In case you were wondering what was keeping me from blogging excessively...

I'm taking spanish classes, re-reading El amor en los tiempos del cólera, by Gabriel Garcia Marquez, and watching every Almodóvar film I can find.

Another coup: I just found a Catalá/Euskara dictionary for my dictionary collection. There's something you don't see every day...

Posted by BradRubenstein at 05:44 PM

Just Point and Shoot

These digital cameras are amazing. I was attending the fireworks at La Fiesta de la Mercè a few days ago, and snapped this photo with my Minolta Dimage X. It's not a fancy camera; it slips easily into my shirt pocket.

It was quite dark out (10pm on the beach, with a lone streetlight casting a glow), and I braced the camera against a pole, but still was holding it with my hand (no tripod or anything). The exposure was as long as it needed to be.

A bit fuzzy, but I'm impressed nonetheless...

Other pictures from my barcelona wanderings, using the same camera, are here.

Posted by BradRubenstein at 05:33 PM

Try and Vote

Jon pointed this out to me. Just try and vote.

Posted by BradRubenstein at 08:14 AM

Opportunity for lateral promotion by non-jewish gay translators

New York Times reports in F.B.I. Said to Lag on Translations of Terror Tapes:

With $48 million in additional financing since the Sept. 11 attacks, the number of linguists at the F.B.I. rose to 1,214 as of April 2004 from 883 in 2001, with sharp increases in the number of translators of Arabic, Farsi and other languages considered critical to counterterrorism investigations. But Mr. Fine's report made clear that the expansion had not eliminated the management and efficiency problems that dogged the bureau even before Sept. 11.

Of course, it occurred to me that this would be the perfect opportunity to snap up those translators fired by the Army because they were gay.

This seems particularly good idea, since they are perhaps not hiring jews (note to self: have CBS vet the source).

The Advocate article on The homosexual translator menace is most entertaining. My favorite part:

Frank [Nathaniel Frank, a senior fellow at the Center for the Study of Sexual Minorities in the Military] wrote that the institute’s Northern California location attracted “a large number” of gay linguists. “There were way too many gay people at DLI [the Army's elite Defense Language Institute in Monterey, California] for anybody to fear the ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’ policy,” Frank quoted a gay former student as saying. “Sometimes we lived on halls that were more than 50% homosexual.”

Gives a whole new meaning to the term "Tipping Point", doesn't it...

Posted by BradRubenstein at 11:56 AM

Ankle Biters: Get Yours

Glenn at Instapundit.com points me to Steven Levy referring to bloggers as A Nation of Ankle-Biters.

I just wanted Glenn to know that the blogosphere is not alone. As far back as January 2000, we were seeing complaints of ankle biters in the hotel industry.

Full service hotels everywhere are being molested by ankle biters.

Of course, you can get Ankle Biters online for £10.95.

Or you can go to New Zealand and get these ankle biters for NZ$48.

Not as iconic as pajamas, perhaps, but I think they're cool.

Posted by BradRubenstein at 10:19 AM

La Mercè

Attending La Mercè 2004 in Barcelona is really just like attending the Republican National Convention in New York, except that instead of several hundred thousand protesters, there are hundreds of thousands of people dancing and singing and watching the fireworks, and instead of tens of thousands of heavily armed police, there are four or five of them giving directions to some lost tourist, and instead of signs denouncing the government (or denouncing the denouncers), there are signs announcing peoples affiliation to any of a number of civic groups participating in the festival, and instead of an atmosphere of fear and cynicism and division and alienation there is more of an atmosphere of fun and daring and revelry and

But since most kids here dress like anarchists, it looks the same. Anarchist chic: grunge plus face scarves I think is the look.

This just couldn't happen in New York. The crowds are too large, the people are too free, the police are too few, and the fireworks are not "safe and sane" (as a matter of fact, parents are constantly moving baby carriages to safe harbor when the flying molten metal comes a bit too close).

I am realizing that being a socialist in Spain is like keeping kosher in Jerusalem. You worked so hard on it at home, then you get here, and it is as easy as breathing.

It is the opposite of my necessary american libertarian individualism (where I'm forced to yell at the government to try and get it out of my bedroom, out of my pocket, out of my laboratory, off my computer, away from my friends). I'm listening to people (understanding 20% of the rapid-fire catalan, 50% of the rapid-fire spanish) whose passion for working together to make their world better is 100% clear.

And the weather is so perfect. And the people are so beautiful. And they recycle.

Posted by BradRubenstein at 05:27 PM

Orchestras in Cyberspace

Since I am in the process of redoing the web site for the New York Festival of Song , it actually was nice to hear Alex Ross talk about the quality of various orchestral web sites in Orchestras in cyberspace.

The actual rankings of 71 U.S. orchestras is here, at ArtsJournal.

Incidentally, Alex referred me to a very cool string quartet's very cool website.

Posted by BradRubenstein at 11:29 PM

The Ass Morpher

My friend Steve points me to the strangest site I've seen in a while, The Ass Morpher.

Posted by BradRubenstein at 04:18 PM

Two Weeks to Find a Husband

This past Sunday, Reuters reported Spain to approve gay marriage in 2 weeks .

"The cabinet...is going to approve the change to the civil code so that people of the same sex can marry. Why are we doing this? Because people have to be in charge of their own destiny," Jose Blanco, a leading member of the Socialist party told a rally in the northwestern region of Galicia on Sunday.

The reform will then have to be approved by parliament.

Spain is increasingly liberal, with almost 70 percent supporting gay marriage, according to a recent survey.

I'm off to Barcelona on Thursday; that gives me only about 6 days to find a prospective husband.

The pressure is intense.

Posted by BradRubenstein at 01:36 AM

Attack on United States by Cat Stevens Narrowly Averted

Cat Stevens, who converted to Islam in the late 1970's and took the name Yusuf Islam, was halfway into his flight from London to Dulles when TSA found his name on a "watch list" and diverted the plane to Bangor, Maine, where he was met by federal agents and denied entry to the US. He was denied entry on "national security grounds."

The articles are just coming in, but CNN, Reuters, and BBC each have a slightly different slant.

The piece of information I'm not seeing is whether it was a mistake or not for TSA to redirect the plane. Did they really believe he was an immediate threat? Reuters notes:

The TSA had the flight diverted to Maine to keep it out of the Northeast corridor airspace, TSA spokesman Nico Melendez said.

Perhaps they thought the composer of "Morning Has Broken", "Moon Shadow", and "Peace Train" was armed and dangerous.

Or is he simply on the wrong side of the propaganda war? CNN notes:

Last year he released two songs, including a re-recording of his '70s hit "Peace Train," to express his opposition to the U.S.-led war in Iraq.

Posted by BradRubenstein at 01:26 AM

Why Marriage Matters

Here is a quote by David Chag, a Country Club COO, regarding spousal privileges for gay spouses in The New York Times:

"If you are married, you are married. If you are not, then you are in the guest category. Now that the state of Massachusetts is allowing gay marriage, fine. It doesn't matter to us if you are homosexual or heterosexual."

I had been thinking (as someone not expecting to take advantage of any gay marriage statute any time soon) that Kerry's civil unions would be fine, a pragmatic compromise for a divided electorate. But although proponents claim that equality can be created through civil unions, they don't take into account this variety of privileges all sorts of non-governmental entities make to spouses, who really have no stake in the gay marriage issue. They just want the state to define the boundary for them. Whatever it is, it is.

So Massachusetts got it it right. What next?

Posted by BradRubenstein at 08:21 PM

Lesbian to Bush: Hey, you're cute!

More fear that we are going to hell in a handbasket from Power Line: A Woman's View:

We ask, our readers respond! And so far the response is unanimous. Every woman who has emailed us agrees that the photos of W. in his National Guard uniform are a plus. The most common adjectives are "adorable" and "cute," with a number of readers adding "wholesome" and "clean cut." And Bush seems to pass the ultimate test; one reader, whose name we'll protect, wrote: "Even my lesbian associate commented how cute Bush looked in his uniform just yesterday when she passed by a TV it was on."

I also think Bush looks cute in his fighter jet. (Hell, when I was in college, I looked cute piloting a two-seater Cessna). I just don't want him making foreign policy is all. Of course, I say, if you're going to hell in a handbasket, put the top down and let your scarf wave.

Thumbs up!

Posted by BradRubenstein at 11:25 AM

Moab Music Festival in NY Times

I love it when this happens.

NY Times put a picture of the grotto on their front page today.

I have many more pictures of the grotto here, but my circulation numbers are smaller.

The article is entitled In Nature's Own Concert Hall, Sound Is Forever.

Congratulations to Michael and Leslie, directors of the festival, and the whole Moab Family that puts the thing together, including slogging that Steinway downriver.

Posted by BradRubenstein at 10:41 AM

Johnny Cash and the Emu

Johnny Cash died a year ago Sep 10.

There is a sweet piece in the London Guardian about it. Bono (who walked by me this past summer in a hallway, and waved), contributed an anecdote:

I was telling somebody just the other day: "We're all sissies in comparison to Johnny Cash." And he was a zookeeper, too. Did you know he was nearly killed by an emu on his property? He told me: "That emu damn near killed me. I defended myself with a post."

Posted by BradRubenstein at 09:39 AM

Reagan's Vegetable, Rebranded

Republicans can spice up their lives with W Ketchup, so they shouldn't have to buy Heinz (Kerry). Think of all the texan burgers and freedom fries that will be assaulted by this highly politicized sauce. It's enough to make a country obese.

The Republic is doomed (but in a funny way).

Posted by BradRubenstein at 08:58 AM

Need a Lemur?

I just discovered the New York Public Library's Picture Collection Online. Wow. Select any of a gazillion categories (a huge number of animals, birds, decades of american history, costumes by region, on and on), and you'll see page after page of sample images, each with a complete bibliographical pedigree.

• A Diamond Dee Skirt Grip.
• A russian soldier
• Duck billed platypus.
• Exécution de Fieschi, Pépin et Morey.

How utterly and delightfully random.

Posted by BradRubenstein at 10:17 PM

Where ya goin'? Barcelona...

I'm off to Barcelona next week. These observations of Javier Marías in the NY Times captured my attention.

Here in Spain, we don't feel as if we are at war, because we aren't. And neither are the inhabitants of the United States, however vociferously many Americans may insist that they are. War is something else entirely. No semi-normal life can be led while a war is going on. The Madrilenians who lived through the siege of their city from 1936 to 1939 know that very well. The survivors of the daily bombardments of London during the Second World War know it, too. And those Americans who participated in that war know it also.

But there is no war against terrorism. There can be no such thing against an enemy that remains dormant most of the time and is almost never visible. It's simply another of life's inevitable troubles, and all we can do as we continue to combat it is repeat Cervantes's famous phrase, "Paciencia y barajar": "Have patience, and keep shuffling the cards."

My sentiments exactly.

Posted by BradRubenstein at 09:31 PM

We fewe, we happie fewe...

Did you know that you can browse through the images of the original Shakespeare folios at the British Library online? Thanks to my friend Stephen for pointing that out to me...

Posted by BradRubenstein at 07:47 PM

Funniest Ra^thergate sequitur

Ra^thergate is all over the blogosphere. Check here if you've been vacationing on mars. My favorite parody so far is on ScrappleFace: Former CIA Boss Tenet Calls CBS Memos 'Slam Dunk'. But I also like this Waiting For Godot piece by Donald Sensing.

Posted by BradRubenstein at 07:21 PM

Tax Policy

As my friend Hank was taking me on hikes through obscure trails outside Moab, we of course spent much of our time discussing national tax policy; what are appropriate things for government to spend money on, and how to apportion the cost of those things over the citizenry.

Now I take Hank to be, at heart, a "don't tax me" republican-leaning libertarian. Since I tend more toward the socialist bordering on communist end of the spectrum, we don't often agree on policy solutions. On the other hand, Bush's abuse of power (and the prospect of his reelection) is turning even my pinko self into a "don't tread on me" libertarian. I no longer trust the government to do it right, Bush is making government larger, not smaller, which to a blind commie would seem like a good thing, but it is so clear that so few benefit, what can I do but throw up my hands and say, "what's the point?"

In today's New York Times, The Big Issues: Taxes for an Ownership Society:

But as Peter Orszag, an economist at the Brookings Institution, pointed out in a recent speech at Georgetown University, Mr. Bush's de facto wage tax would be the worst of all worlds: it would have all the regressive aspects of a consumption tax and none of its potential for increasing national savings.

What a waste.

Posted by BradRubenstein at 07:13 PM

More Genius

I had to throw in another snippet from Lesser's The Genius of Language, this one by Leonard Michaels, whose native language was Yiddish. I think it captures the self-reflective sense of all the essays, and seems to me exceptionally well crafted.

Family members could speak Polish as well as Yiddish, and some Hebrew and Russian. My father worked for a short while in Paris and could manage French. My mother had gone to high school in Poland and was fluent in Polish, but refused to speak the language even when I asked her to. Her memory of pogroms made it unspeakable. In Yiddish and English I heard about her father, my grandfather, a tailor who made uniforms for Polish army officers. Once, after he'd worked all night to finish a uniform, the officer wouldn't pay. My grandfather, waving a pair of scissors, threatened to cut the uniform to pieces. The officer paid. The Germans later murdered my grandfather, his wife, and one daughter. Polish officers imprisoned in Katyn forest and elsewhere were massacred by Stalin. This paragraph, beginning with the first sentence and concluding with a moral, is in the form of a geshichte, or Yiddish story, except that it's in English and merely true.

Posted by BradRubenstein at 02:07 AM

Big Traffic Spike

Big spike in traffic could mean only one thing — Hurricane Instapundit!

Chapeau chapeau to the instacousin. Welcome, Instapundit readers.

Warning: I don't vet my sources, and my steady readers (aka Mom) don't care.

Posted by BradRubenstein at 01:54 AM

The Genius of Language

I love reading books of essays, I suspect because they let me fall asleep every few pages, which suits me just fine.

Wendy Lesser has put together a collection entitled The Genius of Language : Fifteen Writers Reflect on Their Mother Tongues. Much to my chagrin, it kept me awake from start to finish.

The contributors are all authors, writing in English, which is not their mother tongue. The essays are more or less self-conscious reflections on the effect of bilingualism on both how they write and what they have to say.

Example: Amy Tan writes about a New York Times Magazine article that said Chinese people are so "discreet and modest," there aren't even words for "yes" and "no". After a long exegesis on Sapir-Whorf, she ends:

Ask a Chinese person if he or she has eaten, and he or she might say chrle (eaten already) or perhaps meiyou (have not).

Ask, "So you had insurance at the time of the accident?" and the response would be dwei (correct) or meiyou (did not have).

Ask, "Have you stopped beating your wife?" and the answer refers directly to the proposition being asserted or denied: stopped already, still have not, never beat, have no wife.

What could be clearer?

I read that, and burst out laughing. I've always maintained that linguistics is the most (and most unnecessarily) contentious of sciences, and all for want of such clear explanation.

Posted by BradRubenstein at 01:29 AM

Three Years Ago Today

Three years ago today, I woke up in my 7th avenue apartment to hear the phone ringing, and my friend Adam saying, "take a look out your window". I got up and snapped a few photos...

Unbelievable how long ago that seems, and, here in Moab, how far away.

Posted by BradRubenstein at 04:31 PM

Funnel Arch

Of course, the best thing about Moab is the hiking, and I spent the day yesterday running behind my good friend Hank Rutter, who lives here and knows every trail there is to be known like the back of his hand.

He took me on a jaunt up and down big rocks, from Kane Creek Road to Funnel Arch.

It wasn't exactly rock climbing, since we didn't need tools, and we didn't hang from sheer rock walls. But there were various places where we had to crawl up strategically placed cables, and I kept banging myself on the rocks.

Of course, that's all part of the fun, when you get to be my age.

The complete set of pictures is online at unclebrad.com.

Posted by BradRubenstein at 04:17 PM

Concert in a Grotto

What happens when you take a hundred people and a Steinway, and float them down the Colorado River to a grotto just inside Canyonlands National Park? You get the annual Moab Music Festival River Concert! Among the many excellent performances, William Sharp sang John Mustos' River Songs, with Musto at the piano, and the Claremont Trio finished the day with a piece by a composer I'd never heard of, Trio quasi una ballata in d minor, Op. 27 by Vitezslav Novak. Perfect silent-movie music for a perfect day at the river.

As you can see, the scenery going down the river is incomparable. Coming from New York City, arriving in Moab is like landing on the moon. I've been going running or hiking around the red rocks every day.

After the concert ended, Chris Layer put on a great dance social, introducing the newly formed Moab Community Dance Band. Square dancing, Virginia Reels, contra-dances, all called by dance caller Chris Kermiet.

Congratulations to Michael Barrett and Leslie Tomkins for putting on such a great festival this year!

Posted by BradRubenstein at 12:21 PM

The Inner Drag Queen of Sarah Hudson

Arjan writes on his interview with Sarah Hudson:

"I feel certain girls have an inner drag queen," she tells Arjan. "And I definitely have an inner drag queen going on just like Christina Aguilera, Madonna, Sarah Jessica Parker and those kind of girls."

I love "those kind of girls."

Posted by BradRubenstein at 08:57 PM

War, Power, Bush

Paul Krugman paraphrases Chris Hedges, author of "War is a Force That Gives Us Meaning".

War, Mr. Hedges says, plays to some fundamental urges. "Lurking beneath the surface of every society, including ours," he says, "is the passionate yearning for a nationalist cause that exalts us, the kind that war alone is able to deliver." When war psychology takes hold, the public believes, temporarily, in a "mythic reality" in which our nation is purely good, our enemies are purely evil, and anyone who isn't our ally is our enemy.

This state of mind works greatly to the benefit of those in power.

I have been singularly unimpressed with anything Kerry has put forward so far to shake us of this mentality. Get to work.

Posted by BradRubenstein at 08:51 PM

NYC to RNC - !@#$%^&*

Every once in a while, the New York Times captures New York just right - NYC: It's Safe to Return, Girlie Men:

It must be said that many of the foul-mouthed protesters were out-of-towners themselves. Likening them to terrorists may be a bit much for some people. Still, they were an affront to many New Yorkers. Since when do we need outside help to scream dirty words in public?

I can vouch for the fact that I never really new how to curse properly until I had spent a few weeks on a currency trading floor on Wall Street.

I also had to learn how to turn it off when I went back to California. This did not come naturally.

Posted by BradRubenstein at 08:15 PM

Fancy searches in Google

Google allows all sorts of fancy queries that most folks don't know about. For example, try typing "2 + 3" or "30 square feet in hectares".

However, I just learned from Larry Seltzer's recent article, Don't Expect Privacy on the Web, about numeric range searching. He gives an example (which I've modified slightly) for "-google +visa 4366000000000000..4366999999999999".

He also suggests using the wonderful file type qualifier to search for quicken financial files that folks have carefully left on the web.

The things you find.

Posted by BradRubenstein at 08:01 PM

Gay Republicans Snub Bush

The Log Cabin Republicans just voted 22-2 to withhold their endorsement of Bush. A snippet:

"Log Cabin has proudly supported the President's firm leadership in the war on terror. As principled Republicans, we believe in our Party's commitment to a strong national defense and a confident foreign policy. We especially applaud the President's leadership in cutting taxes for American families and small businesses, his belief in free market principles and his compassionate and historic leadership in the global fight against HIV/AIDS," continued Guerriero.

I don't know too many gay republicans that consider HIV/AIDS their issue; I don't know anyone who considers Bush's leadership on this global fight "historic", other than Guerriero. I had simply assumed that members of the Log Cabin group have sacrificed any concerns about gay rights or discrimination or the battle against HIV in preference to their concerns about wasteful government spending and welfare politics.

It seems to me that, in withholding their support for Bush, they are simply saying that a president who inserts himself in other people's bedrooms, bankrupts the government through fiscal imprudence, engages in ill-conceived foreign policy adventures, and otherwise acts so downright un-Republican, is no longer their knight in shining armor.

Hmm. I'm hearing that same argument from straight Republicans.

Posted by BradRubenstein at 07:12 PM

Labor Day at the Moab Music Festival

I am now safely ensconced in Moab, attending the Moab Music Festival. Here I get my annual fix of music, river water, and red rock. Richard Danielpour is serving as composer-in-residence this season, and my friend and bagpiper Christopher Layer is working to establish a local traditional dance band.

Labor Day was spent in the Old City Park, listening to a great concert. Michael Barrett and Michael Boriskin played Bernstein's Candide Overture for Piano, 4 hands flying. Dana Hanchard, Darius de Haas, and James Martin reprised some of their songs from the NYFOS program At Harlem's Height, which they did here last week (prior to my arrival). John Musto played piano for them, and he was smokin'. Wow.

The picture perfect day was capped by a performance from the U of Utah Jazz Band. They played jazz. Incontheivable.

Posted by BradRubenstein at 12:47 PM

More on Caller ID Spoofing in NYT

The New York Times ran an article today about a company called Star38 that would offer spoofing as a commercial service (see my previous entry on Caller ID spoofing). But it's not working out for Star38 founder Jason Jepson:

"It generated a lot more interest than I ever thought it would," said Mr. Jepson, who noted he had spent only $3,000 to develop his service with the company's five other employees. But he said the threats had persuaded him to get out of the caller ID spoofing business.

"I was harassed," he said. "It's too much."

Mr. Jepson, an entrepreneur who lives in a gated community in Orange County, said he had hired a private investigator familiar with hackers, both to protect himself and his family and to try to determine the source of the threats.

He said that since he did not know specifically who was threatening him, he thought it would be fruitless to seek help from the police. "I don't want to go to the cops, who might not know what a hacker is," he said.

I'm not sure what the police who protect gated communities in Orange County know about hackers. I do know that folks who deal in disruptive technologies should expect disruption.

Posted by BradRubenstein at 03:49 AM

Strange meeting in Utah

I am in Salt Lake City this week, visiting my cousin Patrice Arent, who happens to be Utah District 4 State Senator.

I'm actually staying at her mom's house. Mom is Lynn Arent, who has regaled me (continuously) with tales of running Young Democrats for her good buddy Harry S Truman 60 years ago. This is a family with a lot of tales to tell. Patrice's daughter Sarah Mulhern is also getting into the political picture (also check out this article on Sarah and Patrice in the Deseret News).

Anyway, Patrice asked me what I'd like to do while I was here, and I mentioned I'd like to see the Governor's mansion. Well, today is not a regular tour day, but Patrice said, "No problem, I'll show it to you myself.". So she called someone on staff there, and it turns out the Governor, Olene Walker, is at the RNC convention. So we have the place to ourselves. I get the grand tour, and as we're talking with the Carolynne Lund, who manages the residence, who should drive up but the Governor herself, who must have left NYC very early that morning. I imagine she must have been somewhat surprised to see us standing in her house, but she was extremely gracious, and had a nice chat with us, much of which involved aspects of state and federal politics which I was very careful not to understand.

And I thought I was escaping New York to get away from politics. Good thing my shoes were shined.

Posted by BradRubenstein at 06:45 PM