Truffle story.

The NYT reports:

It was one of the most expensive truffles in the world, costing a group of regulars at the London restaurant Zafferano - said to include Gwyneth Paltrow - $53,000 dollars at a charity auction last month. But it met its end before anyone had even a taste of it, undone by its allure. The purchase of the 30-ounce white truffle, unearthed in Tuscany, caused so much excitement the restaurant put it on display, for five days. Then the chef went on vacation, locking the truffle in the fridge, and taking the keys with him. When he returned after four days, he found it had rotted. It was buried near a tree and "died a very happy truffle, back in the ground, unsliced," the restaurant's owner said.

This sounds like a fable. It should have a moral. Any ideas? Email me. If I get some good ones, I'll do an update.

UPDATE: The "virgin, unsliced" truffle has inspired a poem parody: "Fungus had we enough, and time,/Chilliness, chef, would be no crime."

Blogging and physics!

The best email of the day comes from UW Physics professor Clint Sprott:

I enjoyed reading the article in today's Wisconsin State Journal about blogs... I would like to invite you to give a talk on that or a related topic of your choosing at the interdisciplinary Chaos and Complex Systems Seminar next spring. We are especially interested in the dynamical and self-organizing aspects of this phenomenon, but just to hear about your experiences and impressions would be very enlightening.

You know, I'm interested in the the dynamical and self-organizing aspects of this phenomenon as well. How cool!

Check out Sprott's fractal gallery! I love the fractal background music!

The death of Darrell Abbott.

I wrote earlier today about the murder of former Pantera guitarist "Dimebag" Darrell Abbott. I see in the BBC report that some people in the audience heard the murderer accuse Abbott of breaking up Pantera. Police shot the murderer, Nathan Gale, to death, so maybe we'll never know why he did it.

My post brought an email from a reader who wrote: "I was amused to see you had been to a NIN concert and now a Pantera concert as well? I shall never cease to be amazed." Well, it's less amazing than you may think. I have two sons, one born in 1981, and the other born in 1983. What music do you think they listened too? When they were in their early teens, I was happy to drive them to concerts, and I didn't just drop them off. I stayed for the show! As a result, I saw quite a few great concerts that I would never have gone to on my own. Nine Inch Nails (with an opening act of Marilyn Manson) was probably the best one I saw in those days. Sonic Youth, Green Day, and Smashing Pumpkins were the closest to something I would have been interested in on my own. Pantera was beyond the limit of what I really wanted to hear, but they were undeniably great at what they were doing, and I admired the intense commitment to that extreme form of music. I enjoyed watching the show, including the crowd of kids who just loved them, but I was watching as more of an objective outsider. The opening act was beyond what I could enjoy on any level, the only band of the many I saw in those days that I can honestly say I hated: Type O Negative. And I'm sure if any of my readers are Type O Negative fans, they don't want people like me to enjoy their band anyway.

But my son John called today and said he saw my post about Darrell Abbott. [UPDATE: The next sentence is wrong.] He said I should have said in my post that half of Pantera died: Abbott's brother, Vinnie Paul, was also murdered. [UPDATE: No, Vinnie was not among those who were murdered. Sorry for the misreporting, though it's clearly good news. I'll leave the tribute to Vinnie that follows.] Vinnie was the drummer, and he was, John tells me, a truly great drummer, who wrote the Pantera songs with his brother. The two musicians had a great style, a brilliant way of playing together in lockstep, John tells me. He says the drumbeats were so distinctive that by thinking the drumbeat, you think the song, just as normally when you think the vocal melody, you think the song. Vinnie's drumming was not just the background, John says. It was the song.

John also informs me that Darrell Abbott was not just "a" guitarist in Pantera. He was the guitarist. He says that most bands who have only one guitarist have trouble when they play concerts, because in making their records, the guitarist has recorded a continuous rhythm track and then made a separate track for the solo parts. As a result, when the band plays in concert, it seems that a second guitarist is needed to keep up the rhythm track, so it won't sound empty during the solos. But in a rock band, John says, once you have people on the stage they have to play all the time, so adding an extra guitarist can be a problem. If you just have that one guitarist, it's going to sound awkward when he switches from playing the rhythm part to doing the solo and it's going to sound too thin. What was distinctive about Abbott, John says, is that he played in concert as the sole guitarist and it sounded full the whole time and there was no awkward shift from rhythm to solo. He says that in the Pantera recordings you can hear that the rhythm guitar track does not extend under the solos. So what Abbott did on the record, he could also do single-handedly in concert. It was brilliant!

Go up in my room and get the CD of "Vulgar Display of Power," John says, and listen to the third track, "Walk." You can really hear it in that song. I do. I listen to "Walk," and I listen to "This Love." "Vulgar Display of Power" is their best album, John assures me. I've put an Amazon button for it in the sidebar, and you can hear short clips of both of those songs over there. [UPDATE: Button replaced by hot link.]

Very sad!

UPDATE: Title of the post changed to reflect the correction in the third paragraph.

ANOTHER UPDATE: MTV has a detailed article about Abbott and lots of video clips.

YET ANOTHER UPDATE: Interesting discussion at Metafilter. Someone wonders whether anyone has ever been murdered on stage like this before. There's a link to a Snopes page listing many performers who've had fatal heart attacks and the like on stage, but none who were murdered.

STILL MORE: An emailer notes that the great jazz trumpeter Lee Morgan was murdered on stage (by his wife).

Household minutiae.

It's a gray day here in Madison, but the temperature is 46 degrees. At this time of year, it would not be surprising for it to be 50 degrees colder. I drove home after my morning office hours to meet the plumber who should be showing up at any minute to fix a shower that's been dripping for a long time. Shower dripping is especially noisy because of the long distance of the drop. I hear the splat all the way downstairs in the dining room, my favorite place to work. I don't like to call in the plumber to fix just one thing. (Cf. this post, explaining how I don't like to buy only one item.) But yesterday the shower drip rate crossed the line where waiting for some other plumbing problem to occur no longer made sense, so today is plumbing day. It's also the day to get my Civil Procedure exam written, I think, as I get out of the car and walk toward the house. But I get a little distracted and stop to photograph three things on the way from the car to my front door.

Here's a bird's nest, revealed when the leaves fell from my redbud tree. I'm going to guess it's a cardinal's nest, because I often saw a cardinal couple fooling around in the tree and because it seems fitting for red birds to go for redbuds.



And here's a second newly revealed bird's nest. It's in my neighbor's hedge:



Next to the hedge on the other side of my front yard is this pumpkin belonging to my other neighbors. My guess is that the pumpkin does not represent a failure to put out the trash, but a beneficent gesture toward the squirrels and raccoons. Eat your vegetable! Have some vitamin A! Note the gnaw marks.



UPDATE: The plumber had to do a makeshift repair. The shower handle is 80 years old, and you can't buy replacement parts. To replace the handle altogether would entail an elaborate reconfiguration of the pipe work, which would be better done when I undertake the much-needed restoration of the bathroom. Having just survived the carpentry work shoring up the back of my house and the receipt of the $15,000 bill for that work, I'm not ready to do the bathroom just yet. I wonder if the plumber found the ancient fixture interesting to figure out. I've had electricians work on my house and comment on how unusual some old switch or outlet is. I like to think they find it relatively amusing to deal with these "This Old House" problems.

Metal Massacre.

How sad to read of the death of "Dimebag" Darrell Abbott and others who were gunned down last night in Columbus, Ohio. Abbott, who was playing last night with his new band Damageplan, was once a guitarist for the great metal band Pantera. Though not a fan of heavy metal music, I happened to see Pantera in concert once, and the musicianship was brilliant.

Man's Life, Man's Exploits, Real Men.

Lurid men's adventure magazines from the 1950s are the subject of a new book, reviewed in today's NYT. Don't miss the glorious, hilarious covers. I love the one of the manly guy saving a curvaceous lady from turtles.

A classic showdown between lawyer and judge.

Adam Liptak reports on the argument before a D.C. Circuit panel about whether journalists have a privilege to protect their sources. Judge David Sentelle addresses famed First Amendment advocate Floyd Abrams:

"I take it you do not have a material difference between this case and Branzburg," Judge Sentelle finally said, "or you would have given me an answer on the first, third, fourth or fifth opportunities you had."

A classic showdown between lawyer and judge. The precedents are powerful, but some things you still want to fight to the hilt.

UPDATE: I named the wrong circuit court and have correct it.

Deliberating speed.

Gay rights groups deliberate about the speed of their own movement, John M. Broder writes in today's NYT:

The leadership of the Human Rights Campaign, at a meeting last weekend in Las Vegas, concluded that the group must bow to political reality and moderate its message and its goals. One official said the group would consider supporting President Bush's efforts to privatize Social Security partly in exchange for the right of gay partners to receive benefits under the program.

"The feeling this weekend in Las Vegas was that we had to get beyond the political and return to the personal," said Michael Berman, a Democratic lobbyist and consultant who was elected the first non-gay co-chairman of the Human Rights Campaign's board last week. "We need to reintroduce ourselves to America with the stories of our lives."

These are tough choices. I remember opposition to civil rights legislation in the 1960s that was based on the idea that "you can't legislate morality." The argument was that you have to change people's hearts and not force change on them. In retrospect, that seems like a completely inadequate reason to oppose the legislation. But there is a tipping point, where enough people agree with you and those who disagree look like laggards who deserve to be pushed up to speed. What was learned in the last election and what has motivated the Human Rights Campaign to moderate their strategy is that not enough people do agree with them yet.

As the article notes, the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force disagrees with this new moderation. Its executive director Matt Foreman says:

"A lot of gay people understand the concept of bullies. The worst thing you can do with a bully is not fight back because you'll only get hit harder the next day."

The passion behind that statement is understandable. But I'm sure people who oppose gay marriage also feel that they are being bullied, and it's hard to see the political sense of ratcheting up the hostilities. Notably, Representatives Barney Frank and Tammy Baldwin are supporting the more pragmatic, moderate approach.

"This weird window into the mind of the professor."

The lawprof blog, described by a law student blogger, in this Wisconsin State Journal article. Some quotes in there from me as well. Too bad the article, discussing many blogs, doesn't have hot links, but then WSJ is none too web-savvy. Half the time when I link to one of its articles, the article disappears after a few days. I used my interview with the reporter in part to harangue her about how blogging depends on linking, you should want to be linked by bloggers, and you need to be good about preserving the material we link to.

Here's the quoted law student's blog. Actually, it's not the greatest time for a law student blog to get attention. It's exam time.

Death days.

Let's not make a regular occasion out of someone's death day. We celebrate Abraham Lincoln and Martin Luther King, Jr. on their birthdays. We don't put the holiday on date they were gunned down. Mark October 9th on your calendar, people, not today.

UPDATE: Not long after I wrote this, a great rock musician was shot to death on stage. Scroll up for two posts on "Dimebag" Darrell Abbott. Who knows if the annual recognition of John Lennon's murder stimulated the mind of Abbott's murderer?

I received an email from a reader defending the recogintion of death dates. He wrote:

Your point is well taken about not 'celebrating' someone's death day. But it is a time to remember, where I was when I heard, what I thought about, how people reacted. The day of his death has a resonance, and an emotional connection I think most of us don't have with the day of his birth. And death is so much more emotionally affecting than birth or the cessation of death. I think Dec 7th is more notorious and marked every year than VE Day or VJ Day for the same reason, not to mention 9/11. No one is there for the birth of great or notorious people, so they have little reason to relate with that date. Everyone alive remembers the day of Kennedy's death, Lennon's death because of the emotion they have invested in those dates as opposed to their births. By all means make their birthday a holiday or recognized day of celebration, but nothing can stop people's visceral response to the day of their death. And commemorating those days is a good thing because it did make me think about that day in '80 and that isn't always bad to reflect on such things. Its more real to me than to have an announcer say "Today Lennon would have been 64."

I understand this position, but I'm genuinely tired of commemorating murders! And I'm tired of the trite "I remember where I was" reminiscing. Yeah, I remember where I was when I heard John Lennon died: in bed turning on the radio in the morning. I have an identical story to tell about me and Bobby Kennedy. But Bobby Kennedy's death isn't about me, nor is John Lennon's. But I've had enough of it, really. I've been asked a thousand times do you remember where you were when you heard President Kennedy got shot, and I feel like saying, no actually I'm the only one who went ahead and forgot that scintillating fact. But I always say, "I was in a stairwell." But, so what? I remember being in a stairwell, but so the hell what? After forty years, what are we talking about?

At the Annex.

Instapundit notes that his brother's band is playing at the Annex here in Madison tonight (aka "Free Music Wednesday." All you can drink for $10--yikes!). Here's what the Annex looks like.

UPDATE: Link corrected. Now you can actually see what the Annex looks like. It has what I think of as a distinctly midwestern look.

"Dude."

A linguist studies the word "dude."

To decode the word's meaning, Kiesling listened to conversations with fraternity members he taped in 1993. He also had undergraduate students in sociolinguistics classes in 2001 and 2002 write down the first 20 times they heard "dude" and who said it during a three-day period.

Some fields of research just seem a whole lot easier than others. But who knows? Maybe you start off analyzing the detail to the meaning of one word. ("It's like man or buddy, there is often this male-male addressed term that says, 'I'm your friend but not much more than your friend.") But then it leads you into insights about all sorts of sociological and psychological phenomena. ("He found the word taps into nonconformity and a new American image of leisurely success.") Well, you decide.

Here's the history of the word:

Historically, dude originally meant "old rags" -- a "dudesman" was a scarecrow. In the late 1800s, a "dude" was akin to a "dandy," a meticulously dressed man, especially out West. It became "cool" in the 1930s and 1940s, according to Kiesling. Dude began its rise in the teenage lexicon with the 1981 movie "Fast Times at Ridgemont High."

How can you talk about "dude" and movies and not include "The Big Lebowski"?

Anyway, there's a nice special edition DVD of "Fast Times at Ridgemont High" for only $14.99, featuring commentary by director Amy Heckerling and writer Cameron Crowe and a "Reliving our Fast Times at Ridgemont High" documentary. A nice and cheap Christmas present for the dude on your list. And "The Big Lebowski" is only $11.24 (but no special features). One thing I love about Amazon, by the way, is the information about where a particular item is "uniquely popular." "The Big Lebowski" is currently number 1 on the Amherst, Massachusetts list.

Oh, and as long as I'm giving shopping tips related to "The Big Lebowski," let me add that I love the soundtrack from that movie, which is worth buying on CD, and I especially love the way the Bob Dylan song "The Man in Me" is used in that movie. Rereading the lyrics to that song, maybe you can find something of an explanation for Dylan's taciturn turn on "60 Minutes" the other night:

The man in me will hide sometimes to keep from bein' seen,
But that's just because he doesn't want to turn into some machine.

All right. Enough free-associating. I've got some exam writing to do and a million loose ends to tie up.

UPDATE: I take a pause in the tying up of loose ends to check my email and learn from a reader that the dude linguist looks exactly like Calvin's dad.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Another emailing dude writes:

I ... saw the discussion on the word "dude," but noticed that you omitted "Baseketball" from your list of films. If you are not familiar with this movie, and its relevance, there is an exchange (approximately 20-30 seconds in length) between the two main characters where the only word spoken (repeatedly, with varied inflection and tone) is "dude."

And "Baseketball" is only $11.24, so for $37.47, you can give a great 3 DVD dude-themed gift.

YET ANOTHER UPDATE: Metafilter is discussing the dude research. Oh, and this Dylan song is my favorite song with the wold "dude" in it.

EVEN MORE: Let me just say there's also "Dude, Where's My Car?" so you won't feel you need to email me about it. And another great song with "dude" (used maybe too cleverly) is "Heroes and Villains." ("But she’s still dancing in the night/Unafraid of what a dude’ll do in a town full of heroes and villains.")

"UW’s in-state dominance continues."

I just wanted to do a post about UW basketball so I could say that this picture, from the Badger Herald, seems to need the caption: let me get a really close look at that nipple.

The next Supreme Court nomination.

The NYT reports on the gathering fight over the next Supreme Court nomination:

"This will be a repeat, and all the organizations that were engaged in work around the election, from big groups to small groups, will feel that this is their own personal fight," said Nan Aron, the president of the Alliance for Justice, a liberal advocacy group.

Ms. Aron said her office had been flooded with calls from students, lawyers and activists "who were involved in get-out-the-vote work and now want to turn their attention to the Supreme Court."

The energy for the get-out-the-vote effort re-channels itself.

Here's a quote from Senator Shumer:

"If a candidate is a mainstream candidate, even with conservative leanings, it will be hard," said Senator Charles E. Schumer, the New York Democrat who serves on the judiciary panel. "But if the candidate is a hard right-wing candidate, it will not be that hard. The more the hard right rattles its sabers, the more resolved our caucus is not to cave."

Note the advance signaling from the minority party. Perhaps its best hope is to cow the President into nominating someone the other side will be willing to give the magic label "mainstream." I suspect that the Shumers of the Senate will tend to say that any Bush nominee is not "mainstream," but the believability of the nearly inevitable "not mainstream" rhetoric will depend on how far from liberal preferences the nominee seems to be. We did not want to have to filibuster, and if only the President had heeded our plea and nominated a mainstream candidate....

"You say that, but how?"

A great, succinct question from Justice Souter at oral argument yesterday, to a lawyer who was trying to defend a state's ban on shipping wine from out-of-state to consumers in the state on the theory that it was needed to protect children. Since in-state wineries are allowed to ship the product to the consumer, this theory looks like a skimpy veil for protectionism.

"This Supreme Court obsession of yours."

A father's plea:

Son, could you come in here for a second?... Now, I know it may make you feel uncomfortable to talk about it, but this Supreme Court obsession of yours has become a problem.

It sounds as though this boy has spent some time staring at page 99 of "The Daily Show with Jon Stewart Presents America (The Book)." And, please, I'm begging you. Don't go to the bookstore and open that book up to that page! I happened to do that by accident the other day. You'd be doing it on purpose. And that page is just very wrong.