… we have three Palestinians who were killed trying to commit murder, two of them acting out of “anger” that Israelis had defended themselves instead of allowing themselves to be murdered. The chutzpah of those Jews!But it's the NYT, mythical paper of record.
Sunday, January 31, 2016
The horror, the horror …
… Let's play the 'blame Israel game' with The New York Times | Stephen M. Flatow | The Blogs | The Times of Israel.
In case you wondered …
… Why too much gym can be bad for your love life - Telegraph.
A study out this week, though, may release a few gym bunnies back into the world. For it revealed that people who rely on working out to shift excess pounds could well be toiling in vain. It would seem the body adapts to new, more energetic regimes and quite swiftly changes metabolism, meaning fewer calories are burned off. After a couple of months, gym rats reach a plateau, after which it’s hard to shift further flab. This corresponds with Pontzer’s research on Tanzanian hunter-gatherers, which demonstrated that they didn’t expend far more energy in their wanderings than Western couch potatoes. And of the 300 subjects monitored in the New York study, those with moderate activity levels (ie, those who walked to work and used stairs, rather than lifts) were found to use most calories.
Readers and authors …
… Beyond Eastrod: Today in History: Flannery O'Connor & Henry James.
I like "The Aspern Papers," but I particularly like "The Beast in the Jungle."
I like "The Aspern Papers," but I particularly like "The Beast in the Jungle."
Wise beyond her years …
… Baptizing the Modern World. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Stubbornness comes with more ease than holiness. I, for one, am tempted to “force the door.” I have always been ambitious and was, at one time, fiercely political. In this vein, I was ideologically inclined. But that was before I learned the dangers of ideologies and their blameworthiness for perpetuating the plight of modern men. I was attracted to politicians and ideologues and their ability to impact the bigger picture. I know now that it is not ideas, but human persons that, in reality, are the bigger picture. Any ideology that sets itself above the logos of the Incarnation will not provide an adequate view of men. Only “Christ…fully reveals man to himself and makes his supreme calling clear” (Gaudium et Spes). So, politics must return to its proper place where it derives its importance only from humble service toward human persons and their true end.This piece is startlingly impressive.
Something to think on …
Art enables us to find ourselves and lose ourselves at the same time.
— Thomas Merton, born n this date in 1915
Saturday, January 30, 2016
Bobby Burns …
… The Writer’s Almanac for January 25, 2016 | A Red, Red Rose | The Writer's Almanac with Garrison Keillor. (Hat tip, Rus Bowden.)
See also: Burns Night celebration at his birth cottage — in pictures. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Post bumped.
See also: Burns Night celebration at his birth cottage — in pictures. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Post bumped.
Stating what should be obvious …
… Intellectual Maintenance | Commonweal Magazine. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
The required philosophy courses I took in my junior and senior years included logic, epistemology, metaphysics, rational psychology, and ethics. But I also took two years of the history of philosophy, a course in existentialism, and another in aesthetics. It all proved immensely helpful in life. As this piece points out:
The role of philosophy is to introduce students to the problems, concepts, and arguments that philosophers, from Plato to the present, have developed to think rigorously about the fundamental questions of human life. This thinking employs (as St. Thomas would put it) reason “unaided” by any “divine revelation.” This is in contrast to theology and other forms of “Catholic thinking,” which assume and elaborate revealed truths. Philosophy does not assume Catholic doctrines but rather provides the philosophical resources needed for informed and rigorous thinking about the universal human questions to which these doctrines respond.Too bad about Notre Dame taking up with analytic philosophy, which seems to me to be grounded in nitpicking, the modern equivalent of counting the number of angels occupying a pinhead.
We've come to this …
… Sharansky Breasts a Protest Against His Talk at Brown On Jewish Identity - The New York Sun.
But it’s … a sad moment for American higher education, for Israel, and for world Jewry when a campus conversation between an American actor with a Jewish identity and a human rights hero known for surviving nine years in the Soviet gulag is greeted — before it even happens — by an op-ed in the student newspaper summoning a rally “to speak out against this justification of Israeli crimes.” It’s a measure of the movement’s virulence that it targeted not an appearance by an Israeli general or a foreign policy talk but rather a discussion about Jewish identity.
I agree with Instapundit's Glenn Reynolds: "Well, all this talk about “Palestine” is really just a cover for anti-semitism. And a pretty thin one at that."
And now for something different -- Women's Flag Football!!! Special Super Bowl Post!
Where I interview me at pages 15 on, over transsexuals in woman's flag football...and share my workout tips with women half my age. Life is amazing.
Something to think on …
No thoroughly occupied person was ever found really miserable.
— Walter Savage Landor, born on this date in 1775
Republican vs Republican
...Donald Trump Is Shocking, Vulgar and Right
Trump is the ideal candidate to fight Washington corruption not simply because he opposes it, but because he has personally participated in it. He’s not just a reformer; like most effective populists, he’s a whistleblower, a traitor to his class. Before he became the most ferocious enemy American business had ever known, Teddy Roosevelt was a rich guy. His privilege wasn't incidental; it was key to his appeal. Anyone can peer through the window in envy. It takes a real man to throw furniture through it from the inside.
Friday, January 29, 2016
Hear, hear …
… The Bear From ‘The Revenant’ Speaks Out About Having His Face In Leonardo DiCaprio’s Butt – UPROXX.
The late Uggie was deprived of a British Oscar because he wasn't a human. Talk about your discrimination. What'll be the excuse in this case? If he's denied, I don't want to ever hear some Hollywood denizen tell me anything about inequality.
Hmm …
… First Things First | Commonweal Magazine. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Admittedly, I am so old that I remember when there were just Catholics, not conservative Catholics and liberal Catholics, let alone progressive Catholics. But I am not sure if that is why I find this intemperate piece utterly incoherent.
FYI …
… Bruce Charlton's Notions: The Genius Famine, my new book, is now published. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
I will have it on my Kindle tonight. Notice, by the way, the disparity in price between the UK Kindle version and the US version. Why is that, I wonder.
I will have it on my Kindle tonight. Notice, by the way, the disparity in price between the UK Kindle version and the US version. Why is that, I wonder.
Something different …
… Issue 23.
Editor's Note: “So, while we’ll leave the music to the musicians and the science to the scientists, we’ve paired Paul Siegell’s poem with Graham Francois visual art to create an issue that at first glance reminds us of a page from a children’s book.”
Sketching life...
Last night I met with a potential client. We met at a bar, after work, in the city, in what's known as Philadelphia's Gayborhood, Tavern on Camac, a place when they have a wonderful singer who plays the piano too, and I think she is the best in the city. I played flag football with the bartender at the place and he is a nice kid too. My potential client works with a non profit here in the city. She is a wonderfully quiet, reflective and peaceful African American trans woman.
We talked about things, drank a little and left. We had agreed things were getting better, and we are excited about the possibilities. We have both been through many things and are still here.
We hugged each other on the corner of 13th and Locust, right on the corner where so much crime had occurred through the years, a corner known for, among other things, the killing of Officer Daniel Faulkner in 1981. It's not far either from where a trans woman, Nizah Morris, went into a police car alive and was dumped out dead in 2002.
But now there is mostly peace, and a place where we can hug, a white trans woman and a black trans woman.
I met her because I have been working on a project -- a Complaint in a new lawsuit -- that has literally taken hundreds of hours, so far unpaid. I'm close to the end, which is good hopefully, because a positive resolution will have a wonderful, direct impact on hundreds of people, God Willing. It will also set precedent in a place American law has never been, despite all the years of jurisprudence and all the cases in the local, state and federal courts.
In this case, the case (see what I did there) will likely be resolved soon too, so I won't have long to wait to find out whether the work will have been for a good cause or simply have been a waste. And at the most difficult times while I worked on it, I literally shook sometimes as I wrote, trying to put down the truth, and the justice and the need, but in ways that are understandable to the judge and his clerks, and would make them would look favorably on our case, and in ways that would make the other side concerned about the strength of our case. I had to fight myself too, my own emotions as I worked, since it's not just the culmination of many direct hours, but also raises issues that I have fought with myself my whole life.
I hope to write about it here soon in more detail -- the end of the tunnel is approaching one way or another -- and I am terrified with the possibilities.
We talked about things, drank a little and left. We had agreed things were getting better, and we are excited about the possibilities. We have both been through many things and are still here.
We hugged each other on the corner of 13th and Locust, right on the corner where so much crime had occurred through the years, a corner known for, among other things, the killing of Officer Daniel Faulkner in 1981. It's not far either from where a trans woman, Nizah Morris, went into a police car alive and was dumped out dead in 2002.
But now there is mostly peace, and a place where we can hug, a white trans woman and a black trans woman.
I met her because I have been working on a project -- a Complaint in a new lawsuit -- that has literally taken hundreds of hours, so far unpaid. I'm close to the end, which is good hopefully, because a positive resolution will have a wonderful, direct impact on hundreds of people, God Willing. It will also set precedent in a place American law has never been, despite all the years of jurisprudence and all the cases in the local, state and federal courts.
In this case, the case (see what I did there) will likely be resolved soon too, so I won't have long to wait to find out whether the work will have been for a good cause or simply have been a waste. And at the most difficult times while I worked on it, I literally shook sometimes as I wrote, trying to put down the truth, and the justice and the need, but in ways that are understandable to the judge and his clerks, and would make them would look favorably on our case, and in ways that would make the other side concerned about the strength of our case. I had to fight myself too, my own emotions as I worked, since it's not just the culmination of many direct hours, but also raises issues that I have fought with myself my whole life.
I hope to write about it here soon in more detail -- the end of the tunnel is approaching one way or another -- and I am terrified with the possibilities.
Something to think on …
Let us learn to appreciate there will be times when the trees will be bare, and look forward to the time when we may pick the fruit.
— Anton Chekhov, born on this dare in 1860
May you live in interesting times
Perhaps it's time now to stop mapping political differences along the left-right dichotomy. The great political, intellectual and emotional chasm of our world runs between transnational elites with access to diverse forms of social, economic and cultural power, and masses who feel left out from the global party and who express their fury and resentment through social media and xenophobic movements.
We have entered a perilous new era in politics, where a whirlwind of raw emotions is blowing away all the verities of the past. The global elites, whose competence and moral legitimacy are questioned like never before, need, as Martin Wolf wrote in the Financial Times last week, "to work out intelligent responses." Until then, progressively more and more intemperate outbursts against posh boys will define political life.
Thursday, January 28, 2016
Vive la France!
… Hollande-Rouhani lunch scrapped after Elysée Palace 'refused to remove wine from menu' - Telegraph.
If you don't like how they do things in another country, don't visit.
Confusion and devotion …
… On Good Old Boys, Randy Newman approaches the South with an insider’s touch — Permanent Records — The A.V. Club. (Hat tip, DaveLull.)
… Newman has always been identified as a Californian. Furthermore, his typecasting as a nebbishy intellectual in the world of pop music would seem to make him a particularly poor choice for approaching salt of the earth, working class Americans. But, as Good Old Boys demonstrates ably, beneath Newman the biting satirist lies Newman the populist, always ready to express viewpoints other than his own in his songs. Newman’s ability to adopt the perspective of an everyman Southerner makes Good Old Boys one of the few profound documents of the American South written by someone not from the region.
To shave or not …
… A History of the Hirsute - WSJ. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Shaving, it has always seemed to me, is as unnatural as wearing a wig. But, to each his own.
Shaving, it has always seemed to me, is as unnatural as wearing a wig. But, to each his own.
A fresh look …
… A Different T.S. Eliot by Edward Mendelson | The New York Review of Books. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
In 1934, Eliot separated from Vivien; she had become increasingly unbalanced, and in 1938 was confined by her brother to an asylum where she died in 1947. (Despite rumors to the contrary, Eliot took no part in the commitment procedure.) After the separation, Eliot continued his normal working life as a director at the publishing firm of Faber & Faber while privately withdrawing into penitent asceticism. At 6:30 every morning he knelt on the stone floor of a local church. In the flat he shared with his bibliophile friend John Hayward, the brightly painted rooms at the front were Hayward’s, while Eliot took the dark rooms at the back. His bedroom was lit with one bare bulb, and an ebony crucifix hung on the wall above his bed.
The bravery of joy …
… Bruce Charlton's Notions: Superstitious fear of nemesis thwarts joy and hope - Colin Wilson, William Arkle and optimism. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Our culture tends to admire the cynic, the pessimist, the hard-boiled, slyly-corrupt hedonist - the anti-hero. But I feel that the greatest Christian hero is the one who really believes in the goodness and love of God such that full value is accorded to those moment of joy, hope, beauty and inspiration which come our way.Well, I think it is important not to think too well of yourself. And that suggestion Jesus made about not letting your left hand know what your right hand is doing is solid advice.
Something to think on …
You must not pity me because my sixtieth year finds me still astonished. To be astonished is one of the surest ways of not growing old too quickly.
— Colette, born on this date in 1873
David Lodge
And now he's two for two - that's right: David Lodge can't miss.
I posted recently on the blog about his Nice Work, and now I'm onto Small World, which, honestly, was even better.
For me, Lodge is what a novelist should be: inventive, playful, insightful, smart. He pokes fun at the academy, but there's a gravity to it all: there's more here than in P. G. Wodehouse or Kingsley Amis. Plus, Lodge knows how to weave a narrative, fusing the stories of a dozen characters into a raucous, cerebral, sexy tale.
As I say, Lodge has an insightful quality: he cracks jokes, it's true, and he jabs at universities. But he does so with tremendous wit, with a sense of understanding and compassion, almost of camaraderie. It's as if Lodge is highlighting the worst of higher education in an effort - and it's a successful one - to reveal its best.
I really enjoyed Small World and I wish Lodge and his campus novels were better known in the States. For me, this was such a better book than Lucky Jim and other parodies of the academic life. A large part of that, of course, owes to the way Lodge writes: quickly, completely, and with a flair that's all his own.
Wednesday, January 27, 2016
Remembering Johnny Mercer …
… That Old Black Magic. (Hat tip,Dave Lull.)
“George Gershwin could go up to Harlem to hear jazz and blues,” wrote biographer Philip Furia, but “Johnny Mercer, alone among the great songwriters of his generation, was, from the day he was born, influenced by the music of blacks.”
Something to think on …
A well-thought-out story doesn't need to resemble real life. Life itself tries with all its might To resemble a well-crafted story.
— Isaac Babel, who was executed on this date in 1940
Tuesday, January 26, 2016
A poet rediscovered …
… Recovering the Catholic voice of poet Thompson | USCatholic.org. (Hat tip, Rus Bowden.)
A gay Catholic veteran of World War II, Thompson’s canon has been claimed for its progressive representations of sexuality, its deep theology, and its considerations of war. Thompson was a literary paradox, a man with complex public and private identities. The fate of his broader popularity is irrelevant to the decision to publish his selected poems. Gregory Wolfe, the volume’s editor, recognizes that Thompson captures a Catholic literary tendency that is innate: the tension between sinner and saint, between art and belief.I have read this book and it is very good.
Not so fast, Mr. Self …
… The Value of the Novel by Peter Boxall review – Will Self is wrong, the novel is thriving | Books | The Guardian. (Hat tip Dave Lull.)
… Peter Boxall has set out to defend the novel against Self’s charges in terms that draw partly on Lawrence. Boxall claims that the novel is ideally suited to capturing 21st-century life. He argues convincingly that Self ignores the fact that, historically, the novel is a genre that has derived its power precisely from its precariousness, from the tremulations described by Lawrence.
Only so many laughs …
… Fiction review: ‘Fardwor, Russia!,’ by Oleg Kashin | Dallas Morning News.
The unusual title, with its intentional misspelling of “forward,” twists what is instantly recognizable as a patriotic slogan in Russia.It is the type of mistake a young child or a person with a learning disability might make, and about as blunt an expression of withering contempt for the contemporary Russian state as you can make. And that’s before you’ve even opened the book.
Much more indeed …
… Not Merely the Finest TV Documentary Series Ever Made - Issue 7: Waste - Nautilus. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Bronowski saw the purpose of art as being the same as that of science: to give meaning and order to our experience by revealing hidden structure beneath the appearances. That conception gives an objective meaning to progress in those fields. Moreover, neither a scientific discovery nor a work of art can be made by merely “copying nature,” for appearances are deceptive, traditions flawed. Hence a system of open-ended self-correction is needed. Creativity and boundless imagination are as essential in the mathematical sciences as in the humanities; criticism and testing in art just as in science.
Something to think on …
Restore human legs as a means of travel. Pedestrians rely on food for fuel and need no special parking facilities.
— Lewis Mumford, who died on this date in 1990
Monday, January 25, 2016
Faith and hope …
… On Updike and eternity - The Boston Globe. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
The safest prayer is "Thy will be done."
The safest prayer is "Thy will be done."
Words fail …
… Feminists attack Oxford Dictionary of English for 'reinforcing sexist stereotypes' - Telegraph.
Clearly, these people have no idea how increasingly ridiculous they seem.
"Please note: All the examples sentences throughout the site are real examples of usage. They are taken from a huge variety of different sources, from all parts of the world where English is used, and they reflect a wide spectrum of views and levels of language. Opinions and views expressed in the usage examples are the views of the individuals concerned and are not endorsed by Oxford University Press."
Clearly, these people have no idea how increasingly ridiculous they seem.
Moral accounts …
… The University Bookman: Too Much Reality? (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Tushnet’s public identity as a celibate Catholic lesbian critic and commentator gestures at the number of vertices in the shape of her own personality; writing Amends must have required a considerable imaginative effort, but not a heroic one, as would have been the case with almost all of her peers. Tushnet demonstrates convincing fluency in the dialects spoken here—of Colton’s archly suave intimations, of Medea’s wanton creative brilliance, of Jaymi’s smirking and haughty intellectualism, even of Sharptooth’s infinite hermeneutic of oppression—and pits the competing vocabularies against one another in fruitful contests of will.
Something to think on …
Tradition is a guide and not a jailer.
— W. Somerset Maugham, born on this date in 1874
Sunday, January 24, 2016
Q&A …
… Whit Stillman’s Long-Awaited Jane Austen Adaptation Is Here | Vanity Fair. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
I hear a lot about Stillman, but have never seen any of his movies. He is described in Wikipedia as being "known for his sly depictions of the "urban haute bourgeoisie," which doesn't exactly sound like my cup of tea.
Hmm …
… How ‘The X-Files’ Changed The Way We Talk About TV – Page 3 – UPROXX. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
This old man was unaware that he was living in "the Golden Age of TV." Of course, I only watch the news (sometimes), Phillies games, and movies.
This old man was unaware that he was living in "the Golden Age of TV." Of course, I only watch the news (sometimes), Phillies games, and movies.
Hmm …
… Language Log — Stark rhetoric. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
… the herds and hordes of journalists and political scientists are not coming to grips with this. Rather than come to grips with this, they work hard to “save the phenomena” and save their models–analyzing the rise and durability of Donald Trump by making the smallest possible tweaks to what they thought last year. They are not stepping back and absorbing the lesson. They do not want to recognize that the rise and durability of Trump teaches them that what they thought last year was wrong. They do not want to face the reality that they need to pretty much throw everything away and start over.
I think this is correct. But I think it has to do with more than rhetoric, as this piece suggests. I think Trump has accurately assessed that the political professionals — especially Republican political operatives — have been gaming the system for quite some time, and he is calling them on it, and that resonates with voters who feel they have got little in return for their votes. The idea that Trump will be a pushover to beat in the general election strikes me as bizarre. He has maintained a lead over all comers in the primary season. And if he does win the election, a seismic change in American politics will have taken place. One thing you can be sure of: The professional politicians will adapt quickly and, as much as possible, to their own advantage (the country's advantage being a distinctly secondary concern among them). But they will have a dealmeister to contend with.
Wisdom …
… A Good Doctor On Dying A Good Death. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
The essays are leavened with science, but not overburdened by explanation. When Sacks got his terminal diagnosis, he decided, “It is up to me now to choose how to live out the months that remain to me. I have to live in the richest, deepest, most productive way I can.” He decided to take stock, to write, to travel, to spend time with friends and loved ones, and to tune out anything “inessential” including NewsHour, politics, and global warming.Dave also sends along a link to the piece by D. Keith Mano that is mentioned in the piece. You have to scroll to the bottom to find it.
Inquirer reviews …
… 'American Governor': The tale of Chris Christie.
… 'Swans of Fifth Avenue' a tale of Truman Capote and Babe Paley.
… 'Surprise Encounters': McVay tells of his amazing life - confusingly.
… Writer Colson Whitehead keeps breaking boundaries.
… 'Restaurant Critic's Wife': Light, nourishing fare for any season.
… Life with a food critic.
… 'Swans of Fifth Avenue' a tale of Truman Capote and Babe Paley.
… 'Surprise Encounters': McVay tells of his amazing life - confusingly.
… Writer Colson Whitehead keeps breaking boundaries.
… 'Restaurant Critic's Wife': Light, nourishing fare for any season.
… Life with a food critic.
Something to think on …
Another unsettling element in modern art is that common symptom of immaturity, the dread of doing what has been done before.
— Edith Wharton, born on this date in 1862
Saturday, January 23, 2016
Q&A …
… Lunch with the FT: Julian Barnes - FT.com. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Dave also sends along my review of Barnes's Nothing To Be Frightened Of: Diverting thoughts on Grim Reaper.
Dave also sends along my review of Barnes's Nothing To Be Frightened Of: Diverting thoughts on Grim Reaper.
I am surprised that I disagree so much with a writer I so much enjoy reading. I am anything but a pedantic recipe-follower. But I was taught to cook by mother and grandmother, and most of the recipes had been handed down. I am a very organized cook, but I improvise all the time.
I can't imagine why anyone in his right mind would have voted for Jeremy Corbyn — unless he wanted to bring down the Labour Party.
I don't like Shostakovich's music (though I have a soft spot for the man and look forward to reading Barnes's novel), and I am not especially afraid of death. Like Peter Pan, I think it will be a very big adventure. (I do understand the fear, though. As Larkin has it, "Not to be here, / Not to be anywhere, /And soon …")
Sounds like a good idea …
… Petition Calls For Feminist, Migrant Activist and Actress Emma Watson To Spend A Week In A Migrant Camp.
You want to preach? Well, walk the walk.
You want to preach? Well, walk the walk.
Something to think on …
Abbot Zerchi smiled thinly. 'You don't have a soul, Doctor. You are a soul. You have a body, temporarily.'
— Walter M. Miller, born on this date in 1923
Friday, January 22, 2016
A useful compendium …
… Omnibus of Fallacies by Edward Feser | Articles | First Things. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Coyne speaks repeatedly of “religion’s methods,” as if there were some common technique applied by scholastic logicians, Buddhist monks, and Appalachian snake handlers. The theology of Thomas Aquinas, Hindu nationalism, the cargo cults of Melanesia, Scientology—all of these and more are casually lumped together as examples of religion, as if the differences weren’t at least as significant as whatever similarities Coyne thinks he sees. This is like pulling random lines from a physics textbook, the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Mary Baker Eddy’s Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, and an episode of Star Trek and then putting them forward as equally typical illustrations of “science” and of “science’s methods.”
Some perspective …
… History and the Limits of the Climate Consensus | The American Conservative.
The 2015 Paris Conference declared a target of restricting “the increase in the global average temperature to well below 2 degrees C above pre-industrial levels and to pursue efforts to limit the temperature increase to 1.5 degrees C above pre-industrial levels.” It’s very important to set a baseline for such efforts, certainly, but what on earth is intended here? Which pre-industrial levels are we talking about? The levels of AD 900, of 1150, of 1350, of 1680, of 1740? All those eras were assuredly pre-industrial, but the levels were significantly different in each of those years. Do they want us to return to the temperatures of the Little Ice Age, and even of the depths of cold in the 1680s? The Winter of 1684, for instance, still remains the worst recorded in England, ever. Or are the bureaucrats aiming to get us back to the warmer medieval period, around 1150?
Is there an editor in the house …
… The 50 Most Unacceptable Sentences in City on Fire, In Order - The Awl. (Hat tip, Christopher Guerin.)
Haiku …
Not too cold. Right shade
Of gray. Perfect for snow, in
Philadelphia.
Back and forth and back
And forth. The Sheltie gamely
Races for the ball.
Good to know …
… Beards may be more hygienic and bacteria-resistant than shaven skin, study finds | Science | News | The Independent. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Fashionable and healthy. What's not to like?
Fashionable and healthy. What's not to like?
Gossip master …
… His Gimlet Eye | The Weekly Standard. (Hat tip Dave Lull.)
Aubrey, a restless purveyor of the thumbnail sketch, defies easy summary himself. He had diverse talents, but no real occupation; many interests, but no clear vocation; reams of notes, but only one published work at the time of his death. Aubrey's friends didn't quite know what to make of him, just as generations of readers haven't quite known what to make of his principal legacy, a collection of his anecdotes about the great and the powerful called Aubrey's Brief Lives.
Just strolling …
… An Entire Herd Of Elephants Walks Through This Hotel Lobby Every Spring. (Hat tip, David Tothero.)
Something to think on…
As a cop, I dealt with every kind of bum and criminal. They all have more integrity than some Hollywood people.
— Joseph Wambaugh, born on this date in 1937
Thursday, January 21, 2016
Once upon a time …
… The Promise of American Life (Modern Library Nonfiction #95) | Reluctant Habits.
Croly’s book touched a nerve among a small passionate group. One couple ended up reading Croly’s book aloud to each other during their honeymoon (leaving this 21st century reader, comparing Croly’s thick “irremediable”-heavy prose style against now all too common sybaritic options, to imagine other important activities that this nubile pair may have missed out on). The newly married couple was Willard Straight and Dorothy Whitney. They had money. They invited Croly to lunch. The New Republicwas formed.
Vintage interview …
… Paris Review — The Art of Poetry No. 1, T. S. Eliot. (Hate tip, David Tothero.)
Hmm …
… AP FACT CHECK: Ted Cruz misstates science of climate change.
THE FACTS: Actually, global warming was more of a concern than cooling back in that time. From 1965 to 1979, 44 peer-reviewed scientific studies found the world was warming, 20 found no trend and only seven found cooling, according to a review of literature published in the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society in 2008.
But on January 11, 1970, the Washing to Post reported that "Colder Winters Held Dawn of New Ice Age."
And of course, there was this in 1975: 1975 Newsweek: The Coming Ice Age.
And, in 1972, the National Science Board issued a report saying that "Judging from the record of the past interglacial ages, the present time of high temperatures should be drawing to an end, to be followed by a long period of considerably colder temperatures leading into the next glacial age some 20,000 years from now."
Just saying.
Good fortune …
… 2 Iranian poets, facing lashings and prison, escape country. (Hat tip, Rus Bowden.)
Shelter from the cold …
… Photo Essay: Portraits of Canada's Ice Fishing Huts - Modern Farmer. (Hat tip, Rus Bowden.)
Hmm …
… Meaning in America | TLS. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Americans have never had much of a shared literary culture.Really? Maybe not now, but not ever? I think there was something of an American literary culture when I was growing up. My father, a policeman, was quite familiar with Sinclair Lewis and other authors of his time.
Fender argues that the Great American Speech “runs directly counter to the ‘American Dream’”. That loose association of ideas and ideals holds that if you work hard to better yourself and play by the rules, you’ll eventually succeed.
Well, he argues from ignorance. The American Dream has a quite specific origin and a quite specific definition. The phrase was coined by historian James Truslow Adams in 1931 in The Epic of America. He describes it as "that dream of a land in which life should be better and richer and fuller for everyone, with opportunity for each according to ability or achievement. It is a difficult dream for the European upper classes to interpret adequately, and too many of us ourselves have grown weary and mistrustful of it. It is not a dream of motor cars and high wages merely, but a dream of social order in which each man and each woman shall be able to attain to the fullest stature of which they are innately capable, and be recognized by others for what they are, regardless of the fortuitous circumstances of birth or position."
It has little to do with getting and spending. Apparently it also difficult for those preoccupied with speechifying to interpret.
Cold case …
… Unsolved mysteries surrounding the death of Edgar Allan Poe - NY Daily News. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Adventures in language …
… How Jhumpa Lahiri Learned to Write Again - WSJ. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
What truly marks this book as a departure for Lahiri is that she wrote it not in English (which isn’t her mother tongue; Bengali was spoken exclusively at home for the first four years of her life) but in Italian, a language she decided to teach herself as an adult. Such was her obsession with Italian that she moved her family (her husband, Alberto, and her two children, Octavio and Noor) to Rome for three years and essentially gave up reading or writing English. Open In Other Words anywhere and you will find Italian on one page and its English counterpart (rendered here by Ann Goldstein, whose other translations include the Neapolitan novels of Elena Ferrante) on the opposite. It is a dichotomy that turns out, in the course of this brave meditation, to be a love story and a mystery all in one. In that story lies the beginning of all the books that the author has not yet written. As Lahiri describes it, “In learning Italian I learned, again, to write.”
Something to think on …
The Christian idea of God as Essential Love, as Love inside Himself, and therefore also outside Himself; the idea of God’s humility, of His self-abasement, manifested first in the creation of the world, i.e., in the placing of autonomous being alongside Himself, in the gift to this being of the freedom to develop according to its own laws, and therefore in the voluntary limitation of Himself–this idea for the first time made it possible to recognize creation as autonomous and therefore morally responsible to God.
— Pavel Florensky, born on this date in 1882
Wednesday, January 20, 2016
The uses of faith …
… Why humans find it hard to do away with religion. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
But what if belief in the supernatural is natural for human beings? For anyone who takes the idea of evolution seriously, religions are not intellectual errors, but adaptations to the experience of living in an uncertain and hazardous world. What is needed – and still largely lacking – is a perspective in which religion is understood as an inexhaustibly complex variety of beliefs and practices that have evolved to meet enduring human needs.
A Frost anniversary …
… Beyond Eastrod: Robert Frost on 20 January.
I remember Kennedy's inauguration quite vividly, and I remember Frost's reading. I also remember what I said to my mother when the President told us, "Ask not what your country can do for you; ask what you can do for your country." I said to her, "Why ask either?"
Well, maybe not …
… Janet Malcolm on Jonathan Bate's biography of Ted Hughes: ‘A Very Sadistic Man’. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Bate’s malice is the glue that holds his incoherent book together—malice directed at other peripheral characters but chiefly directed at its subject. Bate wants to cut Hughes down to size and does so, interestingly, by blowing him up into a kind of extra-large sex maniac.
I reviewed Bate's book, but I didn't take it upon myself to to investigate his sources and methods. And I only had 1,000 words. I did not get the sense that he disliked Hughes or Hughes poetry — though it is true that his comments on that poetry are lackluster. The sex life had to be addressed, since so much of the book is taken up with it, but I like to think I came off as reasonably fair to Hughes. But you can judge that for yourself: Jonathan Bate's life of Ted Hughes: Uneven look at an uneven life.
Sweet …
… Poem of the week: The Gartan Mother’s Lullaby by Joseph Campbell | Books | The Guardian. (Hat tip, Rus Bowden.)
Go to the end to see how to pronounce the Irish words.
Go to the end to see how to pronounce the Irish words.
Found …
… Martin Luther King's Decades Old "Lost" Speech Surfaces - News & Views - EBONY. (Hat tip, Rus Bowden.)
A must-read …
… "René Girard never played the Great Man," says biographer.
A week after René’s death, France suffered the greatest attack on its soil since World War II. René’s Palo Alto Requiem Mass took place on a day of national mourning in France – how strange and apt for the man who wrote so much about violence. So often René was saying what we did not want to hear. Already the silence is beginning to settle like snow around the Paris atrocity. We find we can get used to just about anything. René said we are facing a whole new phenomenon, and that what we are watching with Islamic terrorism is in fact a new religion, an archaic one armed with modern technology.
Hard to handle …
… In the Tumult of Translation by Tim Parks | NYR Daily | The New York Review of Books. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
The fact is that much space is required to say anything even half-way serious about a translation. For example, the three volumes of [Primo] Levi’s Complete Works include fourteen books and involved ten translators. There is the further complication that the three best-known books—If This Is a Man, The Truce, and The Periodic Table—had already been translated, the first two by Stuart Woolf, the third by Raymond Rosenthal. If This Is a Man appears here in a “revised” version of the 1959 translation, Woolf himself having carried out the revision more than a half century after his original. However, The Truceappears in an entirely new translation by Ann Goldstein. One can only imagine what negotiations lay behind this odd arrangement; Levi’s writings are still under copyright, which presumably allowed Woolf or his publisher to dictate terms. Ann Goldstein also offers a new translation of The Periodic Table, and is the translator of Lilith and Other Stories, another book in the Complete Works.
Tuesday, January 19, 2016
Interesting …
… John Wayne: 10 surprising facts.
I like that line, "Like the best people, Wayne was once a sports journalist." Makes me proud that I once did the daily racing charts.
I like that line, "Like the best people, Wayne was once a sports journalist." Makes me proud that I once did the daily racing charts.
A poem
… or not.
Songs played at parties long ago,
Remembered now, conjure great helpings
Of time past. But time is said to curve,
Causing him to wonder, in the stretch,
If the future may turn out to be just
A modest relic of what each of us has been.
Flashback
Songs played at parties long ago,
Remembered now, conjure great helpings
Of time past. But time is said to curve,
Causing him to wonder, in the stretch,
If the future may turn out to be just
A modest relic of what each of us has been.
Gee, I never knew …
… my particular religious faith was bizarre: Marco Rubio’s real disqualification: New video outlines bizarre religious faith — and he wants to govern by it - Salon.com.
Not two weeks into the new year, the frocked and beanied capo dei capi of the Catholic Church, Pope Francis, chose to impose upon humanity a book of his own authorship, “The Name of God Is Mercy.” The title alone should have given reviewers cause to dispatch the tome, unopened, straight into the waste bin. “Mercy?” From a purportedly omnipotent Lord who chose to sire a kid whom He subjected to ghastly tortures culminating in execution? Who battered and abused poor Job on a whim? Who ordered a patriarch to knife his own long-awaited son? The name of God, were God to exist, would be anything but mercy.Rubio, of course, is a Catholic, as I am. But the author of this piece obviously despises Christians in general and Catholics in particular. And I guess he isn't old enough to remember JFK. I don't care what he thinks, and I would never suggest his piece should not have been published (it's good to know who hates you). But I wonder if Salon would have published a similarly intemperate piece about, say, Muslims.
Bloomsday …
… Episode 151 – Harold Bloom | Virtual Memories.
“I’m a reader and a teacher. Writing comes out of reading and teaching. Those are all three words for the same thing. I don’t think I’m going to be remembered at all; I don’t think any of us get remembered.”
Something to think on …
There is no such thing in anyone's life as an unimportant day.
— Alexander Woollcott, born on this date in 1887
Monday, January 18, 2016
Worth bearing in mind …
This deprecation of individual freedom was objectionable to me. I am convinced now, as I was then, that man is an end because he is a child of God. Man is not made for the state; the state is made for man. To deprive man of freedom is to relegate him to the status of a thing, rather than elevate him to the status of a person. Man must never be treated as means to the end of the state; but always as an end within himself.
— The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
Hear, hear …
… Glenn Reynolds: Blow up the administrative state.
A smaller government would mean fewer phony-baloney jobs for college graduates with few marketable skills but demonstrated political loyalty. It would mean fewer opportunities for tax dollars to be directed to people and entities with close ties to people in power. It would mean less ability to engage in social engineering and “nudges” aimed at what are all-too-often seen as those dumb rubes in flyover country. The smaller the government, the fewer the opportunities for graft and self-aggrandizement — and graft and self-aggrandizement are what our political class is all about.
Higher (sort of) education moves nearer to irrelevance …
… Portland Community College to devote an entire month to 'whiteness'-shaming.
I suggest an immediate month devoted to PCC-ridiculing.
The WHM site makes clear that the project is not a "celebratory endeavor" like heritage months, but is rather "an effort to change our campus climate" by "[challenging] the master narrative of race and racism through an exploration of the social construction of whiteness." ("Challenging the master narrative," PCC explains, "is a strategy within higher education that promotes multicultural education and equity.")Well, if whiteness is a construct, does that mean that blackness is, too? And where does that leave genetics? Presumably, these are people who think of themselves as heedful of science.
I suggest an immediate month devoted to PCC-ridiculing.
To say nothing of some good tunes …
… Why Musicians Need Philosophy | Future Symphony Institute. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
There is in fact nothing arbitrary about the diatonic scale or the place of the tonic within it. While there can be other scales, some sounding strange to Western ears, they are all attempts to divide up the octave, to provide significant points of rest and closure, and to preserve natural harmonies delivered by the overtone series. The diatonic scale is one of a number of modes derived from mediaeval church music, and its history is not a history of arbitrary invention, but one of gradual discovery. The circle of fifths, the chromatic scale, modulation, voice-leading and triadic harmony – all these are discoveries, representing at each stage an advance into a shared tonal space. The result is not the product of decision or design: it is as natural and embedded in our experience as the post and beam in architecture or frying and baking in cookery. If composers are to ‘make it new’, then they must recognize this natural quality and not defy it. Yet defiance of nature has become an orthodoxy, and when asked to explain and justify this defiance composers will invariably lean on some variant of Adorno’s philosophy. Music for the concert hall has increasingly followed the pattern of Stockhausen’s Gruppen – elaborate sound effects, organised by arcane systems of rhythm and pitch, which no normal ear can hold together as music, but which comes with intimidating programme notes explaining why this doesn’t matter, and why the normal ear is an impediment to creative music in any case.
Something to think on …
Useless laws weaken the necessary laws.
— Charles de Montesquieu, born on this date in 1689
Sunday, January 17, 2016
Well, it depends …
… What Exactly Does An Editor Do? The Role Has Changed Over Time : NPR. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
I've done a lot of editing over the past half-century. Usually, it's pretty routine — tightening things up, coming up with a more efficient order. It can also be a pleasure. At The Inquirer I edited some real pros, and I knew what their prose sounded. Every now and then a phrase wouldn't sound quite. I would point that out to them, they would think for a minute, the tweak it. I copy-edited the late Stanley I. Kutler's Privilege and Creative Destruction for Lippincott years ago. Cleanest manuscript I ever saw. Maybe a comma got dropped somewhere. I don't recall changing anything.
I've done a lot of editing over the past half-century. Usually, it's pretty routine — tightening things up, coming up with a more efficient order. It can also be a pleasure. At The Inquirer I edited some real pros, and I knew what their prose sounded. Every now and then a phrase wouldn't sound quite. I would point that out to them, they would think for a minute, the tweak it. I copy-edited the late Stanley I. Kutler's Privilege and Creative Destruction for Lippincott years ago. Cleanest manuscript I ever saw. Maybe a comma got dropped somewhere. I don't recall changing anything.
Impulse out of nowhere …
… Never a Dull Moment by Charles Baxter | The New York Review of Books. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Like it or not, this vision of a population blown around by its own impulses has struck many readers as an accurate depiction of the way a sizable number of Americans typically behave. The pure products of America are going crazy on a regular basis these days. Unmethodical and uprooted erratic behavior is our signature, our keynote. If a character is incapable of planning anything or remembering her own history, then where does she belong? In with a shadowy, helter-skelter submerged population group, that’s where.
Well, I don't know …
… @Cli_Fi_Books on Twitter (blog): Outrage as climate-themed movies absent from Oscars lineup: #NoOscarsNoCli hashtag emerges on Twitter.
This might be good news. What they'd probably turn out would be something like Truth. As anyone who visits here with any regularity knows, I am not a fan of didactic art. When I want a sermon, I go to church.
Something to think on …
The world is so dreadfully managed, one hardly knows to whom to complain.
— Ronald Firbank, born on this date in 1886
Saturday, January 16, 2016
Milan Kundera
Milan Kundera's newest book, The Festival of Insignificance, read to me like candy: sweet, easy, immediate. In the past, this short novel would have constituted a part, or section, of a longer work. But Kundera has aged now, and there's a sense that, at 86, he's publishing what he can, when he can, in a continued effort to probe the themes that have defined his career.
In many ways, The Festival of Insignificance is quintessential Kundera. Themes include laughter, friendship, sexuality, and yes, communism. Kundera offers an unusual critique of the navel, for instance, identifying it as the new erotic zone - all the while, weaving a secondary narrative around Stalin and his Soviet subordinates.
The novel isn't a perfect one - in large part because it doesn't feel complete. But there sections where there's lots to like. For my part, I've found - and continue to find - a certain comfort in Kundera's characters. They're props, after all: nothing more. And when reading Kundera, I don't have an issue with that: I recognize that his characters are masks for ideas, and what color hair they have is secondary, almost meaningless, when compared with the themes he uses them to explore.
The title of Kundera's novel imparts a great deal, of course, about its contents, and it strikes me that The Festival of Insignificance is, in many ways, the natural end-point for his work. After all the laughter and forgetting, all the sexual discomfort and missed signals, it really does seem that what's left to Kundera and his characters is an element of insignificance. (Note: that's insignificance, not nihilism.)
On several occasions, Kundera equates an acceptance of this insignificance with a "good mood" (those are his words). And while that might seem simple or reductive, I think, on some level, it's true. Kundera's characters knowingly tell lies, but those lies belie a greater truth: namely that insignificance offers a bridge to levity. In this new world, characters lie about insignificant events, they discuss insignificant relationships - and the result is happiness.
The Festival of Insignificance is not my favorite of Kundera's novels - not by a long shot (that spot is reserved for The Joke). Still, reading Kundera is one of those rare literary experiences: one that's a mixture of pleasure and pain, sorrow and hope. I always feel refreshed - and optimistic - after reading Kundera's novels, if only because they reminds me to laugh.
Just like conservatives …
… Liberals Are Simple-Minded - Reason.com.
The more interesting and telling results were found when comparing the liberal and conservative results derived from the environmentalism and religion dogmatism scales. The researchers report, "Conservatives are indeed more dogmatic on the religious domain; but liberals are more dogmatic on the environmental domain." In fact, they note that "the highest score for simplicity was for liberals" (emphasis theirs).Bailey's disclosure at the end speaks for me as well. 😊
Sound reasoning …
… No 'silver bullet' exists for fixing climate change - San Diego Jewish World.
Masover has done his homework and has thought about these issues a lot. He’s see the big picture so to speak. “I do think that focus on climate change — or any issue — in isolation can distort the range of threats to Earth’s biosphere through over-simplification. We live amid and as a part of complex, interdependent systems, amid complexity that is (as near as I can make out) beyond the ability of individual human beings even to comprehend in toto. Reduction of this complexity to narrow analyses of cause and effect, to isolated problems and focused solutions, is nearsighted and insufficient absent circumspect acknowledgement that any ‘explanation,’ ‘portrayal,’ or ‘solution’ is at best part of a larger picture. That said, I think it makes good sense to emphasize climate change (and what humans can and can’t do about it at this point) in some books and films, so long as that emphasis acknowledges a range of concerns beyond the principal frame of the story or analysis.”
Hmm …
… Paul Davis On Crime: Journalism In the Movies.
Take-away quote:
(More coarsely, Woodward himself has declared: “To say the press brought down Nixon, that’s horseshit.”)
The obvious comparison is All the President’s Men, the revered 1976 account of the Washington Post’s exposure of the Watergate scandal, its reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein played by Robert Redford and Dustin Hoffman. Another stellar tale of gross wrongdoing the world would otherwise have never known about, Spotlight is the kind of film about journalism that journalists enjoy; it’s also the bookies’ favourite to win Best Picture at next month’s Oscars.The writer should check this out: A media myth eruption: WaPo, Watergate, and Nixon’s fall.
Take-away quote:
(More coarsely, Woodward himself has declared: “To say the press brought down Nixon, that’s horseshit.”)
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)