It was sort of a coincidence. I’d been reviewing the CDs I picked up on my trip to Japan a few months ago, and then I sat in with If By Yes as part of the Japan music festival here in NY last week. Then the earthquake and tsunami and the nuclear mess all hit—all of which made me want to get this Japanese playlist together faster than I normally would have. Thoughts of Japanese friends, culture and countryside welled up, and this music became a kind of soundtrack to my thoughts and feelings.
This music arrived largely through friends. Thanks to Yusuke, and all the folks at Vacant Gallery in Tokyo, who invited their musical friends round—who tipped me to a lot of new stuff I didn’t know about. Thanks Deerhoof for arranging that Ichi, from Nagoya, perform here at LPR. (One of the most pleasantly surprised NY audience reactions I’ve seen since Tune Yards opened for Dirty Projectors!) Thanks Diego Cortez for the Oorutaichi CD. Thanks Hideaki Matsuura for the tip about Soothe.
Can we help?
Traditionally, the Japanese have issues with charity. They see themselves as proudly self-reliant, and offers of aid after the Kobe earthquake were initially refused. However, times change, and maybe now there is an understanding that offers of help are as much a gesture of solidarity and mutual feeling as they are about money. The urge to reach out is as much about our own feelings as it is about Japanese needs. For folks outside Japan, it stems from an altruistic urge to show some connection and a human bond in a time of crisis. To say “you are not alone.”
Here are two ways to donate. Yuka Honda sent a link to a fund set up by Japan Society here in NY who are donating 100% of the donations that get sent (they’re even swallowing their administrative fees): http://www.japansociety.org/earthquake
Needless to say, this Japanese situation is causing a lot of countries to both examine the safety of their own reactors, and question the wisdom of nuclear power as an energy source. Germany shut their plant down in order to do full inspections. However, no matter what our local power companies or government representatives tell us, we know that our nuclear plants (though not actually manned by Homer Simpson) are probably not as tightly maintained as the those of the Japanese. Anyone who’s been to Japan can tell you that although there are a lot of communication quirks, things generally run well and incredibly smoothly. We look pretty backwards in comparison. So when they can’t get their nuclear plant under control, you know we definitely couldn’t under similar conditions.
As a recent NY Times article points out, more deaths occur yearly due to coal than to nuclear energy, including Chernobyl. That’s one way of measuring things—body counts. The other way of measuring cost was brought up in another article in that paper focusing on the cracked and leaking “sarcophagus” that encloses what’s left of Chernobyl, and how “the contaminated area is around the size of Switzerland,” and “will be affected for more than 300 years.” That doesn’t mean it will be clean in 300 years, but that it will be manageable. The 200 tons of melted nuclear stuff that has burned down into the earth inside the sarcophagus won’t be approachable for the foreseeable future. We don’t usually make things without a shelf life.
As that article says “the death of a nuclear reactor has a beginning… but it doesn’t have an end.” The comparison to the contaminated area being the size of Switzerland is sobering. Can you imagine suddenly Switzerland is gone? Contaminated? Off limits? Can you imagine lots of contaminated Switzerlands dotting the globe? Huge swaths of the oceans and lakes also off limits?
We know just enough to light these fires, but we don’t yet know how to put them out. Would you set something on fire in your house if you had no idea how to really, really put it out (you’re not allowed to toss it out the window in this analogy)? That mind-boggling scope of contamination and long timeframe is the difference between nuclear and coal. Though, realistically, coal is not the answer. It has been responsible for much of the climate change we are experiencing, and it is not a viable energy option going forward. Besides, it will run out. Quite a few environmentally aware folks have advocated re-approaching nuclear power, as it won’t cause the same kind of climate change that we know for certain coal is causing. I saw Bill Gates at TED last year make a presentation about small nuclear plants that re-use spent fuel. The idea of dealing with the fuel disposal issue seemed very smart, but now, after Japan, does any reactor seem like a safe, secure and viable way forward? There are just no guarantees with this stuff.
Some places are looking at alternatives, and some of them are working! Not just theories either. Portugal—little Portugal!—45% of its electricity will come from renewable sources this year (that’s up from 17% five years ago)! To get some perspective on that, Obama’s goal for the U.S. is to run on 20-25% renewable energy sources by 2025. Those renewable sources in Portugal are wind, hydropower, solar and ocean waves. Not all of those are right for everywhere in the U.S., I admit, but some of them are (the U.S. has geothermal as an option, as well).
This amazing change meant a big outlay for Portugal and her people—they pay plenty for electricity (though maybe that will level out after the initial capital outlays have been paid back). They were laughed at by Berlusconi, amongst others. Something tells me Berlusconi won’t be having the last laugh on much of anything these days. But Portugal’s case proves it CAN be done, and in a short time—five years! And they’re not exactly the richest country in Europe either.
The Swedish city of Kristainstad took a little longer—a decade, but they’ve made even more impressive progress. That city of 800,000 (the size of present day Detroit) uses NO fossil fuels to heat their homes, offices and businesses. No oil, no coal, no gas. 20 years ago all their heat came from fossil fuels (nuclear wasn’t an option, I guess). As it’s a farming region, they went for bio fuels, as opposed to wind or solar. Even many of the local cars run on fuel produced from bio fuels. All the city vehicles do.
This is a combined fuel and heating plant in that town. It was built with the help of a company, Fallon Consultants, in Victoria, British Columbia.
What do they use? Potato peelings, wood scraps, manure, used cooking oil, stale cookies and pig guts. Ugh—but it works. Truth be told, not every single amp and bit of fuel is produced this way in town (though all the heat is). But everything connected with the city itself uses this fuel, and the city is also trying to convince locals to convert their private cars to use this fuel as well. So, though they are not quite at zero carbon footprint, they are getting there.
Even the pretty conservative town of Salina, Kansas is converting to geothermal and other technologies and unplugging when they can. The government didn’t mandate those changes—they just want to save money.
Small African villages are using power sources that result in not being reliant on the national grid. The local sources are renewable and cheaper than the grid, too.
So, before we throw up our hands and say nuclear is our only option, maybe we should look at what these other places have already done. These are not just ideas and schemes that some pie-in-the-sky-green-advocate is pontificating about. This is what some practical-minded communities have already accomplished.
Maybe the Japanese tragedy will cause more folks to give these options a second glance.
Another Arab nation’s corrupt leadership is being toppled—first Tunisia, now Egypt, Yemen and Jordan are rising up as well. Though thousands have been beaten and arrested and probably tortured by those states’ security forces (the ruler of Yemen immediately offered a pay raise to the police—way to deal with your people’s problems!), what is heartening is that all-out civil war has not broken out in these countries. It has been peaceful, relatively speaking. The ouster of the Tunisian despot was done without the country descending into all-out civil war. Tell that to the folks who were beaten and tortured, I know, but compare it to El Salvador or Nicaragua, where the U.S. financed and supported wars to reinstall friendly dictators—instigating decades of massacres and armed conflict. So, though not exactly a Velvet Revolution (Czechoslovakia), or even People Power (Philippines), it’s not as bad as it could be—as far as bloodshed.
Wisely, the U.S. is at least refraining from continuing to back the bad guys in most of these uprisings—or so it seems (at least so far). The U.S. isn’t exactly supporting the protesters though; we espouse democracy, but let others make it happen. As some of the protesters said in an interview on Al Jazeera—they don’t need the U.S., they can do this themselves.
This from one of the demonstrators in Cairo—via Huffington Post:
The military made no attempt to disperse some 5,000 protesters gathered at Tahrir Square, a plaza in the heart of downtown that protesters have occupied since Friday afternoon. They have violated the curfew to call for the ouster of President Hosni Mubarak's regime, which they blame for poverty, unemployment, widespread corruption and police brutality.
Nobel Peace laureate Mohamed ElBaradei appeared in the square around 7 p.m.
"You are the owners of this revolution. You are the future," he told the cheering crowd. "Our essential demand is the departure of the regime and the beginning of a new Egypt in which each Egyptian lives in virtue, freedom and dignity."
This guy’s sign says, “Game over.”
What is mentioned in every story over the last couple of weeks, is that the U.S. has been supporting and propping up these criminal dictators for decades (most of them have been in power for at least 30 years). The rationale for support is that these dictators are our allies in the battle against Islamic fundamentalism. The Egyptian president encourages fear regarding the Islamic Brotherhood and insures backing from the US as a result. The Islamic Brotherhood is not a terrorist organization, but given its name it is easily portrayed as one in the West.
In decades past, we backed monsters because they professed to be anti-Communist. Now the slightest lip service that they are anti-terrorist and they get weapons and excuses from Hillary Clinton (the latest in a very long line of excuse makers). This is truly counterproductive. Supporting repressive regimes is what gives rise not only to young advocates for reform, but also to the very organizations that are planting bombs and teaching hatred. Both the reformists and the radicals share a distrust for the U.S.—unfortunately a common bond. The people in those countries know that their rulers have been supported by the U.S.—they’re not ignorant, they know way more about it that most Americans.
Needless to say, Afghanistan, Iraq and Iran aren’t in love with the U.S. either—the dominoes are falling. The whole region is changing political shape, and we should be encouraging reform, not funding its repression anymore. The principal oil states—Saudi Arabia, Russia and Nigeria—speak for themselves: corrupt oligarchies, monarchies or just plain corrupt. Even W knew we had to get off the oil tit ASAP. Instead of wasting billions making enemies, we should be investing those billions in our children’s future (education) and funding alternative energy models. Whole towns in Sweden have reduced their carbon footprint to zero—it can be done, it’s not a utopian pipe dream.
The amounts being spent for no positive results in Afghanistan and Iraq are mind-boggling—to believe that there is no connection between a nation with a growing level of mostly financial-based unrest (that’s the U.S.), and the money spent on illegal wars without end, is to not see history being remade. These U.S.-led wars are financed by money borrowed from China (who holds much of the U.S. debt)—any wonder the Chinese are zooming ahead? I suspect the Chinese will begin some serious arm twisting soon, as they’ll want to be sure their debts can be paid back. And if they see a nation in financial disarray that can’t pay its bills, the Chinese may start dictating how we get our house in order—as any bank would do to a loan holder in danger or default.
Anyway—exciting, thrilling days. Who would have expected all this to grow from a single street vendor who refused to pay bribes?
Big brouhaha as Google and Verizon propose an arrangement which, in my understanding, constitutes a second Internet, a faster Internet, that would be created for medical, industrial and…here it comes…entertainment usage. This 2nd Internet would not be open to the public, at least not for free. So, when your streaming movie stutters and stops because little sister is video Skyping her boyfriend in the next room, you’ll say to yourself, “Hey, I thought the Internet bandwidth was, um, just there, like air.”
Despite Moore’s Law the recent exponential growth expansion of some online capabilities is slowing down in certain areas. I noticed when traveling on a tour bus with wi-fi (pretty good that we had wi-fi!) that when some band members began using video Skype to chat to their loved ones, pretty soon the rest of us couldn’t get even an email in or out. Does Net Neutrality mean whoever gets to the table first gets the whole pie? I realized that with all these companies that are making a business out of the — up til now — unlimited use of high bandwidth media (YouTube, Hulu, Vimeo, Pandora, Spotify, Netflix, Apple TV…well, you get the idea), all that data sucks up most of what is in the pipeline. HD streaming movies soon to come? Forget it.
Does anyone remember the days when you’d yell out, “Don’t wash the dishes, I’m going to take a shower!”? (For those who don’t, it was because a typical residential hot water heater didn’t hold enough hot water to provide for both usages simultaneously.)
I’m not sure the two-tiered model is the best idea — but I’m glad they are beginning to face up to this inevitability. More and more businesses are emerging based on an assumption that consumers will be able to upload and download limitless amounts of data for a fixed monthly cable fee to their heart’s content. It’s like charging a flat fee for water, and then one day some segment of the population decides they’re going to water their golf course-sized lawns and also add a pool. The reservoirs, the farms and local industry would dry up and shrivel instantly.
Phone companies have tiered data plans — if you watch a lot of TV using a mobile network on your phone, you will pay for it. I’m not sure why the same sort of idea isn’t acceptable for regular Internet. Not that the phone companies should charge if you use wi-fi on your phone — but a kind of metered data use for Internet might be reasonable. Maybe wi-fi should be free for the whole country in a capacity that allows for basic emails and some browsing, but for heavy media usage and data transfer a meter could start clicking?
Danielle Spencer, Todomundo Studio Manager, responds: Net neutrality is primarily about whether the Internet Service Providers can prioritize different types of data. The issue of tiered pricing for consumers' bandwidth usage is related but that's not the main question right now. You ask, "Does net neutrality mean whoever gets to the table first gets the whole pie?" But in fact without net neutrality it's the large corporations who are already at the table who will get the whole pie and then some. When the Fox News website streams to your household twenty times faster than the local TV station's, it'll be because Fox has paid Verizon to give consumers faster access — and that will be a barrier to entry for smaller and less wealthy corporations.
DB: I still feel that some sort of tiered system is inevitable…but yes, one hopes it doesn't prioritize Fox or anyone else. Maybe the answer is a pricing tier for customers (not providers) in which access to content is equal at each level? Then the customer decides to pay for extra speed, not the provider. That preserves neutrality, in the sense that big companies don't have an unfair advantage.
DS: We already have tiered pricing for consumers. For wired internet (dialup, cable, DSL, fiber optic) we pay very different rates based on maximum bandwidth usage. For mobile phones, we tend to pay based on total data usage. Now, we could implement plans for wired internet based on total usage rather than bandwidth, and it wouldn't violate the principles of net neutrality. Indeed what you describe — that at a given level everything is equal — is the fundamental principle of net neutrality. The key distinction is whether you the consumer are paying more for more speed/data, or are you paying more for the same amount of data coming from Wikipedia than from Fox because RCN Cable has decided to charge different rates?
We’ve seen way too many articles recently about newspapers in financial trouble: closing bureaus, cutting back on commissioned pieces that require in-depth reporting, and erecting paywalls for their online editions in an attempt to reverse the exodus of subscribers expecting to get all their news for free. While the physical print model of news journals might disappear relatively soon — which will instantly eliminate any such news source from the 1/5 of Americans who rarely use or have access to the Internet, and don’t use smart phones — it doesn’t mean that what they do also needs to end. As the future of these institutions seems increasingly in peril, I recently began to notice some of the incredibly important things they do and have done.
In the midst of further research for Here Lies Love (someday it will see the light of day as a performance!), I read that it was the San Jose Mercury News that exposed the Marcoses’ ill-gotten wealth. (This would have been in the ’80s.) The Philippine press was, of course, heavily censored at the time, so they couldn’t research or write about such things. This story, which of course filtered back to the Philippines, wasn’t the straw that broke the camel’s back over there, but it was significant in opening the eyes of the Philippine populace to what was going on behind the curtain of the New Society.
In July there was a massive series in The Washington Post called “Top Secret America” (it sounds like a Team America sequel, but it’s real) detailing the massive spending and expansion of a big-beyond-belief series of agencies and outside contractors all engaged in “anti terrorist” activities. It’s hugely expensive, out of control and unaccountable. Also ineffective. It’s a huge exposé, and all the information was already public knowledge, though it required years of digging and organization to assemble a collection of coherent articles.
Just today The New York Times ran a piece about little Portugal managing to power 45% of its grid using sustainable energy after only 5 years of work (on solar, wind arrays and restructuring state utility companies). The obvious implication, to me — from the almost editorial-like nature of the article — was, “Why can’t we, the richest nation on earth, do this?” (Sustainable energy use in the US is barely 5%, and at present rate and with present policies might not catch up to Portugal in our lifetimes.) The article, as I see it, is a goad, a prod, a provocation — and proof that yes, it can be done. But not when you give oil companies massive tax breaks and offer them huge financial incentive programs; not when you don’t enforce the off shore drilling regulations that exist; and certainly not when oil guys were running the government.
These are just three examples. None of this information — or rather, the organized presentation of this information — would have come through other institutions. They simply don’t have the resources that print or TV have.
So, as we watch print media and the press struggle financially, I wonder what is to become of this segment of our democracy that is sometimes referred to as the fourth estate. This country and many others were founded on the idea that a free and open press constitutes, effectively, a separate wing of the government — keeping the other branches honest, and exposing stuff that the government, lobbyists, the military or large corporations would prefer to keep hidden. Checks and balances.
Not everyone agrees that the fourth estate is a positive force. Sometimes it’s likened to a mob, sometimes to a pack of gossips, muckrakers and scandal mongers who simply stir things up for their own pleasure, and throw their critical weight around as a way of exorcising personal psychological demons. As a performing artist I’ve had moments of agreeing with this latter assessment. But what if no one, no agency or medium, had enough popularity, readership or weight to expose situations or inform the public about some of this stuff? — never mind biased music writers. An ignorant public is a gullible public, a bunch of suckers, ripe for plucking.
The broadcast press — radio and TV — who could have picked up the slack have mostly imploded as far as serving this function. (NPR and PBS don’t have the budgets, and PBS was also under politically motivated attack.) The provocations and lies of Fox, and the celebrity focus and lack of investigation of most of the rest, render what could have been a real alternative to print invalid.
Where there used to be the occasional in-depth series on TV news shows, now there is rumormongering, inciting fear and outright lies. Most Americans get their news from TV, so we shouldn’t be surprised that they think all Muslims are somehow guilty for 9/11 or that Saddam Hussein was connected to al Qaeda.
Although we emphasize freedom of the press, shout about it and hold it up as something worth fighting for, that freedom is worthless and irrelevant if it’s rendered nearly invisible and virtually inaudible. As they used to say in Soviet Russia: when nothing was permitted, everything was important, and now that everything is permitted, nothing is important. In the Soviet days of samizdat pamphlets, “news” carried weight, and people met and talked about what they’d heard or read. But with Russia approaching Italy’s standing as a land of media awash in bimbos, game shows and corruption, most serious news that isn’t propaganda is next to invisible in the capitalist fog of anything for entertainment.
It’s not exactly true that everything is permitted anymore, what with Putin’s crew assassinating any dissenting politician or critical journalist, but you get the point: freedom of the press approaches meaninglessness as any serious work increasingly becomes discouraged because it doesn’t sell, and the lowest common denominator of journalism takes over. Dictators don’t need to take repressive measures to silence criticism, they just need to be more entertaining.
What about the Internet? Are there web institutions or investigative sites that will step in when print journalism can’t afford to fund years of investigation and research anymore? Drudge Report? The Smoking Gun? Wikileaks? Huffington? It’s a running joke to think that you might threaten someone who had wronged you or who was harming others by saying, “Beware the power of the blogosphere!” — though we know the blogosphere has indeed righted some wrongs and uncovered injustices. But it’s not as powerful and doesn’t have the resources that the press once had.
I’m glad these online institutions exist, and the Wikileak of the Afghan material will speed the end of an invasion whose plan and purpose was never thought out in the first place. But sometimes it’s not enough to leak, cull and aggregate. Research and analysis that takes time (and money) can have a larger effect on the public and their representatives than the biggest mountains of data.
Once again though, if 1/5 of the country doesn’t or can’t or won’t use the Internet, then when and if these online alternatives become the main source for news, those people will instantly be completely disenfranchised. They will be like serfs who aren’t taught to read because, well, why bother?
If one accepts that a democracy without an informed citizenry isn’t a democracy and shouldn’t refer to itself as one, then do we need to rethink how a democracy can work in our culture the near future? Some think the hive mind and self-regulating social networks are a model — that when everyone can speak and everyone is connected then the intelligence and the checks and balances will emerge all by themselves — but I’m not sure I’m ready to believe that millions of people with very little insight and almost no information can somehow magically turn into one smart collective entity.
That said, our cells don’t know what we (think we) know — individual cells don’t all “know” how to make a whole person, for example — but in a structural sense, actually, they do. The DNA for a whole person is contained in every cell, but it’s maybe less a complete blueprint than a small (relatively, for what it accomplishes) set of rules. Like swooping, flocking birds, fish or thousands of other creatures, the behavior of some groups appears to be intelligent, but it’s not. Not in the sense of being self-aware. Is that the model for a future society of “idiots” — a kind of emergent evolutionary structure? Everyone would be given a few basic rules to follow — as if instinctively — and then a whole society eventually emerges from that? It’s more like an ant colony than what we have now. It works for them. Do we want to be more like the ants?
I mused about all this before, in a previous blog post, so this is a return to and extension of that one.
I recently read a long article in Archaeology called “Should We Clone Neanderthals?” It’s serious — various bone fragments and other bits have been found in recent years, and as gene sequencing and cloning technology have gotten faster and cheaper, it’s not pure science fiction anymore.
When I saw that headline online, I thought to myself, “Didn’t they already make that movie?” (No, I think that was about a frozen caveman.) And then I remembered, “Hey, didn’t Neanderthals have a larger brain capacity than us?” They did — not by much, but they did have bigger brains. Some scientists discount this, saying they had more body mass as well, but that was largely made up of muscle mass — in other words, they were stronger than us too. It goes on — their bones were thicker, too. One theory is that those muscles and strong bones were crucial because in their world, the taking down of game was often hands-on, with only the aid of stone tools, which were used at fairly close range. I would maintain, though the scientists don’t say it, that they might have been more quick-witted and clever than us too…in order to be able to survive in the harsh, dog eat dog conditions of the time.
Though we have always portrayed “cavemen” as lumbering dimwitted brutes, that might just be an expression of our own species-specific xenophobia; the survivor in any situation always thinks that they are superior, and their survival is the proof. But many very smart species, not to mention large chunks of human civilization, have died out, been overrun, failed to adapt or persisted in habits that were against their own best interests. We’re not the first ones to foul our own nests — we’re just not gone…yet. Evolution is not the same as progress — we’re not “getting better” as we’d like to believe, or improving along some giant timeline. We just happen to be well adapted and lucky at this particular moment. Some of our inessential abilities will wither, and others will emerge and evolve as time goes by. But better or not better is not the right way to judge what we are.
The Neanderthals did interbreed a little with Homo sapiens, the other branch of the human tree — but for the most part, their numbers started dwindling about 30,000 years ago. Maybe the environment was changing, or maybe Homo sapiens were more social, and in unity lay strength. Maybe they became too good at hunting, and depleted their own food resources; hunters require plentiful game, and wide areas of wilderness to allow that game to flourish. Maybe some of those animals disappeared or moved to other parts of the continent. Whatever happened, it doesn’t necessarily mean that the Neanderthals were stupid — or at least stupider than us, which is the point.
Other abilities and traits of these folks: they could talk. They almost certainly had a language. They had religion, and ceremonies for their dead. Paleontologists surmise that their broad, projecting noses allowed them to breathe more easily when chasing prey, and also in cold weather. Total athletes, except they had short legs.
They developed more rapidly than we do. Puberty came early, and by age 15 they were fully matured. Most scientists now think they had red hair.
Most likely, they didn’t live as long as we do — though one might question if what some of our own elderly citizens go through is really living. They were probably lactose intolerant — except as babies — as that adaptation in humans didn’t occur until recently, and even then mostly in zones of intense dairy farming. They lived in small groups or clans, and though they weren’t as social as some other proto-humans, they weren’t complete loners either. They may have had symbiotic relations with animals prevalent at that time. And like Native Americans, the Inuit and indigenous Australians, they would get drunk easily and intensely.
So, how likely is this cloning?
According to the Archaeology article, cows and goats have been cloned successfully numerous times. Dolly, the cloned sheep, was a famous precursor. But it’s not easy. The last ibex (a kind of small goat) in the Pyrenean area was felled by a tree branch in 2000, and the genetic sequence gang and clone club all made attempts to bring it back. They used her DNA to reconstruct 439 eggs. Only 57 of those developed into embryos, and most of those didn’t develop further — the one that did died of lung failure hours after being “born.” So there are no guarantees, but scientists keep trying. Given the focus and intense interest in cloning, many assume all of this will be possible and less risky before too long. A clone of a woolly mammoth is under way.
As outlined briefly above I think it’s clear that should a successful Neanderthal be “brought back,” he or she might be smarter than us. Do we want to introduce a human that is smarter (and stronger!) than the rest of us into our world? Imagine the body of Mike Tyson mixed with the devious smarts of Kenneth Lay (Enron) with maybe some Einstein thrown in. Who’s working on this movie? Someone should be. I’m scared already.
It was pointed out in the article that Neanderthals would have human rights. Here’s a great story: Stuart Newman tried in 1997 to patent a genetic sequence that mixed attributes of humans and chimpanzees — in an attempt, he said, to prevent anyone from ever creating such a creature. The US patent office denied him, claiming that it would be against the 13th Amendment, which prohibits slavery. Not animal rights, but slavery. (Of course, this means that the nightmare hybrid possibility is still legally possible.)
Having human rights, a cloned Neanderthal would be able to freely walk out of the lab as soon as it felt the urge. No one could legally stop it.
To make the story even more intriguing, many of the scientists, viewing the Neanderthals as social beings, claim that it would be cruel, sad and unethical to bring back just one — a single being without its family, mates and some similar beings to interact with who might also have some identical social and sexual tendencies and drives. However, creating a whole little clan of these critters, who have the right to go off and live their own lives — and presumably reproduce — and, it seems, are smarter and stronger than us…well, skip ahead a few years, and I see where this movie is going.
Didn’t this guy used to play in a Norwegian metal band in the ’80s?
I see the little clan emigrating from the lab to a part of our planet that is still suitable for their inbuilt propensities — Siberia maybe, or parts of Canada. They might request to be left alone, and to have their own “nation.” Over time they will multiply and maybe figure out how our world works — after all, they made quantum leaps in tool making, amongst other things, in their own time. Should they then realize, or come to believe, that they are indeed better than us, they might wonder why it is that we are in control. It wouldn’t seem fair to have us, the weaker dummies, running the world, would it? They might decide to assert themselves. Fred and Barney, Wilma, Betty and Bamm Bamm — no joke.
A while back a friend told me that the Republican Governor of Florida, Charlie Crist, was using the Talking Heads song “Road to Nowhere” in a campaign ad. He’s running for Senate.
Well, using a recording of a song, or even just using that song and not the original recording, in an advertisement without permission is illegal, unless the composition has gone into the public domain. It’s not just illegal because one is supposed to pay for such use and not paying is, well, theft — it’s also illegal because one has to ask permission, and that permission can be turned down.
Besides being theft, use of the song and my voice in a campaign ad implies that I, as writer and singer of the song, might have granted Crist permission to use it, and that I therefore endorse him and/or the Republican Party, of which he was a member until very, very recently. The general public might also think I simply license the use of my songs to anyone who will pay the going rate, but that’s not true either, as I have never licensed a song for use in an ad. I do license songs to commercial films and TV shows (if they pay the going rate), and to dance companies and student filmmakers mostly for free. But not to ads.
I’m a bit of a throwback that way, as I still believe songs occasionally mean something to people — they obviously mean something personal to the writer, and often to the listener as well. A personal and social meaning is diluted when that same song is used to sell a product (or a politician). If Crist and his campaign folks had asked to use the song, I would have said no — even if they had offered a lot of money, such as I have been offered in the past for ad use (though I’ve always turned these offers down).
I believe my audience is aware of this no-ad use policy of mine, and part of the respect I am accorded as an artist is due to my maintaining this policy. Needless to say, if they thought I’d licensed a song to a political campaign they might not respect me as much in the morning.
It might be pointed out that Republican campaign organizations have done this kind of thing before. John McCain’s campaign used the Jackson Browne song “Running on Empty” and Reagan’s folks used Springsteen’s “Born in the U.S.A.” Both were used illegally without permission, and in the case of the Jackson Browne song a lawsuit was brought. After the Republicans lost several motions attempting to dismiss Browne’s complaint, they settled with him. Part of the settlement said that the Republican National Committee promised to respect artists’ rights and to obtain licenses for the use of copyrighted works in the future. So, it’s not like they weren’t warned, or hadn’t been burned before.
Now, there is such a thing as fair use. Typically the type of free use that doesn’t require a permission might be a student quoting a passage in a book to make a point in a graduate paper, or someone using part (not all) of “Road to Nowhere” to identify, say, the marching groove in that song as a metaphor for the inexorable forward momentum of time, or some such notion. These uses are typically exempt from licensing, permission and fees. In this case, however, the use was not to comment on or explain something about “Road to Nowhere,” ’80s music in general, Talking Heads or Cajun accordion riffs — it was used solely to further Governor Crist’s advertising strategy in his Senate primary campaign… a campaign that has nothing to do with me or my music.
Another tactic the Republicans have used to justify this kind of thing is the right to political free speech. Their argument is that the song is integral to making a political point, and therefore falls under free speech. Well, that’s just crazy talk — the song has nothing to do with Crist’s political views. It simply has a title that is a handy catchphrase, as does the Jackson Browne song — but the content of the song itself doesn’t have any connection with the politician’s campaign or agenda.
So, my lawyers and I have filed a lawsuit — and we also hope the Republicans might not engage (again) in this kind of illegal behavior in the future.
We eventually arrived at Klaustur, the nickname for Kirkjubæjarklaustur. It was almost completely clean here... no clouds of ash being thrown up by the occasional passing car or truck, so we looked for a place to stay. Luckily we were directed to a hotel that seemed to have aspirations to become a kind of golf resort, as they’d made a 10-hole course around some of the nearby hills that all seemed to resemble women’s breasts — complete with nipples on top.
There were three other couples in the whole place, which was nice. In the summer this area is popular as a jumping off point for getting onto some of the nearby glaciers, and an area called 100 Craters, the road to which wasn't opened yet.
It rained in the night and we wondered if it would help out the guys with hoses in Vík.
On to a nearby gorge, again along a gravel road. It appears out of nowhere, and one can hike along the top of it and peer down...
The gorge is only a few kilometers long, so after a short hike we’re back to the road and heading towards a glacier tongue I spied as we sped by Skógar — if the ash had indeed been washed away somewhat, then it might be possible to drive up to the glacier. First we tried a gravel road that was supposed to lead up to Mýrdalsjökull glacier, but it started to get pretty sketchy, so we turned back from that approach. The landscape was nice and bleak.
Further on I could see the glacier tongue from the main road... a dirty, icy wall in the distance just a little inland. Along yet another gravel road we got pretty close, and after a short hike we were on it... covered with dark brown sand or ash, or both, hard to tell. The glaciers push a lot of rocks and dirt along in front of them, so glaciers with dirty faces aren’t all that strange.
I got up as far as an area where some crevasses began, and where there were some funnel shaped holes down which melt water was draining. I could see some hikers emerging over a ridge, and they all had on crampons and carried poles and ropes, so I thought maybe with all these crevasses and deep holes I shouldn’t proceed much further.
We headed back towards Vík, and it had indeed been washed a bit cleaner. The wind seemed to have changed direction, and the ash cloud appeared to be moving more directly south over the sea, and maybe even a little west. We heard soon afterwards that Reykjavík airport had been closed, again, and maybe this wind change was the reason. Our NY friends wouldn't be getting in for Cindy’s opening.
There was a little ash dust coming up from passing vehicles, but not so much in the air now. As we passed under the cloud it began to rain — black gray brown dirty rain, as if someone were throwing mud at the windshield. The more it rained the dirtier the car got.
Clear sky ahead. We headed back to Reykjavík.
Needless to say the tourism industry has been hit hard. The guy we rented our car from was sitting around the office with his mates listening to music on their computers.
Cindy had her opening and loads of people turned out — I ran into Einar, former Sugarcube who had brought me here for a concert in the mid-’90s. We played at a movie theater, which, as it turns out, is better than a lot of the venues where some acts play. Now Einar has other projects, among them Ghostigital, with whom I am slated to collaborate on a song. The new Icelandic minister of culture, Katrín Jakobsdóttir, opened the show. Here’s her official government portrait:
Reykjavík airport had been closed for a few days due to the shifting winds moving the ash
cloud around. I had intended to fly Sunday, but was delayed until Tuesday. It
reopened in time for a flight that would put me in town the opening day of
their arts festival,
in which I have two series of photo works. There would be no time for me to
oversee the installation… but, Danielle, who manages my studio, flew in earlier
in a noble attempt to get some of the work to Reykjavík at least one day in
advance. In order to accomplish this she had to fly to Glasgow, and then double
back to Iceland. At first only a small airport in the north of Iceland was
open, so there was a chance she'd have to fly there and then take the arranged
bus service across the center of the island nation — along a very scenic road that
passes by glaciers and barren rocky landscapes. But after all that traveling, I
doubt too many would be looking at the lava fields and ice.
While stopping over in Glasgow, Keflavik airport in Reykjavík reopened, and the work got in OK.
Cindy was showing in this festival as well, so we decided to make the trip, ash cloud permitting. After we arrived on the morning of the 12th and had a jet lag nap, I went to view some of my work before the festival officially opened. One series, Moral Dilemmas, is a series of 15 — at this point — multiple choice questions placed on info kiosks around town. Each question is accompanied by a picture I took of a CCTV camera. I did a few of these some years ago, but never as public pieces, and never so many of them. These have new questions tied to the banking and financial crises such as Iceland has just had.
Here is one:
In the background one can see the big new concert hall that is being built. All work stopped when the country’s economy collapsed. The city came to the rescue, and it’s started up again. Ólafur Elíasson, the Icelandic artist who did the waterfalls in NY and the sun in the turbine hall in London, is doing the windows. They’re being fabricated in China.
Here are some more info kiosks:
And here is a link to some close-ups that are easier to read.
The festival is partly photo-oriented, though there are musical acts, and I saw a show of fabric works as well (with “wool” spun from moss!), so the festival format is somewhat loose. Both my series have photo elements in them, so they qualify.
The second group of images consists of photos I took of old-style curtains (and one of doors, from Belsay Hall near Newcastle) stuck on the windows of Reykjavík's modern art museum. These are printed on the same material that is often used for ads that cover, for example, the sides of busses, including their windows. The parts that cover the windows have thousands of tiny holes in them, so they are a bit like two-way mirrors. People inside can see out fine, and to them the windows just seem slightly tinted, but from the outside it's very difficult to see in — one sees only the image.
It's not like I had this idea and was just waiting to place it somewhere. The festival had offered the windows a while ago... though what could one do in this situation? To make something physical, one would have to be in Reykjavík for quite a while, and probably assemble a group of local helpers — not likely to happen within their newly frugal budget. So dioramas and the like — objects to be viewed through the windows — were out. I also didn't want to completely obscure or kill the light coming through the windows with an image or material... that would seem cruel to those inside, who would then be enclosed in a dark space with only artificial light. Iceland is dark enough for much of the year!
It occurred to me that there was a material I'd photographed a number of times that might be perfect. I'd taken lots of pictures of those ads on busses and trucks that wrap over gas caps, grills and often even over the windows. In the latter cases I noted that the material became different over windows, and wondered if there might be some image that could be applied over these museum windows, printed on that kind of material.
I looked through my archive of photos for inspiration. Maybe something I had taken over the years — I'm constantly taking pictures with no idea where they'll end up — might unlock this puzzle. At first I thought of using some phone pix I'd taken recently. I'd reversed the color and I thought that blowing up an indecipherable lo rez phone image might be strange and beautiful. There were also a couple of pictures of frilly curtains on file, and one of curtains in a fabric store in Mérida, Mexico. One was taken in a hotel meeting room in Easton, Pennsylvania, where my last tour started. I didn't have enough for all the museum windows though — I'd have to take a few more. The resolution on some of the older ones wasn't high enough, as these would be enlarged to the size of the full windows, about 6 by 8 feet. So, on recent trips to Providence and elsewhere for my bikes and cities events I made time to seek out some more curtains. There were some nice big fancy ones at the Biltmore.
Danielle did a Photoshop mockup of these images on the museum windows, and it looked perfect. But would the printing be rich and detailed enough? The advertising company in Iceland that produced these did tests of both a curtain image and a reversed phone image. They both looked a little washed out — the phone pic even more so — so we went with the curtains, and asked if they could make the colors more saturated. We sent a paper print as a sample to follow for color intensity. They did one in which they hit the plastic twice with the ink... and that came close, but for some reason it still looked washed out. I was about to give up. Meanwhile, the Moral Dilemmas images were being printed by a lab (Griffin) in NY which does fine art prints, and we knew they'd get the hot day-glo style colors on those... but the window pieces had to be done remotely, and the situation was looking doubtful.
Someone pointed out to me that maybe the fact that the white backing paper — which is removed before application — was showing through all the tiny holes might dilute the intensity of the color. Duh. So, I peeled off the back of the double hit sample, and slapped it onto the window of Cindy’s apartment. She has a balcony, so I could view it from both inside and out. It worked! It wasn't as saturated as the original image, but it had holes in it, so what do you expect — even the ads I’d seen on busses were less rich when the images passed over windows.
So it was a go. The company in Iceland knew how to attach these things — there’s some skill involved. They stretch a little, and if the installation was screwed up, they would have to be reprinted. The sticky reverse side, like contact paper, was a bear to get right. (They did have to reprint one in the end.)
Ultimately I was thrilled with the result. In contrast with the minimal modern exterior of the museum, the frilly old-fashioned curtains were pretty funny... and the trompe l'oeil effect worked too.
The Moral Dilemmas looked good too, but were scattered all over town, and initially we were misinformed as to their exact locations. But I managed to find most of them eventually.
Now we had two days before the opening of Cindy’s show of her famous film stills — the first time seen here, I believe. We rented a 4 x 4 and headed towards the volcano. On the map it seemed like one of the dirt roads that leads into the interior might allow us to sneak around behind the gal (volcanoes are female here), and as the ash cloud was blowing south and out to sea we might get sort of close by using that approach.
We did find that road — the same one that leads by this waterfall... a waterfall you can hike behind!
But further up, the road was blocked by a man in an emergency vehicle, and he was making cars turn around. He seemed mildly annoyed at the volcano tourists... we weren't the only ones to be turned back.
So on then to the little town of Vík, where I had reserved a hotel room... and despite a recent BBC News video showing the town covered in ash, the hotel was still open. Volcano eruptions are common here.
On the way we stopped by a pasture at the base of a mountain behind which lay the glacier and volcano. One could see a massive black cloud rising from one corner in the distance.
Driving on, the sky looked dark ahead, as if we were about to drive into a thunderstorm. It was no thunderstorm. Below the dark sky was a kind of brown fog, and when we entered it we had to slow down. It was as if night had suddenly descended, and the ash was so dense that one could hardly see ahead.
Everything was covered — barns, cars, mountains and the lava fields. We stepped outside and were instantly covered — it was finer than sand but not quite as bad as the talcum powder fineness I'd heard it was at first. Our clothes were coated and I could taste it... yuk. Dove back in the car and moved on, not really sure how much further it would extend.
After maybe 30 km we began to see the sky becoming slightly lighter ahead... we were coming out the other side. It wasn't much cleaner, but at least we could see. Looking back one could see the big black thing stretching out across the sky, heading for the north Atlantic and Europe.
A little further on, we stepped out and looked back towards the mountain, and now we could see the actual volcano. It wasn’t spewing lava (which was the “tourist volcano,” as the Icelanders refer to it), but throwing up a constant, billowing plume of dark gray ash from the mountain peak —
enough ash to cover Europe.
Onward. Past Skógar, where we would eventually return, and where, we were later told, access to the “tourist volcano” could have been had in the early days of the eruption. One would drive a monster truck up over neighboring Mýrdalsjökull glacier and onto Eyjafjallajökull. At that time there was none of the ugly billowing ash, as the glacier water hadn't yet melted, and that's what makes the ash plume — when the water gets superheated and explodes as steam.
Around a mountain promontory and we were in Vík, which still looked pretty filthy.
A shop window was almost covered in ash.
Two men stood with hoses trying valiantly to wash the ash off their cars and houses. Another man wore a protective mask. Maybe not a good idea to stay here. We moved on, across a great, endless, sandy desert that soon became an endless lava field. The guidebook warned of sandstorms that could strip the paint off a car. We saw one in the distance.
I was told that a powerful rabbi based in Williamsburg objected strongly to the bike lanes that run alongside their ghetto on Bedford Ave. We were informed that the sight of hipster girls, their heads uncovered and sometimes their lower legs as well, is just too much to bear — though it’s winter now, and surely the gals are bundled up this time of year? Well, that was what, we were told, was the problem initially.
So, the powerful rabbi insisted to the DOT that the lanes had to go — and shortly thereafter they did.
Sure enough, some (Jewish) hipsters repainted the lane by hand, and the rabbi’s wrath was aroused once again — his neighborhood watch (vigilante) group detained the hipsters until the cops came. After no subsequent action against the perps was taken by the city, he demanded that the kids be re-apprehended, which they were — they voluntarily turned themselves in.
OK, on the face of it this is all pretty silly if you live in NY. Hasidic men are not supposed to see scantily clad women. (The man in the photo above has turned his head, but the gal is having a good long look.) In the past they’ve also complained about sexy billboards (ads for Sex and the City) on the BQE and elsewhere. How do they manage when they travel to Manhattan to deal diamonds and cameras? Are they blindfolded until they enter B&H? In addition, that corridor alongside the Hasidic ghetto is just about the only way to cycle from Williamsburg to Dumbo, Vinegar Hill or Brooklyn Heights. The stream of sexy cyclists will therefore continue, though at greater risk to their own safety. Maybe there could be a service offering wigs and wraps for cyclists passing through the No Skin zone.
Some on the blogosphere claim it’s actually not about immodest dress at all — that it’s a ruse, and the real idea is to keep the number of car lanes in the ghetto intact, and to reinstate parking spaces that were cannibalized for the bike lane. The need for plenty of parking is due to the fact that the Hasidim often don’t travel with the rest of us on subways and buses, but in their own vans and bus services — and local transport (food shopping, etc.) is mostly done by private car as well. School kids are dropped off in buses that park in what were, until recently, the bike lanes. This lifestyle requires plenty of parking — more than most other folks need. And I suspect that yes, at times some hipsters probably zoom a bit too carelessly and too close to the school kids. Well, bike lanes or no bike lanes, parking is scarce and getting scarcer in NY, so there may have to be some adjustments eventually. In Antwerp, the European center for Hasidic diamond dealing, the Hasidic kids ride bikes around town.
Although I might be expected to champion anything bike related, I think my problem with this situation is more general — how much do we allow ethnic and religious groups to not blend in and to not become part of the general social fabric, especially in a major metropolis? (We’re not talking about rural communes, where folks can wear what they like and be as freaky as they like on their own.) Multiculturalism, I gather, is the idea that we shouldn’t force outside cultures and immigrants to conform to the culture of the dominant ethnic group — we should respect the integrity of their beliefs and customs. More than just allowing halal or kosher butchers to move in, this idea implies that we might start to see things from the other’s point of view — and sometimes accommodate their wishes, even if they don’t conform to those of the majority. This idea has met its match since 9/11 — Europe, previously a bastion of Muslim enclaves and ghettos of various types and ethnicities, has in recent years pushed back against multiculturalism, and a more nuanced idea is taking hold — sometimes. Other times intolerance rears its ugly head.
Likewise, cyclists, thus far a minority, might be seen in the same light — as a fringe culture that mainstream culture accommodates and tolerates as long as the cyclists don’t insist that the dominant culture bend to their specific wishes. This, in a nutshell, is the argument that some NY communities have made when Janette Sadik-Kahn throws a bike lane in their hood. The argument might be valid, though often the local businesses discover that, for example, bike parking by their shop fronts brings in more customers, and there’s less of a chance that a van or truck will block the view of their windows. And in many cases, the complainers were outvoted by the rest of their own community.
Plus, in NYC, drivers and car owners might be in the minority — most of my friends who live here don’t own cars.
In Holland, the most tolerant place on the planet, it is becoming accepted that tolerance has to go both ways. In other words, the Muslim immigrants are increasingly expected, even by fellow Muslims in Amsterdam, to become “Dutch” in some respects. Which means they must accept that there is a long tradition of tolerance in Holland, especially in Amsterdam, and if one is to move to Holland one should expect to accept this typically Dutch way of thinking. The Muslim community, for example, has to get used to the fact that there is a district with sex shops and scantily dressed women in the windows, same-sex couples might kiss in public, and coffee shops selling hash are a common sight. The implicit agreement is that living in Holland means you accept such things, as tasteless as you may find them. The Dutch, of course, allow the local Muslim population to maintain their own customs as well — as long as they fit in and don’t make lots of demands.
This is a change from a provocative attitude that, a few years ago, resulted in the death of Theo van Gogh. He had made a film, one that deliberately goaded and incited the Dutch Muslim population, in collaboration with Ayaan Hirsi Ali, who received death threats and is now protected by the government — and is involved with the American Enterprise Institute, a right wing US think tank. Their 10 minute film features a naked woman in a see-through chador, with Koranic verses justifying the submission of women written on her body. Like the Danish cartoons, this was viewed by Muslims as a deliberate provocation… and a crude one at that. One might view it as liberal fascism.
An image from the film — and van Gogh dead on the street.
Not that van Gogh deserved to die. The Dutch rallied and demonstrated after his death, and saw the killing as an attempt to stifle free speech — to imply that public expression and criticism has limits. Some free speech advocates insist that one be allowed to say and express anything, barring the encouragement of violence. Others saw the film as being offensively provocative — in a way, they viewed the incident as if the filmmakers were asking for it. Free speech advocates feel that it’s an absolute, and that people should be allowed to say anything, as it’s “only words.”
Ian Buruma, a writer of Dutch background, has written about this incident and the issues that arise from it. He argues that freedom of speech should not be considered absolute — and that thinking in absolutes always leads to disaster. He says we limit our own freedom of speech all the time — around family and relatives over the holidays, I am reminded — and we do it to get along, to allow society to function, for our own happiness and the happiness of others. It’s not necessarily a lie to not blurt out the ugly truth whenever you think it. During the holidays we don’t tease Uncle Harry about his comb-over because we know it would just make the get together more tense than it already is — and who would gain from such insensitive honesty? Stifling free speech just a little, with some subtle self-censorship, makes life pleasanter for everyone.
A few years ago, Mamie Manneh, a Staten Island woman, was arrested for importing 720 pounds of monkey meat, including limbs, skulls and torsos, from baboons and green monkeys in boxes labeled “African dresses and smoked fish” [Link]. She argued it was her Constitutional right to bring monkey meat into the United States. Her lawyers claimed she needed to eat monkey during certain religious ceremonies for her syncretic faith, which merges Christian and African traditions [Source].
In my opinion, besides being disgusting, eating bush meat isn’t actually linked to deep traditions — it emerged as a food source fairly recently, out of hunger and dire necessity. And yes, it crossed the line among some people and was considered an element of ritual. I would argue that it’s not actually a healthy or acceptable food source in Africa, and if you immigrate to Staten Island that might be one of the things you compromise in the move.
Then, on the other side, there’s the recent Swiss minaret ban. Unbelievable! — Zurich has decided to ban new construction of minarets. I foresee other countries banning steeples typical of Christian churches in retaliation. Tit for tat. The Swiss right wing reasoning, if you can call it reasoning, is that mosques are not Swiss, and when in Switzerland one must be Swiss. McDonald’s isn’t Swiss either, and neither are a lot of other easily recognizable branded forms of architecture and décor. Who knows, maybe they even have a panel of guys in funny alpine clothes who decide if contemporary buildings are “Swiss” or not. Presumably, all banks are Swiss — except the ones with Arabic decoration.
Historically, erasing the culture of immigrants or ethnic groups within one’s borders has been attempted over and over. The Soviet Union tried to make all the groups within its massive borders Russian. Stalin shipped ethnic groups from one side of the continent to the other, to thwart any future ethnic unity and uprising. I’ve seen pockets of distinctly Asian-looking Kazakhs in the part of Russia that borders Finland!
In Tajikistan they banned the Persian alphabet, erasing Tajiks’ literary history, and outlawed Islam. This intolerance often only partly succeeds — in many of those former republics, now no longer part of Russia, Islam and local pride have reasserted themselves with a vengeance. Ripping out people’s identities has frightening consequences. When Tajikistan became independent in 1991, the country soon became immersed in a bloody civil war.
One wishes for some kind of common sense to prevail. What harm does a minaret do to the neighborhood? Well, I guess some have a sense of Swiss purity — and purity seeking of any kind always raises a red flag. Some small Italian towns have banned new kebab shops — again, claiming they are not Italian. Hello? Neither were tomatoes! To me, this is all just as silly as the rabbi in Brooklyn claiming that the hipster babes must be discouraged from passing through his neighborhood. Prohibition would probably be preferable — though he doesn’t want to build a wall just yet…
When foreigners visit religious shrines, temples, mosques and churches in other lands, we — if we’re at all sensitive — abide by the local customs. And people from those lands can be expected to reciprocate when they are within our borders.
“My husband was at Starbucks enjoying a coffee and reading the paper when about eight people sat down, opened their Bibles and held a group prayer. Then one of them began a loud sermon that my husband found offensive for its content as well as its sheer volume. I say the group was within its rights. My husband says they made inappropriate use of the location. What do you say?”
(The advice columnist said the evangelicals were within their legal rights, but their lack of social empathy was disgusting.)
Like Rodney King said — Can we all just get along? Can we tolerate difference, without taking toleration to the extreme, where everyone is expected to accept insults and provocations? Tolerance shouldn’t mean we have to let anyone with a different lifestyle boss the rest of us around. It seems maybe there’s no absolute dividing line between what we tolerate and what we insist is unacceptable. The measure of how much we should tolerate is: does it help us get along? If it divides us further, then maybe it’s not a good idea. Granted we don’t want to have to compromise our own beliefs or ways of life — resentment will lie buried, festering, and will reassert itself in some form, later, maybe somewhere else seemingly completely unrelated. I don’t want to compromise my own activities, safety and way of life more than is reasonably necessary — but I can still accommodate somewhat. Where the line is might shift from time to time — it’s not fixed, or unchangeable forever. Adaptability and accommodation make us human. Absolutes are for machines and vengeful Gods. What we sometimes call common sense — not going by the book, whether that be the law or the Bible — might be how we survive. But being an ever-changing thing, it’s hard to define. It is learnt, I imagine, by living together, improvising, and innovating, not from a rulebook.
