Bob Dylan's 1965 Prescient Prediction of the Trump Years.

[NNadir]

I see here today that it is Bob Dylan's birthday.

I also see a nice note over in the Science forum about Alan Turing papers now up for auction:

RWers like to spew that abortion

To which I responded:

Excellent point. They care far more for zygotes than they do for human beings. Post born they can't wait to kill...

...people, especially those who know more than they do.

...which caused me to recall, from the days when I used to play in clubs, a verse from "Desolation Row" for which I had a version:

At midnight all the agents
And the superhuman crew
Come out and round up everyone
That knows more than they do
Then they bring them to the factory
Where the heart attack machine
Is strapped across their shoulders
And then the kerosene
Is brought down from the castles
By insurance men who go
Check to see that nobody is escaping
To Desolation Row

It describes the vandals now destroying this country from the White House perfectly I think, and certainly, in another somewhat less odious (but still odious) time, the death of Alan Turing.

The White House is a heart attack machine, where ignorance and stupidity is celebrated for its own sake, where the fall of the United States is now becoming irrevocable.

The movie "Imitation Game," which is still a movie and perhaps not perfectly accurate, reflects this great tragedy quite well.

There is a great portrait of Alan Turing in the Lewis Science Library, at Princeton University, which despite being a Frank Gehry monstrosity, is one of the great places on this planet.

We have no idea what we have lost, and less about what we are losing now.

[malaise]

1. Happy Birthday Bob Dylan

A good friend’s grandson was given his name.
Lovely OP - get thee to the greatest page.

[dweller]

4. I used to work with 3 young men

Whose parents were probably about my age … those guys were named
Dylan
Donovan
and
Jimi

It made me chuckle


✌🏻

[malaise]

5. Love it

😀

[dweller]

2. I recall that song often these days

They're
Selling postcards
Of the hanging
They're painting
The passports brown
The beauty parlor
Is filled with sailors
The circus is in town
Here comes
The blind commissioner
They've got him in a trance
One hand is tied
To the tight-rope walker
The other is in his pants
And the riot squad
They're restless
They need somewhere to go
As Lady
And I look out tonight
From Desolation Row


✌🏻

[NNadir]

3. I recently learned that this verse actually refers to real events, a lynching in Minnesota.

Duluth lynchings

I played the song for years in my youth and never knew that.