The Last Bass Outpost

That's nice and catchy!

Access to education is a key driver to development and progress in any society and economy. I always thought the West had agreed on that long ago. As our societies and economies develop, not having a proper education will push you into fringe jobs with precarious job security and pressure for low wages. You will spend a good deal of your life fighting off to be redundant and never quite make it.

I don't want elites, I want well-educated masses. That is one of the things that makes a country strong and resilient.

I understand that people long for the 50s, 60s and early 70s when an unskilled auto worker in Detroit could pay off a house, have a small boat on Lake Michigan, cars for himself, the wife and his kids plus send them all to Ann Arbor for college, but that time won't come back. Established Western countries are doomed to develop into information and knowledge-based societies.

It's all a bit much and dystopian right now. And I miss the adults in the room.

But what baffles me the most is the amount of ignorance in the electorate (and I don't mean just the US, it's a symptom of very many Western societies), too many people have a next to nothing grasp of how good administration, domestic economies and worldwide trade work. Snake oil salesmen reign.

I don't know why comprehension of more complex issues has gone out of style, it used to be what set the Western World apart from its competitors. We live in world with an abundance of availabilities of gathering information, facts and knowledge - yet people seem to make little use of them.

Historically, whenever progress, science, education, research and development have been held in low regard, that has not been a good sign and an indication of rulerships trying to keep the public dumb and themselves in power.

Scott, it's so undistorted, what happened? 

Quote from: patman on March 31, 2025, 05:45:24 AMSuccessful change happens in small carefully controlled increments over time. Evolution rather than revolution.
My opinion...yours may vary. I'm uncomfortable with the chainsaw approach.

Amen. Progress is a snail, but a determined one. And for the life of me I can't think of a notable civilization that was built on chainsaws.

In all of our arguments, you've always been right, Rob! 

My Dutch son-in-law (blond, blue-eyed and very tall) still gets approached by Scandinavians on a regular basis thinking he is one of them.

Interestingly enough, Scandinavians overall share the most similar DNA with Dutch people. Only Danes are even closer to North Germans (and closer to them than to Swedes which have a larger Baltic influence; among Scandinavian nationalities, Norwegians are closest to Danes).

I actually meant Hoekstra! Besides his last name, he looks totally Dutch to me. We saw him together in Utrecht at the WS gig, remember?

A Dutchman playing with Michael ...

There is a schism where the US Constitution places Freedom of Speech (pretty much above all else in your First Amendment) and where most European democracies see it. Article 1 of the German Constitution reads:

"(1) Human dignity shall be inviolable. To respect and protect it shall be the duty of all state authority.

(2) The German people therefore acknowledge inviolable and inalienable human rights as the basis of every community, of peace and of justice in the world."

Only Article 2 states:

"1) Every person shall have the right to free development of his personality insofar as he does not violate the rights of others or offend against the constitutional order or the moral law.

(2) Every person shall have the right to life and physical integrity. Freedom of the person shall be inviolable. These rights may be interfered with only pursuant to a law."

You get the gist, there is much more of a "yes, but ..." element to Freedom of Speech. The German Constitution is shaped by historic experience: How the Nazis lied and defamed the Weimar Republic to get elected - and once in power dismantled democracy.

There are pros and cons to the respective emphases of both philosophies.

The older I get, the more my tolerance for hate speech, inventing things just for the heck of it or denying scientific progress shrinks. Social media amplifies these things beyond what we have experienced before in our history and algorithms lead people down rabbit holes where they no longer take part in a discourse. By now, I would likely favor algorithms being outlawed completely or at least programmed in a way that they do not filter out opposing views. I guess you can say that I'm no fan of freedom of ignorance.

No one is denying that Musk has real, selective talents and can be a driving force of innovation - but through all of history people like that have not been the right ones to wield significant political power. You wouldn't have wanted Thomas Edison or Henry Ford to be Presidents either. Musk can spend his zillions all he wants on flying to Mars, letting him buy a social network was a mistake under any rules-based order preventing concentration and misappropriation of powers.

A lot of people ask that question, is this satire? Have we really reached a stage already where it could be deemed as serious even in any alternative universe?

She's a comedian and currently feeding the take that it's sincere in its mock-devoutness, but I believe it's all part of the spoof to carry on for a while. To me it cries SNL. Or maybe I'm just one of those jaded and cynic libs that don't recognize true, unquestioning faith when they see it.

But then ... things can take a life of their own, can't say? This iconic Vietnam War pic here



is largely seen as a media turning point of the war, a depiction of an atrocity. But that is not how the photographer intended it. He took the shot after the interrogation of the tied up man, a suspected Vietcong member, had apparently revealed that he had murdered a South Vietnamese family collaborating with the Americans, women and children being among the dead. The shootist, a higher ranking member of the South Vietnamese police, became so infuriated that he seethingly delivered what he thought was ultimate justice himself and executed him on the spot. The photographer, an American, thought nothing wrong with that given what the VC suspect had supposedly done - the rest of the world, however, did - and would decades later still belabor how the intended message of the pic could have gone so awry (from his point of view).

Finally, some real country:

My favorite two-step bass song ever, courtesy of Randy Meisner:


Not real country of course, except in the more rural parts of Germany where the feathered ones were miscast as "country rock" in the misinformed 70s.

Rob is manly like Alan Lancaster then! Asked to do a two-step bass on Marguerita Time by Francis Rossi, he was first aghast, then played it under duress, but only under the condition that he would NOT be required to appear in the promo video


NOR have to mime to it in TV studios, instead Jim Lea of Slade took his place:


Alan wanted Status Quo to sound like this:


Yeah, I can understand his (and Rob's) sentiment, but admittedly Marguerita Time (which I thought horrendous at the time) has grown on me over close to half a century, I must be growing old.


PS: But here they actually got him to do it once at a TV appearance ("It had gone to #3 and he sure didn't mind the royalties!" Rossi sniffed):


You can tell that he was taking the piss doing it, even playing/miming with fingers, something Alan - a committed downstroke only pick man (hence his throbbing sound) - otherwise never did.

Quote from: Dave W on March 23, 2025, 03:19:57 PMWilko

Gypie

I know it's Dr Feelgood heresy, but I preferred Gypie to Wilko. Wilko was idiosyncratic, yes, but incredibly limited. They do have one trick ponies on Canvey Island. Gypie was more fluid in his playing without being anywhere near glib.