"Avast ye debate pirates!" ~The 2011 Filibuster Reform Compromise

Last week, the Senate took up a debate that can only reasonably take place once every two years: whether to change the Senate rules, specifically those pertaining to the filibuster and the cloture needed to end one.

The romantic in me loves the filibuster. One senator showing the resolve to stand up for his (or her) beliefs and argue his cause. Every one can have his voice heard. And then the process continues, either the lone senator has rallied support, or he hasn't.

But, alas! That's only how the process works in my head. Nowadays the filibuster has been twisted into a stall tactic used to block even the most banal of bills. Either the minority has its way or no legislation makes it to an outright vote. Though such tactics have led most observers to agree that some sort of reform is needed, no one is saying that the Senate should get rid of the filibuster in its entirety.

In 1975, a similar point was reached. The senate majority invoked a 1957 decision by then Vice President Nixon and led a powerful compromise that took the constitutional (aka: "nuclear") option off the table in exchange for lowering the threshhold of votes needed to pass cloture from two-thirds (67 of 100) to the current three-fifths supermajority (60 of 100), excluding special cases such as with international treaties. Simple, right? After the change, another fifteen years of relatively civil discourse prevailed until the early nineties when the filibuster came back into vogue.

Character Study: British coffee biker

"That's not what you said!" he cried, tempering a wild gesture so as not to spill his coffee drink. The man was passionately holding a one sided argument with his female companion next to their shared motorcycle, the sleepy atmosphere of the grocery store parking lot extenuating the odd melodrama of the scene. Although most of the dialogue was obscured by either the bustle of the public setting or his half-hearted attempt to acknowledge it, the cadence of his British accent was always discernible. This was likely due to his voice's juxtaposition to its very American surroundings and seemingly American speaker.  One wonders what could have evoked such passion in this leather clad gentleman, this English Fonze. How long had he been traveling in the States and how many women had been on the wrong side of his latte-fueled tirades? Sadly, nothing remains of this enigmatic road-warrior except the brief impression left on the author.

Southwest

I have always had a warm, fuzzy place in my heart for Southwest airlines. Their recent advertising campaign has been targeted toward their lone refusal among major carriers to charge fees for checked baggage. I thought this was a nice gesture, but I rarely fly with more than a stuffed carry-on. Today, I saw a new campaign that hit much closer to home, and likely cemented Southwest as my preferred carrier.


Last year I flew more miles than I had during the rest of my life combined. A 2500-mile long distance relationship will do that to you. On one memorable occasion, I had booked tickets a month and a half ahead of a  visit to NYC with my girlfriend, who would drive down from upstate NY to meet me. We would then drive back upstate and I would fly back to SoCal from there. A bit complicated but it worked.

Museum of Music: Part 2

In Part 1 of this post, I described and criticized the sorry state of public collections of music as compared to other prominent arts. Continuing with that thought below, I outline ideas for the creation of a modern multimedia driven Museum of Music (MoM).


Unlike paintings or sculpture, presenting music en mass is hard. If you walk into a good-sized room of an art gallery, you might see as many as a dozen paintings in close proximity, perhaps with a few statues filling the void between walls. Tourists can dart through the room, taking only passing glances at the modest and masterful alike; and art aficionados can dissect little known works, brush stroke by brush stroke. Part of the fun of art museums is that you can experience the art at the speed and level of depth that you want.


Music needs a solution to the same problem. Average listeners can't stay awake through an entire symphony, and even if they could, without modest training, they wouldn't appreciate what they were hearing. On the other hand, a former cellist who has season tickets to the Philharmonic, wouldn't enjoy being told that Beethoven's 9th symphony can be summed up by a snippet of the Ode to Joy melody.