Perez Prado - Cherry Pink & Apple Blossom White

Bach's Air on the G String - Leopold Stokowski conducts

Tony Judt on Captive Minds

Tony Judt, who died in August, wrote extensively on post-World War II intellectual life in Europe, both Western and Eastern. In recent years he commented often on current political issues, usually drawing a parallel (or even explicit connections) with some stream of thought in his area of study. In this article from the current issue of the NYRB, he performs that process in reverse, beginning with Czesław Miłosz and moving to today's financial crisis. If you never saw a similarity between Jean-Paul Sartre and Phil Gramm, then let Dr Judt explain.

Captive Minds | The New York Review of Books

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The Who - Sea and Sand

Rick Perlstein on the Bookburners and the Current State of the Media

Pearlstein speaks with so much common sense you can be sure that the media will have no difficulty ignoring it completely.

The problem is that elite media gatekeepers have abandoned their moral mandate to stigmatize uncivil discourse. Instead, too many outlets reward it. In fact, it is an ironic token of the ideological confusions of our age that they do so in the service of upholding what they understand to be a cornerstone of civility: the notion that every public question must be framed in terms of two equal and opposite positions, the "liberal" one and the "conservative" one, each to be afforded equal dignity, respect — and (the more crucial currency) equal space. This has made the most mainstream of media outlets comically easy marks for those actively working to push public discourse to extremes.

H/t digby.

Elvin Jones Drum Solo Demonstration

Lyle Lovett - That's Right (You're Not From Texas)

This is dedicated to a significant percentage of my friends.