Ummagumma

The first two boxed sets of the Neil Young Archives side-by-side.  12 years apart but worth the wait. Note: See Part One of this series (?) from 2009   Meanwhile, a dozen years later... I received Volume Two of The Neil Young Archives (NYA) earlier this month and have spent a considerable amount of time these past few weeks listening and exploring the 250-page book and various fold-out charts that come with the nicely packaged 10-CD deluxe boxed set.   Let's start by getting a bit of frustration out of the way and a revelation about what Volume Two is not .  Last year I was following my news feed on Neil, which indicated the the second volume was finally, finally, finally coming out.  Then, abruptly, I read that the boxed set sold out in 24-hours before I was even aware that it was available.  The reason for this is that, unlike back in 2009 when Volume One was available on amazon and other retailers, Volume Two was initially being sold only by Neil directly off of the NYA websi

The Jordan Peterson Podcast released on March 15 featured a dialog between the host and evolutionary biologist Bret Weinstein covering a wide-range of topics including their personal lives, social media, postmodernism, cancel culture, and the psychology of identity development. I found it fascinating except the last 30 minutes or so of it which became mired in peer commiseration and self-help-ism which, I suppose, is to be expected under the circumstances of Peterson's on-going recovery from acute illness. That last part of the podcast just didn't interest as much as the middle portion beginning about 40 minutes in and lasting just past an hour in. Here is a heavily edited (trimmed preserving context) sampling of the good stuff. They begin by talking about the basis for political values and the best intentions of governmental policies that are often necessary to keep society functioning in this age of accelerating change.  This flows into how difficult it is to make go

Ian W. Toll's magnificent "Pacific War Trilogy." Back in 2015 I bought Pacific Crucible (2012) by Ian W. Toll at a deep discount (I think I paid $6 or something on amazon).  My library contains one shelf of books on the Pacific Theater of World War Two, most of which pertains to specific naval or island battles that were the hallmark of that conflict.  I bought the book because it was a great price for a nice hardback.  After reading it, my aim became to invest in an unfolding and updated general history of the theater.  I wanted this to compliment others that I owned including John Costello's excellent single-volume The Pacific War 1941-1945 (1981) and John Toland's classic two-volume telling, The Rising Sun (1970).   Pacific Crucible did not disappoint, covering the theater from Pearl Harbor through the critical Battle of Midway , roughly a seven-month period which basically ended any chance the Japanese may have had to “win” the war, even though the figh