Month: April 2019

It’s April 15th, and y’all know what that means: Happy Tax Day!

Kudos and thanks to my better half, who stayed up until the wee hours last night helping me navigate the vagaries of the Federal (plus 3 different State) returns:  AVW, you’re simply the best.

So, to honor of my favorite educator, here’s a quote from an old Democrat pol – and a guy who knew a thing or two whereof he spoke…

A THOUGHT FOR TAX DAY:

“The tax which will be paid for the purpose of education is not more than the thousandth part of what will be paid to kings, priests, and nobles who will rise up among us if we leave the people in ignorance.”

Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826), president, architect, & author

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It was Prop 13‘s negative effect on education in the Golden State (look it up!) that induced us to migrate from CA to CO back in ’94.  Now that a bit of a reverse migration has occurred, we find that FTB’s forms are as bewildering as ever (sorry, BRG!).   But thanks be to TaxAct – and TurboTax, and all the rest – there now are online packages to assist.  Without their help turning relatively straightforward Q&A into 54-convoluted-pages of 1040, 540-NR, DR-104, and K-40 gobble-de-gook, the task would be well nigh impossible.

Even for a guy as smart as Thomas Jefferson.

The area where I live near California’s state capitol is variously known as “Washingon,”  “Broderick,” “West Sac,” and perhaps most tellingly from days gone by, “Shantytown.” It lies in an area on the west bank of the Sacramento River directly across from downtown.  Before levees were built, it flooded regularly.  West Sac used to be industrial and blue collar.  Now, because of proximity to business and entertainment centers (it’s walking distance to Golden 1 Center, Old Sac, the State Capitol, and Raley Field), it’s rapidly gentrifying.  As such, people aren’t quite sure what to make of it.  Hence the multiple names.

The block of 35 homes where I live is called “The Good Project.”  It was developed by a high-end builder called Bardis Homes.  They specialize in something called “urban infill.”  This is real estate jargon for expensive, high-density housing on formerly cheap land that’s no longer cheap.  Hard by the levee, steps away from “The River Walk,” this construction was begun a little over ten years ago with a few units at the corner of 4th and B Streets. Then, in 2008, the bottom fell out of the real estate market.  The rest of the block stood empty for the next decade.  Last year, after the economy picked up again, the remaining units – including mine – were built out.  They sold quickly.

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Slate magazine recently published an article titled “How to Scan Your Airbnb For Hidden Cameras.”  In it, they recount recent Airbnb guests’ experience – and outrage – over being recorded by what used to be called “nanny-cams.” The technology – both to record, and to detect the devices that do the recording – has been around for some time now.  Only the outrage is new.

I and several of my neighbors do Airbnb out of our homes in The Good Project.  It’s a great way of leveraging the property investment into another income stream.  Because of the transitional nature of the neighborhood, many of the places on Midstream Lane boast outdoor cameras by the front door accompanied by prominently displayed signs like the one below.  No word on how many of those other places also have indoor cameras.  All I can say is, Caveat Emptor.

Oh, and just for the record?  The Airbnb at 392 Midstream Lane is guaranteed 100% nanny-cam-free.  I should probably put up a sign saying so.  Couldn’t hurt, right?  Always pays to advertise.

If you grew up on a farm picking fruit like I did….

Or, if you dig robotics, automation, and artificial intelligence…

Or, if you did grad work alongside U.C. Davis ag extension agents…

Or, if you just like eating strawberries, oranges, apples and grapes…

Then this story – from the current issue of the New Yorker – is for you.

 

“Nobody wants hydraulic fluid on their strawberries.”

 

Which begs the question:  Are free-range strawberries happier strawberries?

 

There were a couple this week that just struck me as funny.

Not sure why.

Enjoy.

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Thanks, New Yorker cartoonists .

I’ve been a big fan of satire for a very long time.  Perhaps it’s been since I first read “A Modest Proposal” in the 10th grade. Or maybe it was since I read Mad Magazine in the 8th?  In any case, I’ve written an appreciation here in these pages before about Mark Twain, the great American satirist of the post-Civil-War era. And if I allowed myself a bit more political leeway, nowadays on any given day I could probably post something from The Onion or Andy Borowitz and we could all have a good laugh together.

However…

Today’s NY Times has an op-ed, written by a philosophy professor, last name “Smith.” (Smith?  Yeah, right!).  The piece is titled “The End of Satire.”  I don’t recommend you read it.  That’s not because it’s not worthwhile, mind you. After all, it was provocative enough to get me thinking about these things.  Rather, it’s because there’s nothing even remotely funny about it.  And my take has always been:  Go funny, or go home.  The subtitle gives a sense of where this thing is headed:  “The toxic disinformation of social media has rendered traditional forms of humor quaint and futile.”  Good Lord.  Can somebody please just shoot me now?

Don’t get me wrong:  I’m not overtly suicidal here.  And social media commentary like this certainly has its place – even if that place is not always center stage.  Hell, I’m even willing to listen to a philosopher pontificate once in a great while – so long as said philosopher knows when it’s time to sit down and shut up.  But I guess the point of this particular piece – which starts off with a nod to the 2015 terrorists’ slaughter of French cartoonists at Charlie Hebdo, then goes downhill from there – is that technology (and more specifically, Internet technology) has transformed our world to such an extent that satire is now obsolete.

Really?

Jonathan Swift wrote “A Modest Proposal” when the Potato Famine was killing Irish men, women, and children by the thousands, and displacing millions more from their homeland.  Swift’s biting satire recommended (tongue-in-cheek, of course) that the Irish should cook and eat their own children as a means to avoid starvation, and to further the general economic good.  Say whatever else you will about him, Swift, as an English clergyman who was criticizing his own government for oppressing the Irish, knew exactly what he was doing.

Or, to quote from today’s Times op-ed:

Satire is a species of humor that works through impersonation: taking on the voices of others, saying the sort of things they would say, using one’s own voice while not speaking in one’s own name.  It is not surprising that this craft is so often misunderstood.  For when satirists do their job convincingly, when they get too close to their target, it is easy to hear them not just as the channelers of the views expressed in the satire, but as defenders of these views as well.  It is at such moments that critics like to exclaim that a satirist has “gone too far.”  But it would be more correct to say that the satirist has only done his job too well.

I hear you, Mr. Smith. And as far as it goes, you’re entirely right.

Then, in the very next paragraph, there’s this:

Today, with the pollution that new technologies have brought to our information ecosystem, this distinction is no longer so easy to make.  And this is the real problem – and danger – of satire.  Not that it mocks and belittles respect-worthy pieties.  Not that it “punches down.”  But that it has become impossible to separate it cleanly from the toxic disinformation that defines our era.

I will grant you that, here in the Internet Age, things have sped up.  This includes the muddying of media waters by those with an ax to grind.  I will grant too that human nature has not changed one iota.  From time immemorial, the human urge to tear down competes tooth and nail with what Lincoln famously referred to in his Second Inaugural as “The better angels of our nature.”

Still…

We humans have had technological revolutions before.  From the domestication of grain to the invention of the wheel, the printing press, and the assembly line, all the way down to the dawn of the atomic age:  Over the grand sweep of things, is Internet technology really all that much bigger of a deal? Are the Charlie Hebdo killings more heinous than what happened to Irish babies in the 18th century, when Swift wrote?  Than what befell our own country in the wake of the Civil War, when Twain wrote? Than Hiroshima and Nagasaki?

Again, let me say it:  Really?

In defense of Mr. Smith, he does end up in a bit more nuanced of a place than his title or subtitle would at first lead us to believe:

Over the past few years I have been made to see, in sum, that the nature and extent of satire is not nearly as simple a question as I had previously imagined. I am now prepared to agree that some varieties of expression that may have some claim to being satire should indeed be prohibited. I note this not with a plan or proposal for where or how such a prohibition might be enforced, but to acknowledge something I did not fully understand until I experienced it first hand — that even the most cherished and firmly-held values or ideals can change when the world in which those values were first formed changes.

OK then.  All’s well that ends well.  Times change.  Caution’s warranted.

I’m good with all that.

And yet sometimes…

Well, perhaps Swift said it best in 1729:

“I am assured by a very knowing American of my acquaintance in London; that a young healthy child, well nursed, is, at a year old, a most delicious, nourishing, and wholesome food; whether stewed, roasted, baked or boiled, and I make no doubt, that it will equally serve in a fricassee, or ragout.”

Satire is dead?  Long live satire!

Those of you who know me know that I am a sometime fan of New York Times columnist David Brooks.  I have posted on him before, and if you’re interested you can read (or re-read) that one, here.  Many of my dear friends – including some subscribers to this blog – hate Brooks with a passion.  A lot of that has to do with his long history as an unapologetic cheerleader for free-market economics during the Reagan years.  Also – more recently – his patronizing moralistic tone when writing yet another book or column about his “spiritual journey.”

Well, to all the haters, let me say first and foremost:  Nothing has changed. David’s got a new book coming out, and you don’t even need to go any further than the title to see that fact plainly:  “The Second Mountain: The Quest for a Moral Life.”  In today’s NY Times op-ed pages, Brooks sketches an outline for his forthcoming book under the title “The Moral Peril of Meritocracy.” Full text of the op-ed, here.  My comment on it, below.

Very good, grasshopper. There are a whole lot of people out there who will never forgive you all the things you said and did while on your First Mountain quest. I am not one of them. Good luck on your Second Mountain journey – which includes of course sales of the new book. Hey, a man’s gotta eat.  Am I right?

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