted an experiment in the early sixties in which perfectly "normal" Americans were instructed to administer electric shocks to strangers sitting in another room. Of course, there was no actual voltage, but what Milgram's disturbing findings yielded was that 65 percent of the people involved in the experiment were willing to apply the maximum voltage possible to their unknown, unseen counterparts simply by being instructed to. Conducted in the smug enlightenment of Yale, the "Milgram experiments" had damning ramifications for everyone, coming on the heels of the Eichmann trial, the initial furor over Arendt's "banality of evil" theory, (which of course Milgram validated) and foreshadowing how far "average" Americans would cave in to the dark side in the nascent Vietnam war.
This experiment is legendary, but what most people remain unaware of is Milgram's other work. He was largely responsible for popularizing the "six degrees of separation" concept through his "small world" experiments. In these, Milgram randomly decided upon the cities of Wichita, Omaha, and Boston, with the goal of seeing how closely associated people are who don't personally know each other. He mailed packets to individuals in Omaha and Wichita containing details of the project's purpose and then an address of another random individual living in Boston. The receiver of the package was asked if he or she knew the person in Boston whose address was in question, and if not, to forward the package to a friend or relative who might. Once the package finally reached the target address in Boston, Milgram could calculate the number of acquaintances that removed the two subjects. At the end of the experiment, the average stood at 5.5 or 6, thus solidifying, at least in the popular unconscious, the notion of "six degrees of separation" between everyone in the world.
Milgram is a personal hero of mine; his detached humanism has a lot of humor to it, a lot of bite, and very lasting implications.

ear splitting dabke

the outbursts of Everett True

Vintage Edwardian curmudgeon, prefiguring Larry David by eighty years and WC Fields by a couple.

today's tyler tidbit

The song isn't called "Ain't that America", it's called "Pink Houses". And THAT song isn't called "Good Morning America", it's called "The City of New Orleans". Go figure.

Mel Street

Mel was one of the great lost talents of country music, and certainly one of the saddest stories. He was raised in Grundy, Virginia, and spent his early adult years as an electrician and auto mechanic. Although gifted with an undeniable voice and songwriting talent, it wasn't till his mid thirties when his self penned "Borrowed Angel" became a nationwide hit. In the next five years Street would have a handful more of top twenty hits, all of them bleak, defeated cheatin' songs, the kind that make truly great country music so timeless. Unfortunately for Street, they were close to home. He had battled depression and drinking his whole life, and even as more lucrative record contracts came his way, his close brush with stardom was taking a weighty toll. He shot himself on his birthday, October 21st, 1978. Ironically, one of his posthumous singles was titled "Just Hangin' On". There isn't much footage of Street from television, given his sadly brief career. This is from 1976, "I Met a Friend of Yours Today". As with figures like Ian Curtis, Chris Bell, poet Frank Stanford, and other tragic young artists, the inner pain with Street is so palpable and eerie, even in a rather banal setting such as mid seventies Nashville television.

creative leasing in the global village

I'm sure you've noticed the domain names for countries when perusing foreign websites, "de" for Germany, "UK" for England, "za" for South Africa. Luckily for the tiny Pacific island nation of Tuvalu, the national web domain suffix also happens to be something very memorable and potentially profitable for web designers, ".tv". With very few natural resources and limited economic prospects, Tuvalu has made millions of dollars annually by simply leasing ".tv" to web hosters.

kola beldy

John Smiff 25th

The mysterious Nashville guitarist captured live, playing our friends' wedding. I only managed to capture a couple of minutes but this was a long form piece he had been working on for a while.

they sold a Lada these

Hell i traipsed across Armenia in one.

mahmoud darwish

There were many passings to mourn in the last year but the death of Mahmoud Darwish has gained extra solemnity in the last week as Gaza is bombed to rubble. As the poet laureate of the Palestinian people and along with Edward Said one of their most eloquent spokesmen, his presence as a voice of reason and passion will be sorely absent from these ever more tragic times in his former homeland. I have always contended that the Palestinians have been a people sold short less by the Israelis and more by their own leaders. They never had a Ben Gurion, but they have also never had a Mandela or a Ghandi, which is what would have better served them. Arafat and Abbas were "rehabilitated" terrorists, while men like Habash never even got that modicum of legitimacy. (Keep in mind the Israelis funneled quite a bit of money in the eighties to both Hamas and Hezbollah, in an effort to destabilize the PLO.) The kind of senseless bloodshed that has dominated Palestinian resistance, especially sense the Second Intifada, does nothing to further their cause and only hardens the hearts of the right wing hawks in Israel. Meanwhile, Israelis in the south endure a siege mentality, never sure when crude rockets might be lobbed over from Gaza. It is sad beyond words and I truly think nothing will be done until two things occur. First, the Arab world has to recognize Israel and work together to give humanitarian and political aid to the nascent Palestinian state. Secondly, the United States has to broker real peace plans, setting aside all past prejudices and looking forward to a future beyond war, beyond terrorism, beyond the kind of tribal stone throwing that has paralyzed the collective ego of humanity and tends to remind me of the first section of "2001". Darwish, while certainly no lover of Israel, recognized the limits of violent resistance and spent much of his life attempting to "change the world through poetry" as he put it. He was among a handful of Arab intellectuals who condemned a proposed Holocaust denial conference in Lebanon in 2001, and he always dignified his fellow Arabs and Israelis as human beings, not entities. Darker times are surely ahead for the people of Palestine and Israel, but there was a ray of light offered by Darwish's pen that deserves a ceremonial remembrance in bleak days like the present ones.