Audible Althouse #85.

A new podcast... about an old tree, a fat and pompous politician, a girl who survived rabies, a record album from 40 years ago, a possibly evil artist, and succulent flowers and puffy clouds.

You don't need an iPod. You can stream it right through your computer here.

But all the rational people subscribe on iTunes:

Let's watch the Democratic debate in New Hampshire.

Okay, we're off. Wolf Blitzer invites the candidates to introduce themselves with a quick one liner. John Edwards wins this round by saying "I'm John Edwards." The others are all tagging on the fact that they are "running for President." Yeah, it would be weird if you weren't. Bill Richardson is "the proud governor of the state of New Mexico."

1. 14 minutes into this, I think John Edwards is making the strongest showing. Obama seems nervous and rushed, and Hillary Clinton seems flat. Obviously, this is a subjective opinion, but Edwards seems to have put the others on the defensive.

2. Bill Richardson bumbles the question about genocide in Iraq. [ADDED: That is, he evades the question with one desperate move after another. Anyone paying attention must conclude: He is prepared to accept genocide in Iraq. I wish all the candidates were pinned down with this question.]

3. Kucinich is asked whether the entire war was a complete waste, and instead of harshly saying yes, he uses the occasion to say -- quite rousingly -- that this war is the Democrats' war too, and he's not buying Hillary Clinton's repeated (already!) refrain that this is George Bush's war. The Democrats have the majority: cut off funding!

4. Biden keeps yelling. Hillary Clinton tries to deflect the question about her failure to read the National Intelligence Estimate before the original Iraq war vote. Edwards compliments Obama: "He was right. I was wrong." Obama is settling down now, and he magnanimously says that voting for the war shouldn't be seen as "a disqualifier." We see Hillary in the background as he's speaking and she looks intense, determined, and scared. When she gets a chance to speak, it's back to her refrain: It's all Bush's fault.

5. Immigration. I have to admit that I have no patience for the posturing on this issue. Blitzer does a show-of-hands for the question whether English should be the official language of the U.S. Only Gravel raises his hand. There's a lot of blather about the importance of English and of other languages.

6. Health care. They all seem to have plans to cover everyone with quality health care.

7. Hillary Clinton is asked whether Bill Clinton's "don't-ask-don't-tell" policy was a mistake. It was a transition, she says. And she asserts that it's been applied in a discriminatory way -- which is odd, since the whole idea is discriminatory. But she opposes the policy in the end, even as she won't say Bill made a mistake. It was a "first step."

8. Blitzer is going through the list of issues. They are on energy now. I don't think this is an effective way to do a debate, because each candidate just lays out his or her official policy, which we could see by looking at their websites and which is always a bit unreal, given that a President will have to work with Congress. But just as I'm sick of it, Wolf says we're going into "Part 2" of the debate. Questions from citizens. Okay. Good. Anything for a change. There's 3 minute break. I fast-forward. Looks like hands are being shaken. And those weird lecterns are carted off and replaced by modernistic swivel chairs of that seem to have time traveled in from a 1970s talk show.

9. The first 2 audience questions are from women with family members involved in the military. The responses here are nondescript, and I'm sorry to say, my attention wanes.

10. At about 1:20, Hillary Clinton heats up, talking about diplomacy and Iran. It's still the same theme that it's all Bush's fault: "We've had an administration that doesn't believe in diplomacy." But there's some style here as she talks about how "every so often" Condi Rice shows up somewhere and "occasionally they even send Dick Cheney, which is hardly diplomatic, in my view." She sounds very strong at this point. I just wish she'd shown this spirit in the first half hour. Is anyone watching as she catches fire?

11. Confession: I'm in a bit of a TiVo lag, and "The Sopranos" is about to start. So... I'm bailing! Keep talking. I'll get back to this. But I don't TiVo "The Sopranos." I'm on HDTV here. Sorry!

12. Blah! I'm trying to get back to this after watching "The Sopranos." Is anyone watching now? Does this matter? They all look like they want to leave. Edwards is shaking his foot impatiently. Various issues come up in the end, but nothing impresses me to the point where I feel like writing. Sorry.

Alive...

Then gone...

Feeling theme-ish.

It feels like a theme day today. Life... death... Gore... Hillary... Something there. I feel the pull of a theme that wants to be discovered. I feel.... like podcasting!

"This significant tree."

I was walking on path down by Lake Wingra yesterday, when up ahead I saw gloriously twisted oak branches:



I have a very old oak tree in my back yard. I'm looking at it as I write this, and I've been looking at it for 20 years. I've had a long and deep relationship with my tree. (It seems absurd to call it "mine" -- this thing which has lived so much longer than I have and which will almost surely live on after me.) But that the tree up ahead...



I knew it was big when mine was an acorn.



Ah, what's this little path?



It's a path to a plaque:



"This significant tree"... alive in the time of the Founders... Your humble blogger is wearing dark sunglasses, so she does not worry that some passerby might see that she is moved to tears.

Aimee Mann doesn't want to listen to "Sgt. Pepper" ever again.

It lacks "emotional depth":

I’m ashamed to say it, but sometimes John Lennon’s melodies feel a bit underwritten, while Paul McCartney’s relentless cheerfulness is depressing. The very jauntiness I used to love as a girl feels as if it’s covering up a sadder subtext. And what’s bleaker than a brave face?

The whole experience is uncomfortable, like realizing you can beat your own father at chess or arm-wrestling. I don’t want to go back and find that the carcass has been picked clean.

Actually, that sounds rather emotional.

Hillary Clinton and the Iraq war.

The NYT Magazine has an article adapted from Jeff Garth and Don Van Natta Jr.'s new book "Her Way: The Hopes and Ambitions of Hillary Rodham Clinton." It details the positions she's taken with respect to the war. The most interesting part, I think, shows her forcefully inserting herself into coterie of Senators trying to stop the war:

Late in the afternoon of June 14, 2006... the usual attendees were surprised to discover a newcomer in attendance: Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton. She was one of the first to arrive and took a place on a love seat, one of the two couches in the room.... Clinton draped one arm around the back of the couch and chewed gum, a participant recalled....

Snagging the love seat... chewing gum... doing the arm drape....

Two days later, [Levin] introduced [the alternative amendment calling for a phased redeployment] on the floor of the Senate. He was followed by Jack Reed, who said, “I join with my colleague, Senator Levin, and Senators Feinstein and Salazar, to offer this amendment.” Suddenly, Clinton showed up on the Senate floor, wanting to speak as soon as possible. Normally, the speakers go in the order of seniority, with the bill’s original sponsors getting the privilege to speak first. Waiting her turn to speak was one of the sponsors, Senator Feinstein. Senator Levin, who controlled the allocation of floor time for the Democrats, appeared flummoxed, a Senate aide recalled. But he agreed to Clinton’s surprise request to take the floor as the next Democratic speaker.

Clinton’s first words took some insiders by surprise: “I rise in support of the Levin amendment of which I am proud to be an original co-sponsor.”

“We were puzzled,” the aide said, because no one had told them about Clinton’s sudden ascendancy to a leadership role on the measure. Indeed, just a few minutes earlier, Jack Reed, in his remarks, had not included Clinton in his list of sponsors.

The original text of the amendment filed in the Senate read “to be proposed by Mr. Levin (for himself, Mr. Reed, Mrs. Feinstein and Mr. Salazar).” But off to the side, in handwriting, a single word would be added: “Clinton.” Her name was inserted, records show, on June 19, the same day that Levin unveiled his amendment with the other sponsors but not Clinton.

This was odd because, according to the article, Harry Reid had told Feinstein that they wanted her as a sponsor because it was bad to have presidential aspirants as original sponsors.

"Death is such a heavy subject, it would be good to make something that laughed in the face of it."

Says Damien Hirst, who seems to be laughing the hardest, as he sells a diamond-encrusted skull for $100 million.

The dazzle of the diamonds might outshine any meaning Hirst attaches to it, and that could be a problem. Its value as jewelry alone is preposterous. Hirst, who financed the piece himself, watched for months as the price of international diamonds rose while the Bond Street gem dealer Bentley & Skinner tried to corner the market for the artist’s benefit. Given the ongoing controversy over blood diamonds from Africa, “For the Love of God” now has the potential to be about death in a more literal way.

I found a way to laugh at death through art and commerce, and then, in the middle of the project, I saw I had connected myself to the production of death in the real world.

“That’s when you stop laughing,” Hirst says. “You might have created something that people might die because of. I guess I felt like Oppenheimer or something. What have I done? Because it’s going to need high security all its life.”

Is something wrong with the contents of this man's skull? How do you explain that last sentence?! He has the decency to ask "What have I done?" but what should be the answer to the question -- it begins with "because" -- completely changes the subject to the collector's problem of securing the ultra-expensive object from theft.

"There will always be a tomorrow, whether on this Earth or not."

Says Jeanna Giese, the Wisconsin girl who survived rabies. She just went to the prom and graduated from high school.

On Sept. 12, 2004, the then-15-year-old was bitten by a bat after picking it up by its wings inside St. Patrick Catholic Church in Fond du Lac....

More than a month later, Giese was admitted to Children's Hospital with a fever of 102 degrees, double vision, slurred speech and jerking in her left arm.....

In the fall, she will be a freshman at Marian College, where she plans to major in biology with an emphasis on zoology. Her goal is to work with large cats at a zoo.

Giese says the bat bite has only strengthened her desire to work with animals, which she does daily with her own pets - Pepper the rabbit, pheasants Chicken and Duckie, dogs Maggie and Peanut. If she has her way, she'll soon have a goat and baby duck.

Beautiful. Great perspective. She hasn't turned against the animals (or, I assume, from the church).

"I don't think that the skills I have are the ones that are most likely to be rewarded within this system."

Al Gore -- he's just too good for us.

"... I haven't ruled out for all time thinking about politics again. It's just that the way it works now, I don't think that the skills I have are the ones that are most likely to be rewarded within this system. It's like a washing machine that is permanently set on the spin cycle. It doesn't stop spinning. That creates real problems for a politics based on reason."

Friends have urged him to run for president again, but he wants to see a "transformation of this conversation of democracy" that de-emphasizes imagery and spin-doctoring.

"I expect it will take a lot more time," Gore said. "I'm grateful for those who have a good opinion of me, to the point where they think I ought to run again, but I am not convinced myself that's the best way for me to serve."

What?! You think this is spinning? You're spinning. You're always spinning. You're like a washing machine. Al Gore is grateful to those who have a good opinion of him, but you... you don't seem ready for reason, you know, reason, that process that yields a good opinion of Al Gore. Why don't you help him transform the conversation of democracy. De-emphasize imagery! You washing machine.

Is today your birthday?

It's a good day...



To be born...



The same day...



As Lydia Lunch and Frank Rich ...



And Jerry Mathers and the Marquis de Sade ...



And Johnny Weismuller, Martha Washington, and Thomas Hardy ...



You could go anywhere.

Is there anything you'd like to say sub rosa?

Go ahead.

The internet is taking the profit out of pornography.

At first, it looked as thought the internet was going to help the business, but it hasn't worked out that way. Too many amateurs are giving pornography away for nothing.

And unlike consumers looking for music and other media, viewers of pornography do not seem to mind giving up brand-name producers and performers for anonymous ones, or a well-lighted movie set for a ratty couch at an amateur videographer’s house....

“People are making movies in their houses and dragging and dropping them” onto free Web sites, said Harvey Kaplan, a former maker of pornographic movies and now chief executive of GoGoBill.com, which processes payments for pornographic Web sites. “It’s killing the marketplace.”...

“The barrier to get into the industry is so low: you need a video camera and a couple of people who will have sex,” [said Paul Fishbein, president of AVN Media Network] ...

The more traditional pornographic film companies are not giving up, of course. They say they have an answer to the new competition: quality...

“We use good-quality lighting and very good sound,” said David Joseph, president of Red Light District, a production company in Los Angeles that has made films like “Obscene Behavior.”

Mr. Joseph said his company did not waste its time, or that of the viewers, on unnecessary plot lines.

“There’s not a whole lot of story — it’s basically right to the sex, but we’re consistent with the quality,” he said, noting that the company is also careful to pick interesting backdrops. “We use different locations, rooms and couches.”

So do you want a nice couch or not? I wonder what it would take to before the idea of a good story would present itself as a strategy for success.

Anyway, no one's going to feel sorry for these businessfolk having a problem. Too bad the problem isn't that people have gotten tired of pornography and have found new attraction in real-life encounters, but maybe the amateur work seems more like real life. (I wouldn't know. Personally, I have never encountered a pornographic film anywhere other than in the context of a federal district court case.)

"The average full-time worker doesn’t even start doing real work until 11:00 a.m. and begins to wind down around 3:30 p.m."

You may think you're working, but you're not. Why not accept reality and appreciate the time you're afraid to see as wasted?

“The old thinking says ‘the longer it takes, the harder you’re working,” says Lynne Lancaster, a founder of BridgeWorks, a business consulting firm. “The new thinking is ‘if I know the job inside and out and I’m done faster than everyone else then why can’t I go home early?’ ”

A few companies are taking the concept of “watch what I produce, not how I produce it” even further. At the headquarters of Best Buy in Minneapolis, for instance, the hot policy of the moment is called ROWE, short for Results Only Work Environment.

There workers can come in at four or leave at noon, or head for the movies in the middle of the day, or not even show up at all. It’s the work that matters, not the method. And, not incidentally, both output and job satisfaction have jumped wherever ROWE is tried.

In other words, what looks like wasting time from where you sit, could be a whirl of creative thought from where I sit. .. [A]ll the energy that’s been poured into trying to force everyone to work at the same pace and in the same way — it seems that’s the real waste of time.

Sounds right to me. Don't you want to get the benefit of your ability to get things done fast? Don't you hate the employer who mainly wants to see that you're slogging away all the time? Don't you hate when you feel like that overseer is buried in your brain, criticizing you for every digression and inefficiency?

By the way, this expresses some of the reason why I'm glad I'm a law professor and not a lawyer in a law firm that operates on a system of billable hours.

"This case is very emotional, very personal, very sad."

On trial for murder, Gregory Zalevsky is representing himself:

With an arsenal of bad posture and loud sighs, soft paunch and hushed, almost groveling tones, Mr. Zalevsky, 57, has turned his trial into something of a humility contest....

In court, his main adversary is Jonathan S. Kaye, an assistant district attorney with a jarhead haircut and the blocky features of a man who plainly knows how it feels to be punched in the face. Mr. Kaye has matched the defendant’s demeanor with a choice of soothing, schoolmasterly tones over harsh rhetoric.

“Does everybody think they’re able to focus on the issues of this case and not get distracted by extraneous things, such as the defendant representing himself?” he asked potential jurors. Later, he put his concern more bluntly: “I may come across as — not a bully, but — if he doesn’t follow the rules of evidence, it’s my obligation to object.”

For jury selection, Mr. Zalevsky arrived from jail in striped slacks, tan socks, stitched shoes, tortoiseshell glasses and an aging sweater, all variants of blue or brown but none quite matching. He rubbed his lip idly, scanned the panel, scribbled notes and seemed to try to ignore Mr. Sweeney out of existence.

Keeping the baby.

Isn't it interesting that two of the best-reviewed movies of the summer are about a woman going through with an unplanned and seemingly ill-advised pregnancy? In "Waitress" -- which has 91% positive reviews -- the woman is in an abusive marriage and expresses great bitterness toward the unborn child. In "Knocked Up" -- which also has 91% positives -- a woman gets pregnant after a drunken one-night stand with a complete loser. Is something happening here?

CORRECTED: I had "the two best-reviewed movies," which is probably inaccurate. The key thing is that these two movies stand out as the best romantic comedies/date movies to see right now. (Actually, I object to the characterization of "Waitress" as a romantic comedy.)