Beethoven

There's a scene in Band of Brothers where a group of American soldiers watch German's dealing with the rubble of their village. A quartet is playing mournful music in the center of the street. One of the soldiers remarks something like "Germans sure do clean up good when they've got their Mozart." And Cpt. Nixon comes up from behind and says "Beethoven."
A Wikipedia article on the episode indicates that the quartet is playing the String Quartet in C-Sharp Minor (op 131).

I think it is significant because Beethoven, unlike Mozart, was German. This is an episode where the soldiers find a concentration camp. So it seems to me that the humanity of one German is being contrasted with the total lack of humanity in another.

Around the same time as I watched this episode, I heard a movement from a Beethoven symphony on the radio. I couldn't say which symphony but I was bowled over by the power and beauty. It turned to be the final movement of the 5th. And it made me think about a conversation i had with my father. I asked him what was the greatest piece of music ever made. He said, without hesitation, Beethoven's 5th. And I think I was rather disappointed. I'd hoped for a rock selection of course and but if it had to be classical I wanted it to be something more original. What I didn't realized then was that the 5th symphony has so much more than just the overplayed first movement.

So once again I may eventually have to agree with my Dad.

But for now I think I'll stick with Brahm's 3rd Symphony.

A WWII Reading and Watching List

Lately, I have been mildly obsessed with World War II. It seems to raise so many thorny questions. There are moral issues and there also strategic issues. And it is also the context for much great drama.

Non-fiction:

1. Armageddon, Max Hastings. Why it was so hard to get Germany to surrender after Normandy invasion.
   
2. The War of the World, Niall Ferguson. The role of racial hatred in the conflicts in Europe and Asia.
   
3. Chapter on Hitler in The Mask of Command, by John Keegan. How Hitler's experience in the trenchs of WWI shaped his destructive decisions on the Eastern front.
4. Stalingrad, Antony Beevor. The beginning of the end for the Germans in WWII. In August 1942, the German army had reached the Volga. German bombing destroyed the city there and German soldiers occupied most of the ruins. And yet they did not take the whole city and less than six months after their triumphant arrival, the whole German 6th army, something like 300,000 men would be dead or prisoners of the Soviets.
   

Fiction:

1. Suite Francaise, Irene Nemirovsky. French society during the June invasion and the subsequent occupation.
2. The Siege, Helen Dunmore. Leningrad's saga.
3. Goodbye, Mickey Mouse, Len Deighton. Good story about the Americans stationed in England flying bomber escort missions over Germany.
   

Viewing:

1. Band of Brothers, HBO miniseries. The American perspective on the Western Front from Normandy to Bastogne.
   
2. Letters from Iwo Jima, Clint Eastwood movie. The Japanese perspective in the face of certain defeat.
3. Enemy at the Gates, a movie about two snipers (Jude Law playing the historical Noble Sniper Vassily and Ed Harris playing his German stalker--probably mythical) in the battle of Stalingrad. While some elements of the movie appear to be inventions, many aspects of the battle (e.g. the civilians amidst the ruins, the harrowing crossing of the Volga, the Russians who fired on their own men to discourage retreating, etc.) are corroborated in Beevor's book mentioned above.
   

Carbon taxes: a no-brainer, right?

from a CBC article

Liberal environment critic David McGuinty challenged Baird on whether he supports a carbon tax on industry, asking whether he agrees "it's time to charge for the right to pollute into the atmosphere."

"I disagree with the notion of a carbon tax," Baird said. "Our approach will be to provide regulation for industry to ensure we reduce both greenhouse gas emissions and reduce air pollutants."

But wait a sec: Regulation is the way the old-left dealt with environmental issues. The enlightened right, having taken a little economics, ought to know that carbon taxes are the right way to provide incentives and raise a little revenue as well. If you don't want the government to have more money to spend, then you just lower income taxes so the carbon tax increase becomes revenue neutral.

Some people get it. Read this excellent Slate article by Anne Applebaum:

Fortunately, there is such a solution, one that is grippingly unoriginal, requires no special knowledge of economics, and is extremely easy for any country to apply. It's called a carbon tax, and it should be applied across the board to every industry that uses fossil fuels, every home or building with a heating system, every motorist, and every public transportation system. Immediately, it would produce a wealth of innovations designed to save fuel, as well as new incentives to conserve. More to the point, it would produce a big chunk of money that could be used for other things. Anyone for balancing the budget? Fixing Social Security for future generations? Cutting income tax dramatically? As a little foreign-policy side benefit, users of the tax would suddenly find themselves less dependent on Gulf oil or Russian gas.

Wearing a green tie (as Blaird was doing when he dismissed the use of carbon taxes) is an empty gesture if you don't understand the simplest economics of the environment.