Wherein our intrepid adventure survives another day. Here there be navel-gazings about doing the things we value, the Capitolian brooding grounds where regulations are hatched and set forth like so many flying monkeys, a nod to music history, and a brief reflection on the dramatic shift in the context of art perception over the millenia, along with the daily requisite of noodling and doodling. We may even get handsy with Rachmaninoff. Now with Jedi mind tricks and Feastings Greetings.
Praxis
Once I was settled in, it was time to revisit the last two days of musings I’d capture to introduce the subject of what I call praxis and have filed away in a top-level folder named spirt. Nothing’s ever simple.1 I deleted nearly all of the dreck and actually replaced it with something simpler to the point of being a truism while still not quite getting there. There’s also a caveat in there. It’s a topic where, like so many other topics, there are plenty of salespeople with their pitches, hawking their wares, and there are claims aplenty. In this regard, I have no wares and I’m trying to sell nothing to nobody, which is a good trick if you can pull it off.
Administrative Law
From there it was time to wrap up the section on administrative law materials I’d started last night. There’s plenty of notes to play with later, but the biggest takeaway from tonight is something you probably already know. Agencies of departments in the executive branch of government are created by enabling legislation that delegates various of the legislature’s constitutionally authorized powers in varying degrees to them such that their powers are then analogous to those of the three branches of government. Agencies have the legislative-like power to issue regulations, which, like statutes, have the force of law. They have executive powers of investigation and enforcement. Where enforcement is executed, hearings are held in a quasi-judiciary setting presided over by either an administrative law judge appointed by the agency or a panel comprising the full board of the agency. Those triers of fact then render decisions and issue orders. The orders have the force of law. Appeals may be heard by a sub-agency within that agency. And appeals of decisions made by that sub-agency may be taken to the federal courts.
Other material that I haven’t gotten to yet goes into greater detail about the many and varied ways in which regulations are promulgated. Promulgated. I love that word. It practically feels Vogon. For now, it’s enough to go into where the buggers can even be found. For as ever-present in daily life as they are, from your fire-resistant bed to the nutritional label on your candy bar to the brakes on your car to the pill you take for that thing that ails you, they can be hard to find. Or not.
The Federal Register is a daily publication that is largely the required official agency publications of proposed and final regulations, along with a host of various notices, and presidential documents like proclamations and executive orders. Alternately, the Code of Federal Regulations (CFR) is a snapshot in time of all of the regulations in effect at the time of publication. It may cease to be accurate the very next day as new regulations are finalized and other regulations are either modified by their promulgating agencies or amendments to the enabling legislation, are repealed along with their enabling legislation, or struck down by the courts.
Know what’s not in them? Those quasi-judicial orders that have the same force of law as do the regulations themselves. Quimbee points that out, but fails to mention where they might be found, at least so far. It may appear later or in the administrative law course. They can be a bit disorganized like that sometimes, which is kind of distracting.
There is one funny bit. That Federal Register? It came about as the result of a spectacularly embarrassing SCOTAL fubar. Prior to that, there was no organized collection of all the regulations in force at any given time, and as you can see from above, those goalposts march across the field like so many crazy ants. Anyhoo, the esteemed Justices of the SCOTUS in session at the time ruled in a case and provided an analysis of a regulation that was no longer in force. It doesn’t sound like much, maybe (except in all the ways that it’s huge), but consider, pre-1936, that was probably bigger than recent news about attorneys getting spanked in court for using ChatGPT as an “aid” in their legal research, only to have signed off on their briefs (hello, Rule 11) which just somehow accidentally contained citations to case law that didn’t even exist. No fucks were given about due diligence at all. As it happens, maybe don’t use a technology known for hallucinations when you’re signing your right to practice away every time you sign a paper for the courts. I’ll have more on that SCOTUS case when I come back around to it in my notes. That’ll be too fun to pass up.
Oh, and along the way I learned a new Jedi mind trick. Have you ever read something that completely drew you in? Or was informative about something you’re excited about, so just reading it was kind of exciting itself? Like a dungeon master reading through tables in a new book of lore and cackling maniacally as plans start to take shape, perhaps. Yeah, this stuff isn’t that at all. I caught myself feeling that way while reading, and it hit me. Fake it. I act. I can do that. I remembered a time I felt that budding excitement (yeah, it was a game book, who knew?). These aren’t just words on paper. They’re puzzle pieces that fit together in new and novel way. They’re toys, tools. With the memory came that little jolt of endorphins. I focused again on my present reading, but kept the outlook from the memory. It felt rather like starting out wobbly on a bicycle then leveling out. Sure enough, the material became new and fresh. These are puzzle pieces, tools, toys that, manipulated well, can bear on millions if not billions of people. I can actually think of no other set of words I could study that would enable in me even the remotest chance of doing that.
Guitar
After that, it was time to relax with the guitar for my scheduled half hour. Relax. Ha ha. The next addition to this Daily was to refer to Pumping Nylon (Amazon, not an affiliate link). I’ll endorse this one by proxy. I can’t attest to it yet, but it was recommended to me by my classical guitar teacher many years ago. The first exercise is to train your fretting hand to apply pressure and release the pressure on the strings by keeping your fingers on the strings all the while. Never lift your fingers. This obviously isn’t a playing technique. From having done it, it’s very much a body awareness, muscle memory kind of thing. The point is to feel the potential of that pressure in your fingers before the pressure is applied, to feel the suddenness and strength of the pressure when its applied, and to feel the sense of release at the moment when the pressure is no longer applied.
I’ll tell you now, stretching my little baby hands for proper fretting, classical or otherwise, is going to take some time. When I’m trying to fret at 1 with indice (I), 2 with medio (M), and angular (A) it just feels like my fingers are skating all over the string and I’ve got this flyaway pinky that baffled my teacher. The way my hand is wired, certain movements of my middle and ring fingers make my pinky pop out like I’m suddenly the primmest guitar player ever with proper fretting pinky etiquette. And my middle and ring fingers just don’t make the leap from fret 2 to 3 like that. Yet.
First you do the exercise with all four fingers placed on the same string at the same time, all in proper fretting position, thumb properly placed on the back of the next optimally placed to provide the best leverage for your G.I. Joe Kung Fu Grip, knuckles spread come hither. Lightly touching. Apply pressure with all four fingers at the same time. Release. Rinse. Repeat. Tennant (the author) recommends starting on the 3rd string (G), then moving on to the other strings. He didn’t explain that, but I think I get it. It’s centrally placed and makes a good default basis for setting up that muscle memory. Shifting your fingers to other strings are just comparatively minor variations from that position. Once you’ve got the feel for that, he recommends doing the same exercise, but applying the pressure only one finger at a time.
That’s when I really felt the finger skating, and it hit me. This is almost, but not entirely, like fingering a trumpet, if the trumpet had awkwardly placed valves. I was initially tempted to get a finger stretching device, but the reviews turned me off, especially one that noted the obvious-in-hindsight failure of a one-size fits all device. Many claimed helped, but I’m unsold as of yet. Then I searched on stretching exercises for guitarists. I’m sure some of the material is good, but I found it striking that on skim-vetting the links, with the exception of Justinguitar.com, nothing sounded familiar or genuinely authoritative. Heck, where’s a link to an article from Guitar Player, for instance? And nothing from a medical perspective. It just strikes me as something that could be rife with injury if done incorrectly. Then I searched on stretches for piano players. I know it’s a commonly done thing. There’s many links. Same issue. What, not one link from a college music department in either case?
Then I learned about Rachmaninoff’s hands. He had hands like an NBA player. If this guy is right, his hands would tie with the only 12-inch span ever recorded in the NBA. There’s just some things Baby Hands Me just cannot do. I’m not sure I buy that I can’t at least fret properly, though, so I’ll be working on that the old fashioned way…practice with some light stretching and nothing that forces a stretch. I’ve had joint injuries, and my hands are my livelihood.
1 Nothing’s ever simple. Nothing is ever simple. Nothing is forever simple. Nothing is always simple. I love wordplay with the word nothing. Nothing is rather a passing interest of mine.
Drawing
Tonight’s drawing practice wasn’t amazing, but it’s progress. That’s why they call it practice, right? One nifty thing about these geometric patterns, apart from their utility in drawing Platonic solids, is that they really show off the errors in the circles. This is good.
Music History
Unfortunately, not much to report on this one tonight. This is about where in the organizing process I decided it was time to shift gears to focus on the Dailies since I had them pretty well layed out. I reasoned that when this and subsequent topics come about, I’ll just deal with their organization as they come. It’ll probably be several weeks before I have anything here, but I’m really looking forward to it. For now I’m just building up my table of contents links in Obsidian and the table of contents for Norton’s History of Western Music, 7th Edition is fairly extensive. I might not have the contents in my mind yet, but just by this review I’m starting to get the framework in there where new connections can be made.
Finally, it was time for Gardner’s Art Through the Ages, first time diving in for note extraction. The few introductory paragraphs provided me with plenty of note fodder…more like reflections on what I’d read than notes, really. This is another Round I’m going to enjoy thoroughly.
And Here We Are…
…right before I take this buggy off road for the next few days. For the Thanksgiving-inclined, Happy Thanksgiving. For the Feasttaking inclined, don’t forget the Tums and give your crazy drunkle a pass. He knows not what he does. There won’t be any converts, so just enjoy the grub, m’kay. Peace and amity and all that cuddly stuff.
As for me, I’m braced for four days of bliss near bliss (I cast Magic Stinkeye at a furgoblin). Apart from an errand or two, and maybe a bit of minimal socializing, it’s just me and the cats. No morning alarm. And the nearly traditional solo vittles for tomorrow are ready to lock and load. Roasting a bird for one doesn’t make much sense, though I might try air frying a cornish game hen. I let the deli take care of my turkey news. Nothin’ but breast, perfectly carved every time. Stove Top. Cranberry gelgoop. Two corns (creamed and roasted kernel. Canned biscuits. And my favorite discovery a few years ago…if you have a pie all to yourself, you don’t need to slice it and it’s already in a dish. Best to start in the center for sheer barbaric effect. Pecan pie, here I come.
Believe it or not, I can indeed cook. Cajun’s my thing. And I can bard a turkey. But tomorrow the goal is self-indulgent laziness with no one to bother and no one to be bothered by. There are no Dailies, no Rounds. It’s freestylin’ time. I won’t know what part(s) of my Brain in a Vat I’ll pick at until I do. Oh, who am I kidding. The next category up: gaming. I’m overdue. Time to roll up some BECMI characters and see what kind of solo neolithic polar adventure I can put them through. There may even be, gasp, crafting. Ho-lee shit. This is going to be fun.
Administrative Law Postscript
I went looking for a link to Panama Refining Co. v. Ryan (the Hot Oil case) and something about how it was a catalytic event in the creation of the Federal Register. The Quimbee material mentioned it because in it, SCOTUS had interpreted a regulation that wasn’t even in force at the time, and it sounds like it was a huge embarrassment, prompting Congress to create the Federal Register. Now I’m not so sure.
I found this Brief History published by the Office of the Federal Register, which makes exactly one reference to Panama Refining Co. v. Ryan, and skates by…something, rather deftly, “The arguments Griswold made for orderly publication of the official actions of the Executive Branch were underlined when the Supreme Court issued its opinion in the Panama Oil case and forced the hand of the committee studying the issue for President Roosevelt.”
Something happened, but what? It’s written as though to an audience (who would read A Brief History Commemorating the 70th Anniversary of the Publication of the First Issue of the Federal Register?) who knew what happened. Fifteen pages of commemorative history, and no other mention of the Hot Oil case is made. Wikipedia has nothing to say about it. After careful probing, Bard offered up four articles that don’t exist after providing an explanation for the Hot Oil case’s role in the creation of the Federal Register, ostensibly because in its decision it interpreted an outdated version of a regulation that had been amended. Because of that, they arrived at an erroneous conclusion and struck it down. But had they reviewed the correct version it likely would have been upheld. All this happens in the context of the national infighting surrounding the implementation of Roosevelt’s New Deal.
For the moment, it’s a mystery.
xiansays.wordpress.com 
Leave a comment