He Sang Our Lives

 Rewatching “No Direction Home,” Martin Scorsese’s epic 2005 documentary about Bob Dylan’s early career, requires stamina but it’s worth it. Not only does it contain dozens and dozens of tracks from his concerts in the early sixties, it contains the most extensive interviews he has ever given as well.

If you love Dylan’s music, which I do, the live footage of his performances is priceless. But whether you like it or not, the way he talks about his life and career bring us as close to an understanding of what we as a generation tried to do collectively as we are ever likely to get.

The unanswerable question is how and why this skinny, scruffy, raspy-voiced poet from Hibbing, Minnesota, emerged at exactly the right place, Greenwich Village and right time, 1961, to issue his series of clarion calls for an entire generation.

He was and is by far our most authentic voice. He wrote and sang like a man possessed of some supernatural ability to channel the emerging spirit of the largest generation of humans to ever crowd our way onto the planet. 

Meanwhile, just like many of the rest of us, Dylan has lived out his personal life and his career as a series of acts, changing and adapting to a world that’s never seemed quite as stable as the one our parents envisioned for us. Through multiple marriages and relationships, he’s somehow raised six kids, while stubbornly staying as far out of the limelight as his superstardom has allowed.

To this day, Dylan’s greatest songs give me chills and make the hair stand up on the back of my neck. His music, more than any other, helps me remember who I am. 

Somehow he became us — or we became him — I’m not sure which. Or maybe it’s both. 

He doesn’t know either — his modesty is not false. Like he said, he was just a song and dance man. He didn’t try to be a leader or the face of a generation. But he became that anyway and the world is a better place because of it.

Bob Dylan will turn 83 in a couple of weeks.

(Republishing this two yeas after I wrote it.)

HEADLINES:

• Israel's Iran attack carefully calibrated after internal splits, US pressure (Reuters)

• House advances Ukraine, Israel aid as Dems help Speaker Johnson, GOP (The Hill)

• Seeking ‘the right side of history,’ Speaker Mike Johnson risks his job to deliver aid to Ukraine (AP)

• Mike Johnson’s Shockingly Pro-Ukraine Speech Really Sticks It to MAGA (TNR)

• Judge in Trump’s hush money case orders media not to report where potential jurors work (AP)

• Colleges Warn Student Demonstrators: Enough (NYT)

• NPR staff question editorial direction after public essay alleges bias (NewsNation)

• Here’s why Uri Berliner couldn’t stay at NPR (WP)

• What does Goldman Sachs want in a coder? For them to have studied philosophy (WSJ)

• Russia ramps up weapons production, using mass quantity to outgun Ukraine (WP)

• Drought Pushes Millions Into ‘Acute Hunger’ in Southern Africa (NYT)

• Scientists push new paradigm of animal consciousness, saying even insects may be sentient (NBC)

• World faces ‘deathly silence’ of nature as wildlife disappears, warn experts (Guardian)

• Nearly half of China's major cities are suffering "moderate to severe" levels of subsidence, putting millions of people at risk of flooding especially as sea levels rise, according to a study of nationwide satellite data. (Reuters)

• Playing God With the Atmosphere (Atlantic)

• Once a fringe ideology, Hindu nationalism is now mainstream in India (AP)

• How A.I. Tools Could Change India’s Elections (NYT)

• Study: Average American Tries Getting Out Of 10,000 Things Each Year (The Onion

Ceteris Paribus

 For one semester at the University of Michigan I was an Econ major, but I got hung up on the Latin phrase meaning "all other things being equal," which kept showing up in every economic model we studied.

When I (somewhat rebelliously) wrote a paper arguing that in real life all other things never stay equal, my professor was not amused and gave me a D. That was the end of my potential career as an economist.

I understood, of course, the concept of modeling and the need to control for random factors that could affect the outcome, since I’d also been a math major for a minute. But similar concerns about reality’s messiness compared to math’s formulaic purity derailed my academic trajectory in that subject as well. Quod Erat Demonstrandum if you will.

In the end, I found that I was better suited to working with words, so it was journalism for me, which of course is completely obsessed with the real world and all of its messiness. But the two subjects that came up over and over again in my journalism career were economics and math.

I often wished that I’d paid better attention in those classes as the stories I covered often had elements that put my memory to the test. 

Accordingly, years later when I was teaching journalism at U-C, Berkeley, Stanford and SF State, I found myself advising students to take classes in math and economics because they would probably need them in their future careers.

Mindful of my own academic record, I also told my students if they just couldn’t stand the way all those “other things” never seemed to add up the way they were supposed to, maybe being a journalist was indeed the right job for them.

Finis.

HEADLINES:

• Israeli missile hits Iran, U.S. officials confirm (CBS)

• 12 jurors seated in Trump trial as alternates are sought (WP)

• House GOP erupts into name-calling and fresh threats to Johnson over effort to pass aid (CNN)

• Red states threaten librarians with prison — as blue states work to protect them (WP)

• Brussels proposes return to pre-Brexit mobility for UK and EU young people (Guardian)

• Miscalculation Led to Escalation in Clash Between Israel and Iran (NYT)

• US to oppose Palestinian bid for full UN membership (Reuters)For one semester at the University of Michigan I was an Econ major, but I got hung up on the Latin phrase meaning "all other things being equal," which kept showing up in every economic model we studied.

  When I (somewhat rebelliously) wrote a paper arguing that in real life all other things never stay equal, my professor was not amused and gave me a D. That was the end of my potential career as an economist.

  I understood, of course, the concept of modeling and the need to control for random factors that could affect the outcome, since I’d also been a math major for a minute. But similar concerns about reality’s messiness compared to math’s formulaic purity derailed my academic trajectory in that subject as well. Quod Erat Demonstrandum if you will.

  In the end, I found that I was better suited to working with words, so it was journalism for me, which of course is completely obsessed with the real world and all of its messiness. But the two subjects that came up over and over again in my journalism career were economics and math.

  I often wished that I’d paid better attention in those classes as the stories I covered often had elements that put my memory to the test. 

  Accordingly, years later when I was teaching journalism at U-C, Berkeley, Stanford and SF State, I found myself advising students to take classes in math and economics because they would probably need them in their future careers.

  Mindful of my own academic record, I also told my students if they just couldn’t stand the way all those “other things” never seemed to add up the way they were supposed to, maybe being a journalist was indeed the right job for them.

  Finis.

  HEADLINES:

  • Israeli missile hits Iran, U.S. officials confirm (CBS)

  • 12 jurors seated in Trump trial as alternates are sought (WP)

  • House GOP erupts into name-calling and fresh threats to Johnson over effort to pass aid (CNN)

  • Red states threaten librarians with prison — as blue states work to protect them (WP)

  • Brussels proposes return to pre-Brexit mobility for UK and EU young people (Guardian)

  • Miscalculation Led to Escalation in Clash Between Israel and Iran (NYT)

  • US to oppose Palestinian bid for full UN membership (Reuters)

  • NPR needs a serious critique not a politically charged parting shot (Guardian)

  • The Real Reason NPR Squashed Uri Berliner (Politico Mag)

  • NPR’s Problems Won’t Be Solved by “Viewpoint Diversity” (The Nation)

  • Turmoil at NPR after editor rips network for political bias (WP)

  • California sets long-awaited drinking water limit on ‘Erin Brockovich’ contaminant (AP)

  • Arizona Republicans Splinter Over Repeal of 1864 Abortion Ban (NYT)

  • Ancient humans hid in Saudi Arabian lava tube for over 7,000 years (Independent)

  • We Need To Rewild The Internet (Noema)

  • Senate Commerce chair backs amended bill that could ban TikTok (The Hill)

  • The AI race is generating a dual reality (Financial Times)

  • Meta’s battle with ChatGPT begins now (Verge)

  • The AI hype bubble is deflating. Now comes the hard part. (WP)

  • Attention-Seeking Friend Obviously Hoping Someone Will Ask Where Other Arm Went (The Onion)

• NPR needs a serious critique not a politically charged parting shot (Guardian)

• The Real Reason NPR Squashed Uri Berliner (Politico Mag)

• NPR’s Problems Won’t Be Solved by “Viewpoint Diversity” (The Nation)

• Turmoil at NPR after editor rips network for political bias (WP)

• California sets long-awaited drinking water limit on ‘Erin Brockovich’ contaminant (AP)

• Arizona Republicans Splinter Over Repeal of 1864 Abortion Ban (NYT)

• Ancient humans hid in Saudi Arabian lava tube for over 7,000 years (Independent)

• We Need To Rewild The Internet (Noema)

• Senate Commerce chair backs amended bill that could ban TikTok (The Hill)

• The AI race is generating a dual reality (Financial Times)

• Meta’s battle with ChatGPT begins now (Verge)

• The AI hype bubble is deflating. Now comes the hard part. (WP)

• Attention-Seeking Friend Obviously Hoping Someone Will Ask Where Other Arm Went (The Onion)

The World is Flat

 (From my archive. This is an excerpt from an essay I published in 2010.)

Each big change that sweeps through your life, especially of the losing kind (losing a job, a relationship, a house) creates a grieving period but also opens up new possibilities for your future.

This is obvious, of course, and I am not a self-help guru, so I won't condescend to anyone by offering cliches about how to deal with such situations.

But I will note that, in my case, when someone takes something away from me (typically a job), after I'm sad and perhaps mad for a bit, I reach the stage where I feel that a burden has been lifted.

Upon reflection, somebody paid me to do something, told me what to do and how to do it, indicated displeasure but rarely pleasure -- you know the routine — and now all that is gone from my life.

In American business culture, it seems, kindness is a lost art. The idea is to be direct.

The world is changing for middle-class Americans. Our position of relative privilege in the world is flattening out as we increasingly integrate our economy with the emerging global system. It’s called globalization.

There are some who would use our power, including our military power, to resist this adjustment in relative privilege. They believe we have a God-given right to being "number one" and other people should not be allowed to catch up unless they do so at no cost to us.

It doesn't work that way. The world as we know it is a finite place. There are only so many resources. They have to go around, according to some sort of system of equity, or monstrous disparities will persist between the rich and the poor.

There are those who defend such disparities and would fight to the death (or send others to their death) in order to defend them.

Not me. I recognize that my relative wealth is directly related to a larger world of poverty, illness, and shortened expectations. I am grateful to be an American, but I’d like to think we could be better global citizens.

But the political discourse over these matters has become so poisoned that I have trouble enduring it. Let’s hope the situation improves soon.

P.S. It didn’t.

HEADLINES:

• Senate dismisses two articles of impeachment against Homeland Security secretary, ends trial (AP)

• A self-described "Christian nationalist" who served in Trump's administration said his former boss is "cloaking" his actual, "radical" beliefs on the campaign trail, adding that he would govern in a "more aggressive fashion" if he won a second term. [HuffPost]

• Surreal scenes as jurors in New York trial tell Trump what they really think (Guardian)

• Other states, like Arizona, could resurrect laws on abortion, LGBTQ+ issues and more that have been lying dormant for more than 100 years (The Conversation)

• Finally, Mike Johnson Makes His Move to Shiv Marjorie Taylor Greene (New Republic)

• Secret Russian foreign policy document urges action to weaken the U.S. (WP)

• Reformers hoped to curtail US domestic spying; lawmakers are poised to expand it (Reuters)

• NPR Editor Resigns After Publicly Criticizing Coverage, Calls New CEO ‘Divisive’ (WSJ)

• The Real Story Behind NPR’s Current Problems (Slate)

• Hundreds of cargo ships lost propulsion in U.S. waters in recent years (WP)

• They Experimented on Themselves in Secret. What They Discovered Helped Win a War (Wired)

• How did life on Earth begin? Cracks may have been the key. (WP)

• Banks told to anticipate risks from using AI, machine learning (Reuters)

• AI and robotics demystify the workings of a fly's wing (Nature)

• Mother Still Searching For Preschool That Focuses Exclusively On Her Son (The Onion)

Is NPR Too Liberal?

NPR’s decision to suspend senior editor Uri Berliner for five days after his online essay criticizing the network’s alleged liberal bias is not the first such controversy in the public broadcasting system’s history.

In 2010, for example, NPR cancelled commentator Juan Williams’s contract after comments about Muslims that he made during an appearance on the conservative Fox network. 

When people ask me as a former public media executive whether those who work there are mostly liberal, I always answer, “Of course!” The workforce at NPR and at member stations throughout the system tends to be well-educated — and well-educated people skew toward the liberal end of the political spectrum.

Beyond that, public broadcasting employees tend to be thoughtful people, interested in public policy, and supportive of social changes that hold the promise of making our democratic system more inclusive, diverse, and progressive.

Such tendencies can be easily mischaracterized as the kind of knee-jerk “wokeness” so decried by conservatives as a dangerous force in American culture. I’m not sure that such a danger actually exists, but if it does it comes nowhere close to rivaling the threat demonstrated by the Capitol rioters on Jan. 6th, 2021. 

Nevertheless, the critics’ point-of-view is worth taking seriously. 

Liberals, when they do achieve some measure of power, should always practice what they preach, and that definitely incudes tolerance for diverse points of view.

Which brings me back to the news hook for this column. I wasn't privy to the discussions leading up to Berliner’s suspension, but it certainly doesn’t make NPR look good. I read Berliner’s essay and found it to be a relatively mild critique of the network’s liberal bias through flawed coverage of three important stories. 

Whereas Berliner ascribes a liberal bias to the network’s failure to fully execute on those stories, and he may well be right, another view might be that these were routine journalistic failures, not political ones.

Either way, the leaders at NPR probably need to grow thicker skin when it comes to criticism from within their organization. Ideally they should welcome it, though I know that in real life that can be extremely hard to do.

Controversies over coverage happen not infrequently inside newsrooms, and I view them as healthy exercises. If I were running NPR, I’d probably hold out an olive branch to Berliner, with a gentle suggestion that the next time would he please try to keep the dialogue a little more inside the family circle.

Meanwhile, this very public controversy is already being seized upon by right-wingers to call for ending government support for public broadcasting, so let me be clear. NPR, whatever its flaws, is a national treasure. You can trust the journalism — it’s fair, balanced and relatively unbiased.

And at a time when our democracy is under serious assault, we need a healthy public media system now more than ever.

(I worked at NPR affiliate KQED in 1994-’5 and again from 2013-’19. Thanks to my friend and veteran journalist Bruce Koon for talking this issue through with me. He is of course not responsible for what I’ve written. That’s on me)

HEADLINES:

• Mike Johnson says he won’t resign amid right-wing backlash over foreign aid to Ukraine (CNN)

• Johnson gambles on plan separating Israel aid from Ukraine funds (WP)

• With Nuclear Deal Dead, Containing Iran Grows More Fraught (NYT)

• Iran's unprecedented missile and drone strike on Israel is unlikely to prompt dramatic sanctions action on Iran's oil exports from the Biden administration due to worries about boosting oil prices and angering top buyer China, said analysts. (Reuters)

• The Israeli military renewed warnings for Palestinians in Gaza not to return to the embattled territory’s north, saying the area was still an active battle zone. [AP]

• Biden has to decide soon whether to sanction Venezuela. (NPR)

• Judge in hush money trial admonishes Trump after he appears to speak during questioning of a prospective juror (NBC)

• The reality of being a criminal defendant on trial finally dawned on Trump. He didn’t take it well. (Politico)

• First day of trial features legal wrangling over Trump’s tabloid lifestyle (WP)

• A federal judge rejected an effort by Rudy Giuliani to reverse the jury’s verdict in a defamation suit against him, requiring him to pay the $146 million judgment to two Georgia election workers he’d falsely accused of election fraud. [HuffPost]

• Supreme Court is hearing arguments in Jan. 6 case that may impact Trump, rioters (WP)

• Welcome to the Golden Age of User Hostility (Atlantic)

• UK lawmakers back landmark bill to gradually phase out smoking for good (AP)

• Adobe's new generative AI tools for video are absolutely terrifying (Mashable)

• AI now beats humans at basic tasks — new benchmarks are needed, says major report (Nature)

• Vana plans to let users rent out their Reddit data to train AI (TechCrunch)

• Three reasons robots are about to become more way useful  (Technology Review)

• omen are exclusively referred to as “varmints” throughout Arizona’s 1864 abortion ban. (The Onion)

 

Origin Stories: CIR

 In April 1977, Lowell Bergman and I were discussing how to form a new journalism organization in the wake of the demise of our informal muckraking unit inside Rolling Stone.

Over the preceding two years at the magazine's headquarters at 625 Third Street in Soma, we'd pulled together a half dozen or so reporters to pursue investigative stories, which had resulted in some good stories and also a ton of trouble.

Along with a bunch of awards, we had proven an ability to attract death threats and huge libel suits, among other forms of attention. We had both been unceremoniously dumped by Jann Wenner just before Christmas 1976 when he announced he would be taking the magazine to the east coast.

Our idea was to form a non-profit to carry on that type of work and Lowell brought an ally into the mix -- Dan Noyes, who he'd met in the "Arizona Project." That was a group investigation into the murder of journalist Don Bolles, which in turn led to the creation of another non-profit group, Investigative Reporters and Editors (IRE).

The three of us -- Bergman, Noyes and myself -- co-founded the Center for Investigative Reporting (CIR) later in 1977. A large group of advisers helped us launch the organization and we settled into an office in downtown Oakland.

But back in April, we had been still discussing what such an organization should be, what it should do, what its essential identity should be.

Today, 47 years later, CIR and IRE have long been staples of the journalism world and we are working individually on our memoirs. In that context, Lowell recently unearthed an old type-written letter he had sent to Dan that April. Dan and I had not yet met and Lowell wanted to introduce him to my thoughts on the subject.

    "I talked with Weir --as expected he is enthusiastic. Interestingly, David presented the following perspective: (the group should have) two major groups of activity: publications and community involvement."

This old letter is a prime example of why I spend so much energy beseeching people to preserve their journals, letters, notes and files whenever possible. Until Lowell sent a copy of it to me recently, I had absolutely no memory of having said those things.

But clearly I was envisioning not only a journalism organization but one that would attempt to root that work in the communities where we worked.

The Bay Area was our base. It was a region with deep contradictions -- idealism, activism and hope with violence, cynicism, and deeply entrenched reactionary media organizations, notably the old Hearst daily, the San Francisco Examiner.

We couldn't know it at the time, but that same newspaper would be transformed by a talented group of our peers, including the heir to the Hearst publishing empire, Will Hearst, into an excellent newspaper in its final decades.

We participated in that transformation. We also found our way into relationships with dozens of other media groups -- CBS News, NBC News, ABC News, 60 Minutes, 20/20, Mother Jones, New West, New York, NHK, BBC, etc., here and around the world.

There were many ups and downs in the early years, including press conferences denouncing us, and/or announcing libel suits and more death threats, but ultimately CIR survived and thrived. How that came to be is the story the three of us need to tell in our memoirs.

NOTE: Early in 2024, Mother Jones and CIR merged into a single organization.

HEADLINES:

• Trump's historic hush money trial begins in New York (CNN)

• ‘This Seems to Be a Major Strategic Error on the Part of Iran’ (Politico Mag)

• Israel vows to retaliate against Iran for missile attacks (Axios)

• Far Right’s Ties to Russia Sow Rising Alarm in Germany (NYT)

• Ukraine appealed again to allies for "extraordinary and bold steps" to supply air defenses to help defend against waves of Russian air strikes that have targeted the energy system in recent weeks. (Reuters)

• Ukraine’s attacks on Russian oil refineries deepen tensions with U.S. (WP)

• Tesla lays off ‘more than 10 percent’ of its workforce, loses top executives (Verge)

• 'Rust' movie armorer Hannah Gutierrez-Reed sentenced to 18 months (NBC)

• The US Government Has a Microsoft Problem (Wired)

• Half of the world's 75 poorest countries are experiencing a widening income gap with the wealthiest economies for the first time this century in a historical reversal of development, the World Bank said in a report. (Reuters)

• From thousands to millions to billions to trillions to quadrillions and beyond: Do numbers ever end? (The Conversation)

• Are Flying Cars Finally Here? (New Yorker)

• Facebook blocked news in Canada last August to avoid paying fees to media companies and looks likely to do the same in Australia. The blocking of news links has led to profound and disturbing changes in the way Canadian Facebook users engage with information about politics, two unpublished studies shared with Reuters found. (Reuters)

• A.I. Has a Measurement Problem (NYT)

• Eric Trump Only Potential Juror Uninformed Enough To Serve At Father’s Trial (The Onion)

Monday Links

 HEADLINES:

• As Iran attacks Israel, Biden confronts an escalating Middle East crisis he had hoped to avoid (CNN)

• Iran’s attack on Israel raises fears of a wider war, but all sides have also scored gains  (AP)

• Drones are crowding Ukraine’s skies, largely paralyzing battlefield (WP)

• Biden Shrinks Trump’s Edge in Latest Times/Siena Poll (NYT)

• Democracy Dies Behind Paywalls (Atlantic)

• Supreme Court set to hear case that could undo many Jan. 6 convictions (WP)

• GOP push emerges to keep George Santos away from the Capitol (Axios)

• Can homeless people be fined for sleeping outside? A rural Oregon city asks the US Supreme Court (AP)

• Why do some people always get lost? (Knowable)

• What the evidence really says about social media’s impact on teens’ mental health (Vox)

• Generative AI is coming for healthcare, and not everyone’s thrilled (TechCrunch)

• AI could be the prescription that healthcare systems need so desperately (TechRadar)

• What is artificial intelligence (AI)? (LiveScience)

• AI's flawed human yardstick (Axios)

• New Tennessee Law Requires Women To Wait 24 Hours Before Getting A Burger (The Onion)

Party 77

 

Reaching 77

There is a certain synchronicity of numbers, a poetry that always fascinated me as a boy and it still does. My birthday is on the 14th; this year it’s my 77th; and of course two sevens add up to 14.

It’s just a silly game I play, though a therapist once suggested that it may also be one mechanism I developed early on to cope with anxiety.

Until recently, I’m not sure that I could even recognize anxiety when it arose within me but these days I am trying to be more attentive to it. I also now believe that therapist was probably right.

There is a lot to be anxious about in life in general, of course, and in our world right now in particular. I wish that by reaching the age of 77 I could claim to have acquired a new layer of wisdom that might help others deal with worldly anxiety but alas, that does not appear to have occurred.

Still, I’m pretty sure that seven plus seven still adds up to fourteen, so you might try math as a cheap form of therapy.

Also, on my birthday I want to thank all of my readers and subscribers. I’m grateful to each one of you.

HEADLINES:

• Israeli military says multiple drones launched from Iran shot down over Israel (WP)

• Fate of Middle East hangs in the balance as Israel mulls its next steps (Guardian)

• ‘Disastrous’: Israel-Iran tensions test limits of US policy amid Gaza war (Al Jazeera)

• Russian troops advance in Ukraine as Kyiv runs low on air defenses (WP)

• US says China is boosting Russia's war machine in Ukraine (Reuters)

• Immigrants in Maine Are Filling a Labor Gap. It May Be a Prelude for the U.S. (NYT)

• Harris goes on the offensive over abortion rights in Arizona: ‘Trump did this’ (CNN)

• Pittsburgh bridges close after 26 barges break loose, float uncontrolled down Ohio River (USA Today)

• Battle for the American West (Financial Times)

• Right-Wing Media Are in Trouble (Atlantic)

• Campaign Puts Trump and the Spy Agencies on a Collision Course (NYT)

• Minority Rule Is Threatening American Democracy Like Never Before (Mother Jones)

• Google goes all in on generative AI at Google Cloud Next (TechCrunch)

• From boom to burst, the AI bubble is only heading in one direction (Guardian)

• Google’s new technique gives LLMs infinite context (Venture Beat)

• With French under fire, Mali uses AI to bring local language to students (WP)

• Mobster Excited For Surprise Trip To Secluded Lake With His 3 Best Buds (The Onion)