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From back when Americans laughed:

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Ashley Judd recited a "Beat poem" at the Washington Women's March called "#NastyWoman." Intrigued, I looked for the original. I couldn't find the text but I did find a reading by the teenaged poet, Nina Mariah:

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Where did the "Beat" label come from? Perhaps one of our beret-wearing readers can help me, daddio.

My first thought, as a codger, was:

Beatniks and politics, nothing is new

A yardstick for lunatics, one point of view

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The song that went viral for The Strawberry Alarm Clock in 1967 was not sung by the drummer, but instead by 16 year-old Greg Munford, who was attending the recording session as a visitor.

Full lyrics after the jump. Test your knowledge/memory

Not Just Third Reich Tactics, But Robert Reich Tactics!

Fantasies of smelly gas warfare:

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Fantasies of Trump failing...

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...notable for avoiding what not to do as evidenced by the first video. So, own it, shorty.

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Compare Jimi Hendrix playing our national anthem at Woodstock...

...to playing "God Save The Queen" during a return to England shortly before his death:

Hendrix admonishes the Brits: "In fact it'd sound better if you'd stand up, for your country, and your brother...and start singin'! And if you don't, fuck ya."

Contrast those performances with our President cupping his nuts during the national anthem:

Which figure -- Jimi Hendrix or Barack Obama built bridges between races?

What is it about the fools who loved Hendrix and thought Obama was some sort of political equivalent?

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The younger (older?) Jeff Beck:

He's playing the Greek Theater this August: link  I'd like to go, but look at those prices!

Oscar Wilde On The Future Of Machinery

[This post was inspired by Haz's blog post and discussion in the comments here]

Oscar Wilde wrote in his essay "The Soul of Man under Socialism:"

Up to the present, man has been, to a certain extent, the slave of machinery, and there is something tragic in the fact that as soon as man had invented a machine to do his work he began to starve. This, however, is, of course, the result of our property system and our system of competition. One man owns a machine which does the work of five hundred men. Five hundred men are, in consequence, thrown out of employment, and, having no work to do, become hungry and take to thieving. The one man secures the produce of the machine and keeps it, and has five hundred times as much as he should have, and probably, which is of much more importance, a great deal more than he really wants. Were that machine the property of all, every one would benefit by it. It would be an immense advantage to the community. All unintellectual labour, all monotonous, dull labour, all labour that deals with dreadful things, and involves unpleasant conditions, must be done by machinery. Machinery must work for us in coal mines, and do all sanitary services, and be the stoker of steamers, and clean the streets, and run messages on wet days, and do anything that is tedious or distressing. At present machinery competes against man. Under proper conditions machinery will serve man. There is no doubt at all that this is the future of machinery, and just as trees grow while the country gentleman is asleep, so while Humanity will be amusing itself, or enjoying cultivated leisure – which, and not labour, is the aim of man – or making beautiful things, or reading beautiful things, or simply contemplating the world with admiration and delight, machinery will be doing all the necessary and unpleasant work. The fact is, that civilisation requires slaves. The Greeks were quite right there. Unless there are slaves to do the ugly, horrible, uninteresting work, culture and contemplation become almost impossible. Human slavery is wrong, insecure, and demoralising. On mechanical slavery, on the slavery of the machine, the future of the world depends.

Wilde was writing in 1891, at a time when slavery had been abolished in most of the Western world. Yet there certainly were "wage slaves" then and still are. The American Progressive movement really began to take off around that time (1892).  Make what you will of Wilde's thoughts on slavery -- it's been widely quoted -- I was more interested in his take on machinery ownership.

The Waterloo Open Thread

"Waterloo Bridge At Sunset" Claude Monet (1903) 

"Waterloo Sunset"  The Kinks (1967)

Equality vs. Equivalency

Okay, so perhaps 'angry feminist' is a slight exaggeration, but one of the main issues with the feminist quest for sexual parity is that it often conflates "equality" and "sameness". Men and women are different: I, for example, wear floral dresses; my boyfriend (at least to the best of my knowledge) does not. The differences should be recognised and accepted, not changed or eradicated. Of course, there are those who do support "difference feminism", but I would still question one's need to subscribe to feminism at all. Surely anyone with an ounce of common sense can appreciate the fact that men and women are both different and equal and treat them accordingly?  Melissa Bond

In chemistry, the notion of equivalency exists apart from sameness equality. For example, acid-base chemistry involves matching equivalents of H⁺ with equivalents of OH^-. A fair and balanced equation is:

           HCl + NaOH = H₂O + NaCl

Equivalency factors out sameness. No one pretends that H⁺ and OH^- are qualitatively the same, and yet they are quantitatively equal. In real life, chemical equivalents are often out of balance and this introduces natural forces to bring them back to equilibrium. In a sense, inequality drives the world.

Remember When POTUS Channeled Al Green?

Now let's see him channel his other half: