July Rambling: Weird Al, and the moon walk

Political language… is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind. – George Orwell. To that end, Bible Stories for Newly Formed and Young Corporations and Congratulations: It’s a corporation.

An answer to the child immigrant problem at the US-Mexican border? I note that the Biblical Jesus was a refugee, his parents fleeing Herod’s wrath. Yet so many people who profess to follow the teachings of Jesus Christ “are so uncaring and hateful about hungry children trying to get to a better, safer place to live.”

In the non-surprise category: Stand Your Ground Laws Lead To More Homicides, Don’t Deter Crime.

Misleading on Marriage: how gay marriage opponents twist history to suit their agenda.

Yiddish Professor Miriam Isaacs has dug in a previously unknown treasure of over a thousand unknowns Yiddish songs recorded of Holocaust survivors; text is in Swedish, but can be translated. Miriam was my old racquetball buddy decades ago.

The Creation Myth of 20th Century Fundamentalism by Jeff Sharlet, who I also knew long ago.

Australian swimming great Ian Thorpe came out as gay. Arthur explains why it STILL matters. Also: I Can Be Christian, and Gay, and Live in Alabama.

Portraits of people in 7 days’ worth of their own garbage.

U is for UHF

While researching a book about local television that I will almost certainly never write, I discovered that, after World War II, there was a great demand for having local television stations in the United States. TV in those days was limited to what was called VHF (very high frequency) of channels 1 to 13; eventually, channel 1 was reassigned. But with only 12 individual choices of TV stations, there were, inevitably, issues of station signals interfering with other broadcasts.

By 1949, there were just over 100 local stations in the country. While some large cities, such as New York and Los Angeles had four or more stations, other places had only one or two, and some places such as Denver, CO and Austin, TX had none.

So the Federal Communications Commission, the government body in charge of these things, instituted

Y is for Yankovic, "Weird Al" Yankovic

I was flipping through the channels on a Saturday morning – unusual, that – when I came across a BIOGRAPHY Channel piece on “Weird Al” Yankovic, which I was oddly compelled to watch. Then I came across this Bat Segundo interview, a very interesting listen.

Most novelty acts last a year or three. So how is it that Weird Al has managed to mine the music parody gig for nearly three decades? Not only that, he is more successful than ever