How Things Seep In

Empirical proof of the fallaciousness of the Occam’s razor principle.

May be related to the “just world” theory in social psychology, where people think that people always get “what they deserve”. And so victims must have done something to bring their fate upon themselves.

That makes me want to cry.

Was the word wrong written in big capital letters in red next to the aside with an indication to turn over the page for a curt two line summation of who actually drove those planes into the Towers? (By which, I mean, Dick Cheney?)

On the other hand, a new generation learns of the greatness of Led Zeppelin so it’s not all bad.

Actually, those of us who were adolescents in Zep’s heyday remember that they were considered by most people with taste and discernment to be a crap pretentious band that had become a joke by 1971. And their biggest fans tended to be obnoxious morons. Imagine Korn being feted as rock gods in 30 years, and you’ll know how amazed serious rock fans in their 50s are that Zeppelin is now somehow placed in the same ranks as the Who and the Stones.

1 I clearly remember the moon landings, I wrote about them at school. I was almost 8 yrs old when Gene Cernan left the moon for the last time. Why do some students now not recall things from when they were that age? Because we are no longer encouraged to think about things, knowledge is dangerous, ‘clever’ has become a put-down.

2. I assume those papers got an automatic fail?

3. Vanya, I certainly wouldn’t rank Zep with The Who or The Stones, they were much better than either of those self-indulgent and pompous bands.

No offense, but where does your responsibility lie in this? I taught an intro to global politics class at Seattle University two years ago. I’m pretty sure, since the Iraq war and terrorism were discussed to some extent, that none of my students, freshmen to seniors, believed that the Iraqis had anything to do with 9/11. More important, perhaps, I made sure that they knew this and the issue figured in both their terms papers and the final.

@8
haha

17: excellent. The infamously short memory of the American teenager starts to work in the right direction!

Actually, those of us who were adolescents in Zep’s heyday remember that they were considered by most people with taste and discernment to be a crap pretentious band that had become a joke by 1971

that doesn’t sound like much of a heyday. I’m pretty sure that in their heyday they were more popular than that. That’s why they called it a “heyday”.

If teachers are responsible for what their students write, we are all in big, big trouble.

I just read a long essay on a final exam about how the American Revolution was fought because North and South could not work out their differences. I’m sorry, I am just not taking responsibility for that.

Eichmann was “sorry” too, Kieran.

Maybe my students didn’t see ObL as sufficiently loathsome enough to kill because they think “the Iraq’s” were responsible for 9/11?
.

Yes, I sort of wish “Black Shuck” was called “Black Dog 2.0”.

When you inform these kids in no uncertain terms that Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11 (and I am hoping that you take time out to do this – I think this would be one of the most important things you could teach them), do they believe you?

We’ll see. The first two comments were in rough drafts. The final drafts are in now, and I can see how they were corrected.

Comment #1 makes reference to a piece of mythology considerably older than 2000 years, which is the amount of time for which people have believed a younger bearded guy absolved some subset of humanity of its inherent sins by being executed unjustly.

The only question really is, are college students stupider than they used to be, or have they always been this stupid?

The thing is, I’m a bit unclear how this gets attributed to Bush administration disinformation, when the administration wasn’t spreading this particular bit of BS.

Perhaps you can’t blame a student for being taken in by pervasive disinformation, but they ought to at least get the disinformation right, shouldn’t they?

The student’s shock about killing OBL is part of a good trend, I think – American kids are just gentler than they were a generation ago. The downside of that trend is that they are also more passive. I think the constituency for bomb bomb bomb x, or kill kill kill y, may be shrinking to the 35-55 year old male set. I wonder, how many 18-30 year olds listen, for example, to hate radio? I bet Rush’s audience is getting long in the tooth. And since we know that at least a third of the population still believes there is a 9/11 saddam hussein link, it seems like the amount of students who assume it is below the average – although, of course, the subject has not, perhaps, come up enough to tell if that is right.

You remember wrong. The moon landings were staged, of course, by Led Zeppelin. In Iraq.

Precisely. Which is why it is so crucial for the cause of Freedom that Jimmy Page gets bombed as soon as possible.

Jimmy Page is probably getting bombed right this minute.

a new generation learns of the greatness of Led Zeppelin so it’s not all bad.

In a hundred years, Led Zeppelin will be forgotten. Elvis and the Beatles will be forgotten. But “Louie Louie” and “Wild Thing” will live on.

when the administration wasn’t spreading this particular bit of BS

Well, not only the Bush administration, lately, also the Republan candidates.

College Freshman were 12 in 2001? Good God. I was a college sophomore in 2001.

Eh, if you have a good life as a kid everything kind of blurs together until you hit the point where you start thinking about sex all the time–that is, puberty. Tbh my first real memories are of 41, though I did get the tail end of the “Godless Communists Hordes!” as I remember having that idea as a tyke.

I hate to say but being from the Southwest I’d say that suburban kids in that area don’t read the newspaper very much. However, they do represent the mainstream of the U.S. There are a lot more of them than there are the kinds of students I have.

The kids in question are in the Rust Belt, not the Southwest.

I think the fault lies with the English teachers who are always harping on not generalizing. If they would have paid more attention to the general case and just said “them feriners” that attacked the twin towers they wouldn’t be in the same fix.

Interesting how few people talk about the 9/11 attack on the Pentagon compared to the twin towers. Must be because Americans are pro-business and anti-government.

The Led Zeppelin snobbery was generational. Rolling Stones types (me) were 5+ years older than Zep types. A youth culture generation seems to be about 5-10 years.

As time went on I grew to appreciate Zep. In particular, everyone should listen to “Trampled Underfoot”.

You remember wrong. The moon landings were staged, of course, by Led Zeppelin. In Iraq.

You’re correct—you won’t find a single example of anyone in the adminstration badmouthing Led Zeppelin.

Man, this is an hilarious thread.

Rea, you do understand the difference between asserting that “Country X occasionally gives aid to the Axis powers” and “Country X was behind the attack on Pearl Harbor”, don’t you?

I think maybe this tactic is deserving of it’s own latin description as a logical fallacy:

1. X makes specific claim Y. (Saddam permitted al Quaeda to maintain training camps within his territory.)

2. Transform the specific claim into a general claim that wasn’t made. (Saddam and al Quaeda were joined at the hip.)

3. Prove that a quite different specific claim, Z, which falls under that generality is false. (Saddam didn’t organize the 9-11 attack.)

4. X is a liar!

And yet, somehow current college students and a not inconsiderable proportion of the American public thinks that Iraq was responsible for 9/11. By accident. Out of nowhere. How did that happen?

We’re going to need a bigger thread.

For Led Zeppelin.

It wasn’t all that long ago that many Americans thought we fought the Soviets in WWII, and this certainly showed up on student exams. The current crop of students has little or no knowledge of the USSR (or at least, mine don’t) so they don’t tend to make this mistake. However, in every batch of exams there are two or three who confuse Hitler with Stalin, at least to the point of switching their names (that is, they don’t tend to mix up details of each man’s career, they just can’t remember which one was German and which one was Soviet).

I wish I was in a band that was “little better than KISS”…

Chris Williams:

Thanks for the link to the paper on historical consciousness. I’m working on a novel that explores that topic, is there anything else that you’d recommend in that vein?

America invaded Vietnam after the Vietnamese attack on Pearl Harbor.

I think the fault lies with the English teachers who are always harping on not generalizing. If they would have paid more attention to the general case and just said “them feriners” that attacked the twin towers they wouldn’t be in the same fix.

If English teachers had paid more attention to the subjunctive mood, their students wouldn’t write things like “if they would have” so much.

Think what you like about LZ, but I bet they’d never say that Iraq was behind 9/11. Even Bonzo – were he still alive and binging on coke and vodka.

#61, I was a high school kid who liked Zeppelin in the mid-70s; I was possibly a nerd or, more likely, a honor role kid headed for college right after graduation. I was certainly gay, didn’t have a girlfriend (or boyfriend) and didn’t vote in 1980, aready disgusted with both major parties.

ripped off blues riffs

I hate to burst your bubble, but there wasn’t an original blues song written after 1935 or so, arguably earlier. And I like the blues.

if you all enjoy going around pretending that led zeppelin doesn’t rock, or that the rolling stones deserve praise for the extent to which they did not rip off old blues songs, I guess I’m not going to stand in your way.

True story. Someone I knew was teaching peace studies at a midwestern (US) university in the 1970s, and came to a session on atomic weapons. So she asked the class: “Has the atomic bomb ever actually been used in war?”

Silence.

After a while, one student very tentatively raised her hand and said: “Yes?”

“Fine. Who dropped the bomb.”

Silence.

“Japan?”

The US defeated Nazi Germany.

Apart from Stairway to Heaven I don’t think I could identify a single LZ song if I heard it.

You should try Kashmir; it’s a beautiful thing, man.

rea @ 41 is quite right. The repeated linking of Iraq with terrorism and 9/11 by various members of the administration makes it clear that this was not off-the-cuff imprecision but a deliberate tactic. It worked.

Stogie @68:

Pretty much all of what I know is on the website of this radio series that I advise on, ‘The Things We Forgot to Remember’:
http://www.open2.net/thingsweforgot/index.html

There’s more coming up soon: 4 episodes of series 3 are transmitting from Dec 24th, and also some more half-decent podcasts will be going up at the same time.

By the way, if (a) you like it and (b) you’re British, then you ought to go and sign this petition here:
http://petitions.pm.gov.uk/ELQFunding/

because otherwise it’s a near-certainty that it will be cut, since the UK government is about to seriously maim the Open University.

PS – sorry Stogie, I forgot to add that Kim Stanley Robinson’s novel _Icehenge_ also has some useful things to say about history and memory. Simon Schama’s semi-fictional pomo romp _Dead Certainties_ might perhaps help you a little but it’s not my cup of tea.

The thing to remember about “Stairway To Heaven”‘s that Plant’s on record as testifying it was his attempt to write an “Incredible String Band” song. That is a thing of importance.
Originality as concerns blues and rock and roll isn’t all that germane most of the time. The money is though. For a lot of (mature, black) blues guys who played and paid dues to get what little professional standing they had to have to stand and watch young white kids work a (partially grasped, dimly felt, inexpertly played sans nuance) riff they clearly got from said blues guys and make uncounted thousands of relatively easy dollars from it without kicking down or at least passing some attention back to the (immediate anyway) source, which could then be turned into potentially remunerating publicity etc., was hard. The industrial racism in that began to disintegrate only in the 70’s, and not all at once.
Still, there is no pure (contemporary) source for the blues other than the musicians who play the blues, or recordings of those who did. It’s the freeze-frame of the recording that locks it down and commodifies it. Nailing the truly appropriate beneficiaries of appreciation for what comes down, absent the artificial ownerism of copyright legalities, would be a boundless undertaking. I don’t know but I imagine at some point ZZTop would have been confronted with John Lee Hooker’s certified mastery of what they were delivering. Nothing around infringement in a legal sense, but how cool various individuals are. Absent that kind of historical respect it’s going to be about the money.
A lot of people (to attempt to sort of unite both themes of the thread) think Jimi Hendrix wrote “All Along The Watchtower”, but you can bet your last dollar Dylan’s enterprise didn’t get stiffed on royalties ensuant therefrom.

It’s probably a healthy thing to satiate one’s inner fascist with atavistic white boy frat rock every so often

Maybe it’s just me, but I think Living Color and Fishbone rock too. Oh, and System of a Down are not exactly fascist. But I guess I’m not a “serious” rock fan like you are!

It’s interesting how a claim of “irony” is often a post facto defence of bullshitting.

Rea, you do understand the difference between asserting that “Country X occasionally gives aid to the Axis powers” and “Country X was behind the attack on Pearl Harbor”, don’t you?

Brett, Iraq under Saddam did not “occasionally give aid” to al Qaeda. You, of course, will maintain that your comment did not imply that Iraq under Saddam occasionally gave aid to al Qaeda, to which I will respond tht you strongly implied that it did.

Now, if you repeat that a few hundred times, you have the conduct of your Bushian masters: repeated public linking of Iraq and al Qaeda, in a context that allows them to weasel when confonted by evidence that it wasn’t true. All that implication and misleading innuendo was not accidental.

Find me a single occasion in which members of this adminstration have tried to justify the Iraq War without reference to terrorism, 9/11, or al Qaeda.

Unlike a certain lady purchasing a stairway, you don’t seem to be aware that sometimes words have two meanings . . .

Rea, there was, at one time, an intelligence community consensus that Iraq was providing al Quaeda with training and resources. Given that, there’s nothing wrong with the early Bush administration asserting that.

And I stand by my statement that, at the least, we should expect students to get the disinformation right: The administration in fact did NOT claim that Saddam was behind 9-11. Some things the administration DID say might explain why an inattentive student might make this mistake, but it’s the student’s mistake, not the administration’s.

Both can be true: you can admire someone and yet somehow maintain an exploitative relationship to him at the same time.

Some portion of the blame for “Al Qaeda = Iraq” errors is certainly due to the misleading inferential rhetoric of pro-Iraq-warists; but I suspect a surprising amount arises from those whose thinking goes something like this:

“We were attacked on 9/11. It would make no sense to invade a country, topple its government, and occupy it by force unless that country had attacked us first; America is a great country and would never ever ever do such a thing. Therefore, Iraq attacked us on 9/11.”

One might might blame stupidity for that conclusion from rationalization; another might blame American Exceptionalism for it. Both may be right.

I am disappointed, but not surprised, by this evidence of the effectiveness of propaganda. For my own part, I learned long ago not to take any single news item as valid unless corroborated by independent sources, proven over time, or presented by a source with an especially high accuracy percentage. Most people seem to think that if it’s on the news, it must be true.

One of the most useful resources I’ve found for teaching that “history” isn’t always factual is the show “Assume the Position.” It’s a sharp and funny dissection of the historical process and how non-facts creep into the record. And once students have seen that, it tends to stick in their minds, giving them a useful edge of skepticism against the BS artists.

I’ve also got a saying, “Whenever you see propaganda, clap one hand on your wallet and the other hand on your civil rights, and hold on tight.”

When LZ1 came out us Yardbirds fans were pretty darn impressed (I remember thinking “Jesus, Page is playing as hot as Beck does!”)(that’s finger-lickin’ good Jeff Beck, you youths, not Beck Hansen, who in 1969 was an embryo). And when LZ2 hit the streets we were straight blown away. Zep definitely didn’t have as deep a catalog as the Stones or the Mothers but what they were doing in 1969 they did perfectly. After that album I kind of felt there was a diminution in quality but I never heard an LZ album that didn’t have a couple of genuinely boss cuts on it.

…there was, at one time, an intelligence community consensus that Iraq was providing al Quaeda with training and resources.

Brett, this is essentially bullshit. Worse, it’s party-line bullshit.

The Bush administration had exhibited interest in going into Iraq prior to Sept, 2001. In the post 9-11 political environment, they ginnied up a set of weak but numerous lies to support that position after taking a weak stab at sorting out Al-Queada et. al. in Afghanastan. Amongst the lies was a persistant, irrational connection drawn between Iraq and `terrorism’, which had by that point become such an amorphous term in the administrations usage as to become pretty much useless. They cherry picked & distorted whatever bits of intel (or non-intel sources, for that mater) they could use to paper over holes in the sales job they had already started — but there is no evidence that the input of the intelligence community as a whole, flawed as it obviously was, was taken that seriously.

People don’t like to think about this too carefully these days, but that’s understandable. The administration treated everyone like chumps, and most everyone pretty much swallowed it.

…there was, at one time, an intelligence community consensus that Iraq was providing al Quaeda with training and resources.

This particular point irks me to no end, as I was a member of the intelligence community in the early 2000 and I can give direct eye-witness testimony that there was no such consensus. Same with the point about WMD (everybody believed Iraq had WMD? No we didn’t). And don’t try to qualify it in “American intelligence community”, we routniely worked with Americans and there was no discernible differences between their positions and ours.

This teacher’s anecdote says more about her and public education today, than any sinister plot by the U.S. government to blame Iraq for 9-11. Any reasonably competent civics or current events class would hopefully have discussed Afghanistan and Iraq as two separate campaigns.

What about the number of young people who have viewed ‘Fahrenheit 911″ or read left-wing blogs who actually believe the 2000 and 2004 elections were stolen? I would venture to say there is more of that propaganda going on then someone conflating Iraq with 9-11 out of their own intellectual laziness.

This particular point irks me to no end, as I was a member of the intelligence community in the early 2000 and I can give direct eye-witness testimony that there was no such consensus.

This. blog. needs. an. Annie. Hall. tag!

113: The 2000 election wasn’t stolen? That’s certainly news to me.

#91 et al-
That John Mayall, Alexis Korner and the other British blues enthusiasts…
You could throw Long John Baldry in there too if you wanted. Or Fleetwood Mac 1.0. Or in the US, gee, whole bunches of guys – Siegal-Schwall, Butterfield, Bloomfield, Gravenites…or the brilliantly regenerated country blues of Koerner, Ray, and Glover. Tracy Nelson. And especially if to make your snarky point more valid you conflate the years from say 1959 to 1974 or 75. But it’s about large money. It’s about large money at a particular moment when the genre boundaries of music appreciation were disintegrating, vaporizing. The gold mine of late 60’s early 70’s popular music. Records and venues generating massive cash.
The idea that Mayall or Korner were doing much more than living pretty much the same kind of professional lives as Howlin Wolf and Muddy Waters – at the time – won’t hold. They were trying to assume the whole persona, and doing it sometimes, a little fortune, more fame, but nowhere near the superstar bank that came to their junior-varsity siblings like Clapton and Page. Which is not to denigrate anyone or their superlative playing and refined aesthetic morality.
Jagger may have pointed back to his heroes every chance he got, or he may have only done it every once in a while. “Prodigal Son” on “Beggar’s Banquet” has a taint from its near note for note symmetry with a Sonny Terry/Brownie McGee number. There were legal proceedings around that if I’m not mistaken. It’s still a fine tune.
Richards definitely threw his whole celebrity back toward Chuck Berry, when Berry finally let him. But the money, at the time of which I speak, went to the watered-down partial versions of what the blues had become by then, delivered by young white kids, to young white kids.
I love all those guys, every name I’ve mentioned here has my love and respect, full-time. It was more an elaboration of the same idea as made prior.
And I wasn’t making that point so much as the Plant/String Band one, anyway.

how come 30 years later people are stilll comparing the Rolling Stones with any half-decent bands? They should be compared with Oasis, if they are lucky. Led Zeppelin are clearly in a different league. Hint to the oldies: just because you liked it when you were an adolescent philistine doesn’t make it good.

Hint to the oldies: just because you liked it when you were an adolescent philistine doesn’t make it good.

Actually my feelings on this is that there’s a sweet spot which you hit somewhere in early post adolescence. When you’re young your instincts are good but you don’t have experience or a very well developed sense of perspective (the fact that you tend to have strongly held political opinions at this age tends to make this even worse, as you’re very apt to confuse your (usually fairly shallow) ethics with your aesthetics). When you’re old somehow you end up thinking Phil Collins (or the generational equivalent) is ‘subtle’ and great contrary to all the sensory evidence contrariwise. So the pinnacle of your taste takes place sometime in your 20’s. Unless you actively cultivate it.

And cultivating it means listening to, but not emulating or trusting, your 16 year old self:

Wow, what a thread dudes. And to think, no one has yet mentioned Kid Rock as an even more startling nonsequitur.

Those of us familiar with Orwell aren’t surprised about the misperceptions, misconceptions, twisted truths, clever conceits, or abiding deceptions. We’re just wondering, 1. Who’s going to pass out the soma, and 2. Where’s the line start?

Thinking’s dead. Party on.

Lindsey, not shocked. For the last 4 years though I have been shocked though how little discussion the war gets in America. It seems to come up all the time in Europe, in the US hardly ever. I feel like people tiptoe around the subject for fear of offending, or maybe people genuinely just don’t think about it that much.

to: notsneaky@125-Absolutely spot on. (Uh,is Springsteen a generational equivalent to(shudder)Phil Collins?!? (I was born in 57. I grew up with VietNam rising in my harbor like Godzilla. Rust belt,indeed. We had three choices facing us with the end of high school,choices we were certain of from events observed from the safety of the sixth grade in 1968. They were;college if you were a Fortunate Son,the local Chrysler plant or Nam,if you weren’t. Zep was better than vodka. For awhile…)What do the kids look forward to now? If it keeps on rainin’,levee’s gonna break. And I have known for some time that was Memphis Minnie…