From the Village Voice:

In 1918, the New Orleans Times-Picayune declared jazz “an atrocity in polite society,” and fulminated that “we should make it a point of civic honor to suppress it. Its musical value is nil, and its possibilities of harm are great.”

But jazz went on to become an international language, surviving even in dictatorships that banned it. Nazi Germany condemned the music as a disgusting “Negro-Jewish” mongrelization. And in the years jazz was still prohibited in the U.S.S.R., a Moscow tenor saxophonist wrote me that he had translated my John Coltrane liner notes and covertly distributed them to other musicians in unlawful samizdats.

But as the years went on, and more sidemen and leaders grew ill or fell out of fashion, few of the music’s admirers here or around the world were aware of the barren last years of these musicians. Jazz musicians do not have pensions, and very few have medical plans or other resources. Pianist Wynton Kelly, for example—a vital sideman for Miles Davis and Dizzy Gillespie—died penniless. I was at the first recording session of pianist Phineas Newborn, whose mastery of the instrument was astonishing. As jazz musicians say, he told a story. His ended in a pauper’s grave in Memphis.

Via Ananova:

A collection of witty and eccentric lonely hearts ads from the London Review of Books have been brought together for a new book.

It features some of the most brilliant and often absurd ads from what’s been billed as the world’s funniest - and most erudite - lonely-hearts column.

Here’s a selection of the funniest:

‘I’ve divorced better men than you. And worn more expensive shoes than these. So don’t think placing this ad is the biggest comedown I’ve ever had to make. Sensitive F, 34.’

‘List your ten favourite albums… I just want to know if there’s anything worth keeping when we finally break up. Practical, forward thinking man, 35.’

‘Employed in publishing? Me too. Stay the hell away. Man on the inside seeks woman on the outside who likes milling around hospitals guessing the illnesses of out-patients. 30-35. Leeds.’

First world birth rates have been dropping since the 20th century, but that may change thanks to good old Darwinian evolution. From David Friedman’s blog:

 The theoretical argument is simple and persuasive. Humans vary in, among other things, their taste for having children. It seems likely that some of that variation is genetic. …So people with more of a taste for having children, those who are more phyloprogenitive, will out-reproduce those who are less, increasing the share of their descendants in the population and, eventually, bringing average birth rates back up.

It is a persuasive argument, but I have one problem with it. Human generations are long, so human evolution is slow. … We live in a time of very rapid change, driven by technological progress. That makes all long term predictions highly uncertain.

So, people who are genetically predisposed to have lots of kids will give birth to children with the same disposition, ad infinitum. Darwin in action, baby.

I never knew so much work went into the Microsoft Windows system sounds. From MSNBC:

Redmond-based Microsoft seriously debated several other sounds before settling on the final startup sound about three weeks ago. The rejects included a longer, lusher clip and a quick, techno-sounding piece. While many people liked an upbeat ditty with a clapping rhythm, it was eventually nixed for sounding too much like a commercial. Ball said the hand-clapping also seemed like too “human” a sound when paired with the new graphic for Vista.

…

The short startup clip that was eventually chosen is meant to evoke the rhythm of the words “Win-dows Vis-ta!” and Ball hopes the sound will serve as a calling card for the operating system. It also consists of four chords — one for every color in the new Windows graphic that appears as the sound plays. It’s no coincidence that it’s also four seconds long.

There are a total of 45 Vista sounds that Microsoft has spent the last year and a half perfecting, including the dings you hear when you get a new e-mail, receive an error message, or log off your computer. Generally, these are more muted, less jarring variations of the prompts familiar to Windows XP users.

From Jeremy, via some other page:

“Some foolproof methods to irritate your favorite atheist. Just be careful how you use them, or you may start wondering why the atheist is strangling you. ”

If you haven’t yet checked out some of our online friends, you should.

Quantum Muse — Our goal is to provide the discriminating reader with the best fantasy and science fiction literature and art we can obtain without spending most of our beer money.

Cherry Bleeds — Get your twisted fiction and poetry fix.

There’s a whole list of sites on the AntiMuse link page.

Tell me, why does Mitch Albom have the best-selling book according to BookSense, which only tracks INDEPENDENT BOOK STORES?

I doubt City Lights is stocking Mitch Albom.

Author William Styron died a week or so ago. From the New York Times obit:

Mr. Styron’s early work, including “Lie Down in Darkness,” won him wide recognition as a distinctive voice of the South and an heir to William Faulkner. In subsequent fiction, like “The Confessions of Nat Turner” and “Sophie’s Choice,” he transcended his own immediate world and moved across historical and cultural lines.

Critics and readers alike ranked him among the best of the generation that succeeded Hemingway and Faulkner. His peers included James Jones, Gore Vidal and Norman Mailer.

“I think for years to come his work will be seen for its unique power,” Mr. Mailer said of Mr. Styron in a telephone interview a few years ago. “No other American writer of my generation has had so omnipresent and exquisite a sense of the elegiac.”

Faithful reader(s) may have noticed my lack of attention toward National Novel Writing Month, a gimmicky movement whose members pledge to write 50,000 words in November. I tried it last year, but quickly abandoned the task after realizing the sad truth behind it: these 50,000 words will suck.

Yes, I know the entire purpose is to silence the internal editor, but why not spend November trying to write something worth reading? I’d rather have a decent essay than an unsalvageable novel.

Fans of charismatic charlatans will love this YouTube video.