Georgia on my mind

Georgia is a lovely place to live. Apart from being hotter than Hell for 4-5 months out of the year, that is. But even the heat has its advantages: it's a wonderful place to go swimming, because between May and September you never need to worry whether the water is too cold.

Georgia is sort of the prototypical state of the Deep South in popular culture. You hear more about it in songs, I think, than Alabama or Mississippi (probably not than Tennessee, though): of course "The Devil went Down to Georgia," but also "Good Directions," "Meet in the Middle," "Toes," and many others. ("Georgia on My Mind" is also one of the most beautiful state songs.) It has even given rise to an expression, "Hell's broke loose in Georgia," that is widely used. (However, I have no idea where this expression comes from, and I would love to hear about if any knows.)

Georgia's iconic status was cemented, in a very bad way, by the movie "Deliverance." I avoided this movie for years because I thought I would hate it, but I finally gave in -- since I live in Georgia, I figured I ought to see it. I was right, I hated it. Actually, it was a very good movie apart from the one awful scene that everyone knows about, but that scene was really, really bad. One of my colleagues from South Carolina met James Dickey while he was teaching at the University of South Carolina, and asked him why he would write such a thing that portrayed Southerners in such a negative light. "Well," he said, "the money was good. Besides, it takes place on the other side of the river" (i.e., in Georgia rather than South Carolina). I was interested to learn recently that James Dickey was a pathological liar. Not that it makes any difference to the story (it is fiction, after all), but it was interesting to learn.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Country Music

I noticed a long time ago that there isn't much difference between the sound of country music and rock music nowadays. If I'm surfing my radio and I come to a station playing jazz, classical, or rap, I recognize it right away; but if I come to a country or rock station, I often can't tell which it is until the song is half over. Country songs often have screaming guitars that would fit equally well in a hard rock song, and only a minority have a recognizably country instrument such as a fiddle or a banjo. All the same, no one could listen to a country music station for more than a few minutes without realizing that it is definitely not a rock station. What are the differences? There are some stylistic differences. Country songs are more likely to have a boogey beat or certain western-sounding bass lines. They also tend to be more formulaic: if you can't predict how a country song ends, you probably don't listen to much country music. But those things aren'
Read more

Science and Philosophy, Part I: Hume and Popper

I've been listening to a lecture series on philosophy recently, and, even though I haven't gotten past the Greeks yet, it has reminded me of a number of issues that trouble me about science. I want to take the opportunity to express my concerns here. Along the way, I will probably oversimplify philosophy a great deal -- not on purpose, but rather because I have only a simplistic understanding of it. I welcome responses to clear up my misconceptions. One of my issues with science is the famous idea of Karl Popper that it can never establish positive claims, only falsify wrong ones. The history of this goes back to David Hume, the 18th century Scottish sceptic. He shook up the philosophical world by claiming that science could never prove anything through induction -- that is, drawing conclusions about physical laws based on observations. The classic illustration is the sun's rising. Even though the sun has risen every day for our whole lives, and for countless human l
Read more

Three stages in liberal denial of media bias

I was 15 years old in 1984, and an avid follower of politics and the news. When Reagan was making his decision whether to run for re-election, I was opposed to it. It wasn't that I didn't like Reagan; I loved him. But I was convinced that he wouldn't stand a chance in the election, and I didn't want to see him lose. Of course, he went on to win one of the most lopsided elections in history. Why was I so wrong? Because I had been watching network news (the only kind, back then) and the coverage was overwhelmingly negative. Since that time, I have watched with disbelief as liberals have criticized Fox News as unbalanced, culminating in the amazing spectacle of the president himself declaring that Fox is not a legitimate source of journalism. Meanwhile, these same liberals refuse to acknowledge that ABC, NBC, CBS, MSNBC, CNN, etc. (ad nauseum) have any bias of their own. What makes this all the more incredible is that a number of studies have been produced demonstr
Read more