Thursday, March 31, 2022
Good question …
… Why Can't We Be Friends? - The American Conservative. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
… we should take as our models those who understand that politics must always be subordinated to friendship. I think of Henry Clay Owen, the staunch Hoosier Republican editor of the Terre Haute Post, who in 1920 endorsed for president the admirable Socialist Party standard-bearer Eugene V. Debs because Debs—recently sprung from the federal hoosegow, where he’d been caged for “sedition”—was such a good “neighbor and friend.”
Makes sense to me …
… Education Declined When We Stopped Searching for God.
Scholars likewise studied religious topics. Medieval historian Lynn White, Jr. notes: “Every major scientist from about 1250 to about 1650, four hundred years during which our present scientific movement was taking form, considered himself also a theologian: Leibnitz and Newton are notable examples. The importance to science of the religious devotion which these men gave their work cannot be exaggerated.”
Life on wheels …
… Hitler, his driver and other stories - This captivating history of the motorcar is full of rich detail. We'll miss them when they're gone. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Towards the end the tone turns elegiac. Because the future is electric, and it is autonomous. Appleyard rightly loathes the idea that we will become "passive spectators" in our own journeys. Autonomous vehicles, for him, "represent a freedom-destroying victory over the driver's experience of serendipity, contingency, and faith and joy in their own competence". They also present serious legal and philosophical problems, which he summarises in a brilliantly offhand way: "Getting killed or maimed by a robot somehow feels a good deal more annoying than by a human."
It seems we just may …
… The big idea: do we still need religion? | Religion | The Guardian.
There are at least two reasons, however, why religions persist. One is the fact that, on average, religious people are generally happier, healthier and live longer. For better or for worse, they also have easier deaths when the time comes. The other is that religious people are more likely to feel that they belong to a community. In a survey I ran, those who reported attending religious services were depressed less frequently, felt their lives were more worthwhile, were more engaged with their local community, and felt greater trust towards others. These enormous benefits mean not only that religion has enduring appeal, but that religious practices make you “fit” in the evolutionary sense – and thus they tend to stick around.
Something to think on …
There comes a time in each life like a point of fulcrum. At that time you must accept yourself. It is not any more what you will become. It is what you are and always will be.
— John Fowles, born on this date in 1926
Wednesday, March 30, 2022
In case you wondered …
… How Compulsive Conformity Can Get People Killed:.
Everybody needs to learn about the dynamics of conformity. Blatant censorship, hostility to free speech, and campaigns to demonize mainstream American views were all unthinkable scenarios for most Americans just a few years ago.
I’m not given to conformity. I’m 80 years old. Why the hell should I be?
Our new commissars …
… Hedges: On Being Disappeared.
I received no inquiry or notice from YouTube. I vanished. In totalitarian systems you exist, then you don’t. I suppose this was done in the name of censoring Russian propaganda, although I have a hard time seeing how a detailed discussion of “Ulysses” or the biographies of Susan Sontag and J. Robert Oppenheimer had any connection in the eyes of the most obtuse censors in Silicon Valley with Vladimir Putin. Indeed, there is not one show that dealt with Russia.
I don’t agree with Hedges on everything — I certainly don”t support the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement against Israel — but I don’t think he should be canceled.
Something to think on …
From the time we began to build houses and cities, since we invented the wheel, we have not advanced one step toward happiness. We have always been in halves. As long as we invent and progress in mechanical things and not in love, we shall not achieve happiness.
— Jean Giono, born on this date in 1896
In praise of Aaron Poochigian …
… Anecdotal Evidence: 'It Can Also Do Nothing Beautifully'. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Tuesday, March 29, 2022
Quite remarkable …
I am old enough to remember watching every Tuesday night. He was opposite Milton Berle. Berle’s ratings became noticeably after Sheen’s half-hour show ended. Sheen actually won an Emmy. And he and Berle were friends
Made-up history …
… The Bright Ages - The American Conservative. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
I could go on (and on and on) about all the strange, needless errors in this strange, needless book. But I’d rather not. Actually, I try to avoid writing negative book reviews. I only made an exception this time because, at some level, the authors must know this is a bad book.
In case you wondered …
… WHAT KILLED CULTURAL ASPIRATION. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Sooner or later one imagines that widespread antipathy to highbrow aspiration will have serious consequences for cultural engagement at any level. It may even have done so already. A reticence about being negative manifests itself in the familiar calls for a supposedly “objective” criticism that would in practice amount to something like advertising copy.
Something to think on …
Logic of itself cannot give anyone the answer to any questions of substance; but without logic we often do not know the import of what we know and often fall into fallacy and inconsistency.
— Peter Geach, born on this date in 1916
Monday, March 28, 2022
Another phony tough guy …
… Penn State comms professor calls for assassination of Trump: 'Should've been Lincoln'd' | The Post Millennial.
These people who go around wanting people they don’t like dead have probably never been anywhere near some of the places I’ve been very late at night that even I found scary. And bear in mind, some years ago, when a guy started walking toward me while opening a switchblade, I positioned my walking stick — then a fashion statement, not (as it is now) a utility — in a peculiar way and said to him in my best Clint Eastwood voice, “Go ahead, make my day.” He figured out that I wasn’t going to hit him in the head with my stick. I was going to deprive him of one of his eyeballs. He folded up his knife and walked away. I actually know how to use my walking stick — I have several — as a weapon. I wonder what “tough guy” Professor Zack would have done.
Another phony tough guy …
… Penn State professor called for death of Trump, Jordan Peterson, Ben Shapiro - TheBlaze.
My old man was a genuine tough guy. You would never have known it, though, unless the situation called for him to be such. These guys shooting off their mouths are like this guy:
Something to think on …
We must mistrust utopias: they usually end in holocausts.
— Mario Vargas Llosa, born on this date in 1936
Sounds like our media …
… Canadian media ignores scolding of Trudeau while rest of world reports it | True North.
Trudeau was treated to scathing condemnation by several Members of European Parliament (MEP) after giving a speech to the European Union on Wednesday.
Which he richly deserved.
Though there is this: Rex Murphy: Justin Trudeau has become a punchline on the world stage — for good reason.
To defend democracy, you should adhere to its principles. Don’t go to Brussels to preach what you skip over in Ottawa.
Mysterious ways …
… ‘Keep the Faith': How A Hostile Encounter With Yale Law Students Emboldened Me To Speak The Truth With Kindness.
… I witnessed a room full of our future lawyers, jurists, legislators, and corporate executives who would … rather bang on walls and engage in name-calling and physical intimidation than have to engage with people and ideas they dislike. What makes it worse is that their future profession requires them to interact with opponents regularly. Even the American Bar Association recognizes civility “as a foundation for democracy and the rule of law” and urges lawyers “to set a high standard for civil discourse as an example for others. …”…
Sounds promising …
… Elon Musk 'Giving Serious Thought to Creating Social Media Platform - Headline USA.
I canceled my Twitter account quite awhile ago, precisely because of its selective censorship (though I had not been a victim of it).
Sunday, March 27, 2022
Just a thought …
"When a man knows he is to be hanged in a fortnight," Dr. Johnson opined, "it concentrates his mind wonderfully." True enough. But there certainly are other, less extreme measures, to achieve the same thing. I like to remind myself, from time to time, usually when I’m feeling put upon, overburdened, chained to an uninteresting routine, that nothing one had to do or happened to be doing would seem that way if I knew for sure that I would never have the opportunity to do it again, or anything else. And not just that. I would never remember doing anything, never remember having been. "Not to be here,/Not to be anywhere," as Philip Larkin put it.
Concern over death is a common characteristic of religion — even one like Buddhism, which seems to put God in Husserlian brackets — but in a somewhat paradoxical way. Religion is about finding a point in being and how to go about making it. That cannot be done without taking into consideration overwhelming evidence that your organism will die. The value of religion does not consist in a resolution of this problem, but in the continual reminder of it. Faith is an engagement with death.
The Oscar show is about to start …
… does anybody care anymore? I sure in hell don’t. And I used to watch it religiously.
Blogging note …
I am about to head out to Mass, after which I will be having lunch with my fried Katherine Miller. Blogging will resume later on.
Appreciation …
… Mark Ford — Thee, Thou, Twixt: Walter de la Mare LRB 24 March 2022.
Like Delta blues lyrics, de la Mare’s rhymes rework traditional images into new combinations without imparting to them a scintilla of his own concerns or personality. Metrically flawless, ‘The Horseman’ slides into the reader’s consciousness and incarnates the impossible romance of childhood longing, the mixture of yearning for what is ‘over the hill’ with delight in the chivalric properties of silver helm, pale knight and horse of ‘ivory’.
Something to think on …
We did not happen to be — we were chosen by God to exist.
— Mother Angelica, who died on this date in 2016
Saturday, March 26, 2022
Something to think on …
Poetry is when an emotion has found its thought and the thought has found words.
— Robert Frost, born on this date in 1874
Friday, March 25, 2022
Not knowing their place …
… namely, that they are public servants: Hot Mic Catches School Board Member Asking to 'Set Marsha Blackburn on Fire'.
Well worth visiting …
…10 Frank Lloyd Wright Houses You Can Visit. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
I’ve been to Spring Green and have seen Taliesin. Never visited Falling Water, though, and it’s in Pa.
William Golding
Lord of the Flies is one of those novels that you read in high school. Except that I didn't. So I've taken it up now. Here are a few observations now that I'm done:
- In general, I'm not moved by novels about children, or in which children play a primary role. I recognize that Lord of the Flies is about more than children, but there's no way around the fact that they drive the book's progression, and serve as its main characters.
- One question which the novel seems to pose is whether adults, if marooned on an island in the same way as Golding's children, would organize themselves in a similar fashion, and whether they would take recourse to violence as a result of a related set of pressures.
- I suspect that, in response to Golding's question, the answer is yes -- that adults would divide themselves between the primal and the reflective. This dichotomy may not be as pronounced as Golding presents it, but the distinction is real, and would manifest itself similarly, I think, in adults.
Ultimately, Golding positions naivety against survival: the result -- in his reading -- is a set of conclusions which can be generalized about humanity. When and how humans come into conflict is a primary concern. Equally, Golding poses a question about how humans organize themselves, and whether that sense of organization is innate, or genetically coded.
These are interesting questions, and there's no question that Golding's novel builds toward a crescendo. I take all of this as true: but I do wonder whether the experience of abandoned children would have been even more brutal than what Lord of the Flies presents. That became a distraction for me: despite his book's realism, how realistic are Golding's visions and conclusions?
Hmm …
… Meditation as Disciplined Non-Thinking. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
We can … define meditation as the attempt to come to a non-objective or non-dual awareness of the transcendental awareness which is the ever-present condition of anything’s appearing in the first place. As Brunton points out, this cannot occur by thinking about the Overself. For such thinking about merely produces another thought-content, another proposition, about the Overself. We end up objectifying what is in truth the subjective condition of all objectivity.
Something to think on …
The mind serves best when it's anchored in the Word of God. There is no danger then of becoming an intellectual without integrity.
— Flannery O’Connor, born on this date in 1925
Thursday, March 24, 2022
I am not surprised …
… Newly Released Pfizer Documents Reveal COVID Jab Dangers.
To have 1,223 fatalities and 42,086 reports of injury in the first three months is a significant safety signal, especially when you consider that the 1976 swine flu vaccine was pulled after only 25 deaths.
Why am I not surprised? Because I used to be a medical editor, and the reporting on this has been some of the worst I have ever seen. You will be seeing more stories like this. Of course, the petty tyrants in government loved it.
I have an idea …
… let’s shut down all the colleges and universities: Public College Hosts Cop Killer (“Political Prisoner”) with Promoting Excellence in Diversity Grant.
I went to college. Hell, I even went to grad school for a while. Back then — I’m an old man — you were taught how to think. Now, they don’t even teach you facts. And they cost a fortune. And if you run into some of today”s grads, they’re as ignorant as lamp posts. Like the guy who recently interrupted a conversation I was having to inform me that Hitler wasn’t a socialist. I asked him if he knew German. He did not. So I told him what NAZI means: Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei (National Socialist German Workers Party). I also told him that if he googled Hitler socialism speeches, he could read a few.
I must say, I don’t quite get this …
… Photog Speaks Out After She Says NBC Edited Her Photos To ‘Soften’ Look Of Trans Swimmer Lia Thomas.
… This is how 'detransitioners' who regret their gender assignment surgeries get sidelined by leftist narratives.
Lia Thomas does not look to me if she has completed her transitioning. Is that just me? I’m being serious.
Then there’s this:
Nice to know — finally …
… Newly Released Pfizer Documents Reveal COVID Jab Dangers. (Hat tip, Felix Giordano.)
This would have been known quite some time ago, if the people palming themselves off these days as journalists knew how to do journalism. In my day, you never took the government at its word. You set out to verify if what they were telling you was true. Oh, journalists today still do that. But only regarding Republicans. Well, you’ve got to be non-partison, folks. Why do you think so many people don’t trust you nowadays? Because you’ve become partisan hacks. There are plenty of those around already.
A cautionary tale indeed …
“I dreamt we were occupied by Nazis, and that those Nazis were us.” (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Right now a decision is being made about the sort of world we will live in and, in some ways, have already been sucked into: we exist and act in the black hole of another’s consciousness. It calls up archaic ideas of nationhood: that there are worse nations, better ones, nations that are higher or lower on some incomprehensible scale of greatness; that all Ukrainians (or Jews, Russians, Americans and so on) are weak, greedy, servile, hostile — and these cardboard cut-outs are already promenading through the collective imagination, just as they were before the second world war. As they say in Russia, “the dead take hold of the living”, and here these dead are ideas and concepts into which new blood flows and they begin killing, just as in a horror film.
Something to think on …
In the beginning was the Lie and the Lie was made news and dwelt among us, graceless and false.
— Malcolm Muggeridge, born on this date in 1903
Wednesday, March 23, 2022
Some are pretty disturbing …
… Photos Of The Week: Compelling Images From Our Region. (Hat tip, Rus Bowden.)
In case you wondered …
… Why We Walk | Timothy Jacobson | First Things. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Excepting that awful management cliché, “walk the talk,” walking retains even today a certain dignity. “Hike” can be used negatively. The contemptuous “take a hike” (as in beat it, get lost, drop dead) doesn’t work with “walk.” Rather, after too much time at the screen, we take a walk to clear the mind and to refresh. Our purpose is modest, and the exercise usually works. Such walks, in my experience, are usually solitary ones.
That’s for sure …
… James Clapper and our other intel 'experts' are full of it.
…our former DNI, who also served as undersecretary of Defense for Intelligence and the head of the Defense Intelligence Agency, was clearly either dead wrong or flat-out lying. (Note that he dodged a perjury charge for lying to Congress about NSA data collection practices in 2013).
Something to think on …
Nothing is more securely lodged than the ignorance of the experts.
— Friedrich Hayek, who died on this date in 1992
Tuesday, March 22, 2022
Something to think on …
The worst thing you can do is censor yourself as the pencil hits the paper. You must not edit until you get it all on paper. If you can put everything down, stream-of-consciousness, you'll do yourself a service.
— Stephen Sondheim, born on this date in 1930
Hmm …
… An Open Letter To Yale Law Dean Heather Gerken.
I realize that other members of the YLS administration and faculty, such as Dean Ellen Cosgrove, Professor Kate Stith, and DEI Director Yaseen Eldik, were on the scene. But with my apologies if this is too blunt, this was your job. There’s a reason why other attendees at Professor Flores’s job talk were looking at you expectantly, waiting for you to do something. You are the Dean of the Yale Law School, and when a crisis arises at YLS, you must take the wheel.
Monday, March 21, 2022
Poetry and the world we inhabit …
… Anecdotal Evidence: 'Like a Hibernating Bear'. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Something to think on …
The wonderful thing about saints is that they were human. They lost their tempers, got hungry, scolded God, were egotistical or impatient in their turns, made mistakes and regretted them. Still they went on doggedly blundering toward heaven.
— Phyllis McGinley, born on this date in 1905
Farewell …
… Ukrainian Pianist Plays A Final Rendition Of Chopin In The Ruins Of Her House. (Hat tip, Rus Bowden.)
Sunday, March 20, 2022
The triumph of a prodigious versifier …
… Pushkin by the Bay by Bruce Bawer | The New Criterion. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
The Golden Gate is composed in the “Eugene Onegin” stanza, the form invented by Pushkin a century and a half ago for his classic novel in verse. Each of Seth’s 590 sonnet-length stanzas of iambic tetrameter—like each of the 400 stanzas of Eugene Onegin—follows the rhyme scheme aBaB ccDD eFFe GG, with lower-case letters denoting feminine rhymes and capitals denoting masculine rhymes. (Perhaps the number of stanzas in The Golden Gate should actually be reckoned at 594, because Seth’s acknowledgments, dedication, table of contents, and author’s note are also written in the “Onegin” stanza—thus outdoing Pushkin, whose work was prefaced only by a dedication in verse.) Like Pushkin, Seth addresses his audience as “Gentle Reader,” divides his book into chapters, and numbers each stanza. In stanza 5.5 he acknowledges his debt to Pushkin:
Reader, enough of this apology:
But spare me if I think it best,
Before I tether my monology,
To stake a stanza to suggest
You spend some unfilled day of leisure
By that original spring of pleasure:
Sweet-watered, fluent, clear, light, blithe
(This homage merely pays a tithe
Of what in joy and inspiration
It gave me once and does not cease
To give me)—Pushkin’s masterpiece
In Johnston’s luminous translation:
Eugene Onegin—like champagne
Its effervescence stirs my brain.
Good to know …
… NIKE Releases New Women's Swimsuit With Extra Space For Male Genitalia | The Babylon Bee.
Please note: No need to fact check. This called satire.
Good for her …
… Megyn Kelly Slams Lia Thomas: This ‘Is Not The Women’s Champion’ And Has ‘Some Nerve’ Pretending To Be.
I identify as a Vulcan, but nobody takes me seriously. I wonder why. You think it’s the ears?
Surprise, surprise …
…Most Voters Support Florida School Law - Rasmussen Reports.
I never needed any help from the government or teachers unions when. I was raising my kids. Butt out..
Baseball on the big scree …
… Silver Screens - BallNine.
I asked my friends to submit their choices for the best baseball movies. The film mentioned most often would be rated the best, the one with the second most mentions would be second best, etc. Some participants sent a list of 10 films, some sent several, and a few selected only one movie.
Birthday …
"Either she was foul, or her attire was bad.” (Hat tip, Rus Bowden.)
Ovid was born on this date in 43 BC.
Oxford between the wars …
… When Oxford life resembled a great satirical novel | The Spectator. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Not Far From Brideshead is teeming with gloriously witty and cruel anecdotes, worthy of the place where an ‘Oxford secret’ is a piece of malicious gossip (usually entirely untrue) that you tell to one person at a time. But one of the joys of Dunn’s fascinating book is her ability to control the comic tone and leaven it with sober and often moving details. Bowra, who fought bravely in the trenches, carried with him a collection of Thomas Hardy’s poetry, and when Hardy came to receive an honorary degree in 1920, Bowra was there, ‘remembering how he had clung to Hardy’s Moments of Vision in the trenches’. The grand old writer now looked like ‘a very good, shrunken English apple’. Bowra’s unwittingly disastrous part in Operation Valkyrie, the thwarted plot to assassinate Hitler, is rendered brilliantly, showing Dunn’s acute abilities as a storyteller
Something to think on …
The most dangerous enemy of the truth and freedom amongst us is the compact majority.
— Henrik Ibsen, born on this date in 1828
Saturday, March 19, 2022
Transcending reason …
… C.S. Lewis Was a Modern Man Who Breathed Medieval Air... | Christianity Today. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
In Lewis, one finds a transcendent yet intimate morality that does not change from age to age or culture to culture. Baxter, showing keen insight into Lewis’s medieval ethical vision, writes that modernity “thinks of the apex of virtue as being nice,” whereas “ancient languages and primitive religions treat holiness as … a frightening and terrifying power that goes far beyond mere goodness.”
No mind, no matter …
… A New Theism? - The Catholic Thing. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Mind or intellect is present even in a rock as its “formal” principle, causing it to be the kind of thing that it is. Indeed this formal principle is the immediate act of the eternal God’s creation that causes all things – not just human minds – to exist
Missing photos …
… The Kept and the Killed. (Hat tip, Rus Bowden.)
… these unloved alternates have become almost more interesting than their perfect twins. In contrast to the carefully captioned File images, killed negatives have no names attached, often no notes on provenance: what little we know about them is only by analogy to those photos that were saved, clues about location gleaned from landscapes, clothing, faces. As such, the killed photos demand a more active viewer, one willing to piece together, to parse, to consign some things to the realm of the curious and unknowable.
Committing truth …
… The New York Times’ mask has slipped.
Thus far, most media are ignoring the Rosenberg story, with only right-leaning outlets talking about it. This is a dismal state of affairs. Truth is not a partisan issue.
Something to think on …
God, send me anywhere, only go with me. Lay any burden on me, only sustain me. And sever any tie in my heart except the tie that binds my heart to Yours.
— David Livingstone, born on this date in 1813
Friday, March 18, 2022
More about Berdyaev
… Nikolay Berdyaev: His Teaching on the Human Person | The Transfiguration Brotherhood.
Berdayev’s refined vision discerned Divine Humanity in the Church, and at the centre of church life, the principles of personhood and sobornost. He spoke of of the incompleteness of the personal principle within the church and how it has been shunted aside by the symbolic-hierarchical principle, and about an unnecessary shift in focus away from prophecy and toward hieratic priesthood, in which situation it is not the person himself who is venerated, but “the bearer of power, itself an impersonal hierarchal principle.
Berdyaev was born on this date in 1874. He has influenced me immensely.
More about our media …
… Stop blaming women for men’s crimes.
It is the moral choice made by the BBC and the New York Times – and others – that feels most disturbing. They have decided that the feelings of Mr Marcelin count for more than the truth about Susan Leyden’s violent demise. They have judged that Mr Marcelin’s deranged belief that he is a woman carries more moral weight than the late Ms Leyden’s right to have the truth told about the circumstances of her death
Speaking of contemporary journalism …
… NPR Corrects False Hunter Biden Claim But.
NPR issued a tepid correction reading “A previous version of this story said U.S. intelligence had discredited the laptop story. U.S. intelligence officials have not made a statement to that effect.” It would have been a tad more honest to say that there has been no denial that the laptop belongs to Hunter Biden and that the contents were genuine.
Hmm …
… A Century Ago, American Reporters Foresaw the Rise of Authoritarianism in Europe | History| Smithsonian Magazine. (Hat tip, Paul Davis.)
A new book tells the stories of four interwar writers who laid the groundwork for modern journalism.
Given the state of journalism these days, that may not be a compliment.
We can only hope …
… Did Fauci Just Hint He'll Be Stepping Down Soon?
As worthless a bag of shit as has ever robbed the taxpayers. Get lost, buster.
Quite an anthology …
“New York has been a city on the ropes, its boroughs buffeted by fierce challenges from the pandemic’s economic effects,” Wallace said. “But New York City’s poets pack a powerful punch. And in this anthology they’re saying, ‘Don’t call it comeback. New York City is captivating in good times and in bad, and it cannot fail.”
Something to think on …
The central idea of the Eastern Fathers was that of theosis, the divinization of all creatures, the transfiguration of the world, the idea of the cosmos and not the idea of personal salvation... Only later Christian consciousness began to value the idea of hell more than the idea of the transfiguration and divinization of the world...The Kingdom of God is the transfiguration of the world, the universal resurrection, a new heaven and a new earth.
— Nikolai Berdyaev, born on this date in 1874
Push-back …
… Move over think tanks. This alumni-donor ‘action tank’ takes on wokeness one campus at a time.
“If parents understood what their student was being exposed to, and that other parents felt the same way, there’d be a revolution,” scholar Terry Gannon, the group’s main researcher, toldThe College Fix.
Thursday, March 17, 2022
And the winners are …
… Winners of the third Oscar Wilde Society's Wilde Wit Competition - The Oldie. ( hat tip, Dave Lull.)
An engaging exchange …
… Rare Thoughts on Writing From Cormac McCarthy in This Unlikely Interview. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
It Only Took Two Arizona High School Students to Get Answers From the Legendarily Reclusive Author.
Honoring a mass murderer …
… Example #2,943 Why Academia Is Doomed - by Tom Knighton.
The problem … is that Mao killed up to 45 million of his own people, making Stalin and Hitler look like pikers.
The dumbest generation is at it again …
… I will 'literally fight you, b**ch': Over 100 Yale Law students ambush free speech panel; cops called to escort speakers to safety - TheBlaze.
Somebody threatened to fight me, I’d walk over and tell them to try.
Very interesting indeed …
… Alex Berenson's Pandemia: A Review. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Of course, it would be unfair to probe the limitations of a book, without also noting its strengths. Berenson’s discussion of masks and the policies surrounding them has been one of his strongest points, both here and on Twitter. I (and I suspect others) at first tended to avoid this issue, because we thought it was important to concentrate energy on the more dire issues of mass closures and house arrests. I’m now convinced this was the wrong approach. You can’t read Pandemia without wondering whether masks might be the Achilles heel of the whole Corona complex. Their use has no basis in evidence, and yet mask mandates are defended by the entire establishment, who invoke a nebulous ‘science’ that nobody can ever quite call into being
The word missing is Pandemia. I find it interesting that Wikipedia refers to Berenson as a conspiracy theorist. If I were he, I’d have my lawyer get in touch with them. Encyclopedias are for verifiable facts, not political opinions. You can say that he has been called such, but not that he is such. I hope Wikipedia gets royally screwed over and doesn’t allow whoever wrote that article to write for them again.
One of the very greatest …
… Nat King Cole - The Very Thought of You (1958).
Nat Cole was born on this date in 1919. I remember listening to him on the radio when I was just a little kid, in the ‘40s. Handsome, impeccably cool, and oh that voice.
The power of reading …
… Anecdotal Evidence: 'Books gone, the Terror Were of Brute and Dunce'. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Walter de la Mare is one of my favorite poets, and has been since childhood. I even wrote a piece about Memoirs of a Midget. Maybe I’ll post a link to it later today. Right now I must get ready to take my daily walk — before it starts pouring again.
Something to think on …
The past is our ultimate privacy; we pile it up, year by year, decade by decade, it stows itself away, with its perverse random recall system
— Penelope Lively, born on this date in 1933
Wednesday, March 16, 2022
One of the decisive battles …
… A Masterfully Woven History of the Battle of Actium | RealClearBooks.
The first half of the book chronicles the lives of the principles in the lead-up to the finale at Actium; the second half is a gripping description of the great sea battle and an analysis of the political significance of Octavian’s historic victory. Strauss’s overarching themes include the ironies of these bloody decades.
The joy of used books …
… The Bookshelf: The Joys of Used Bookstores - Public Discourse. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
A used bookstore! Browsing the shelves leisurely, one discovers books one never knew one must have. Even the smell is enticing, of old paper and leather and cloth.
The author seems to have the opposite experience to what I had when I read Brideshead Revisited. It was on the list of books those of us taking the course in the modern novel that fall had to read beforehand. It was the first on the list that I chose to read because I had just read Decline and Fall, one of the funniest books I had ever read. I remember pausing after reading Brideshead for about 45 minutes and saying aloud to myself: “This is the saddest book I have ever read.”
I finished and loved and still love. That said, the Sword of Honour trilogy is certainly a masterpiece.
Ah, yes …
five By Gregory Corso. (Hat tip, Rus Bowden.)
When I was in college, Corso was a favorite among the poetically inclined among us.
Something to think on …
The ways of Providence cannot be reasoned out by the finite mind ... I cannot fathom them, yet seeking to know them is the most satisfying thing in all the world.
— Selma Lagerlöf, who died on this date in 1940
Hmm …
… Ukraine LIVE: Russia demands return of Alaska and Californian fort in fury at US sanctions | World | News | Express.co.uk.
Guess they don’t teach history much in Russia. Putin certainly doesn’t seem have pondered Stalin’s war with Finland. And now they to know that Russia sold Alaska to us. We didn’t just take it.
Tuesday, March 15, 2022
Poems and their subjects …
… Something to say by Scott Bartley | The New Criterion. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Some of Brown’s classifications are questionable, and he admits that no taxonomy could capture all the ways poems can treat their subjects. But the virtue of Brown’s discussion is to present poems’ subjects as related to but distinct from their themes. While themes are general and can be shared by multiple poems, a poem’s subject is embedded in its particularized utterance.
Overtaken by modernity …
… Sic Transit Goria. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
“Those contraptions will never catch on,” they said. “Get a hoss!”
Something to think on …
God forbid that any book should be banned. The practice is as indefensible as infanticide.
— Rebecca West, who died in this date in 1983
Monday, March 14, 2022
Life in a progressive city …
… Amazon relocates employees from downtown Seattle office over rampant violent crime.
I’m not sure Philly is much better. We also have a Soros-backed DA and our homicide rate looks as if it could be higher than last year. I used to walk home from the Inquirer. I wouldn’t do that at night these days unless I was packing heat. Back in the day, when I spent some time in San Francisco, I loved the place. That was quite a few years ago. Sounds like it’s turned into a shithole.