Saturday, October 09, 2021
Friday, October 08, 2021
Just so you know …
… It Was A Situation For Despair: Corruption In The Pharmaceuticals — Guest Post by Robert Yoho. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
I recently published Butchered by “Healthcare”, a book about how medicine has degenerated over the past 20 years. The corporations have been marketing drugs that barely worked or did not work. They gained power by spreading fear and disease-mongering. The covid story is a continuation of the same modus writ large and with astonishing chutzpah. The following is how the parts fit together. The other players in the scrum—the media, the tech companies, and the politicians—have motives related to the Pharma corporations.
Regarding the media, there's this: New York Times issues correction after egregiously exaggerating coronavirus child hospitalizations.
Something to think on …
Even against the greatest of odds, there is something in the human spirit - a magic blend of skill, faith, and valor - that can lift men from certain defeat to incredible victory
— Walter Lord, born on this date in 1917
Good …
… Colleges Learning Costly Woke Math in the Courtroom School of Hard Knocks | RealClearInvestigations.
The number of administrators has exploded since the late 1990s, prompting many in and outside of academe to blame “administrative bloat” for the legal trouble. Bureaucrats now outnumber faculty 2 to 1 at public universities, double the ratio in the 1970s.
Thursday, October 07, 2021
The magic of the past …
… zmkc: Treasure in Plain Sight.
… as we grow older it is difficult to retain a sense of magic and of the past being all about us. But sometimes still that feeling can be recaptured. For me, it happened when I stepped inside the parish church of St Just in Cornwall. The interior of that place is quiet and shadowy and resonant in a beautifully melancholy way.
Plenty, actually …
… What’s in a name? (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Praise be appellative diversity! Mr Duck is joined this year in the football animal kingdom by Charlotte’s Panda Askew, Eastern Michigan’s Sidy Sow, and Hawk Wimmer of the Air Force Academy. Each had best keep his distance from Appalachian State center Baer Hunter.
Considering what one has read …
… The Old Devil by Philip Hensher. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
One of the most unexpected of these authors turned out to be Kingsley Amis, whose books I’d picked up here and there in different editions: the rebarbative yellow Gollancz hardbacks, versions with that scattered-objects cover design that was so popular with publishers in the 1960s, chic modern-classics relaunches and one 1970s paperback (The Green Man) with a cover so lurid that I hadn’t been able to read it on a train. This took me back. I would have said, if asked, that Lucky Jim was a classic and that Girl, 20 and I Want It Now are both underrated and insightful novels of their time. But was I an admirer of the work as a whole? Well, I had every novel, including The Anti-Death League and The Riverside Villas Murder, some two dozen in total. So evidently yes. Did I agree with most of what they had to say? Hardly at all. They stayed and have gone on being disagreed with.
Something to think on …
Law may prescribe that the male nipples be made equal to the female ones, but they still will not give milk.
— Allan Bloom, who died on this date in 1992
And the winners are …
…2021 Global Photo Contest Winners | The Nature Conservancy. (Hat tip, Rus Bowden.)
Wednesday, October 06, 2021
Hmm …
… Shakespeare's 'Shall I compare thee to a summer's day' is voted greatest poem ever written | Daily Mail Online. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
But much poetry are those who voted familiar with? Of the sonnets I think my favorite is "Let me not to the marriage of true minds admit impediments." But there a certainly poems as greater or greater than either of these sonnets.
Our town …
… Kenney & Outlaw Clueless, D.A. AWOL As Philly Tops 400 Murders | Big Trial | Philadelphia Trial. Blog (Hat tip, Paul Davis.)
As the city remains in crisis, the dysfunction of its leadership was on full display last week. And so was the malpractice of our docile local media. As the bodies piled up, the city's reporters repeatedly failed to do their job by holding Kenney, Outlaw and Krasner accountable for the bloodshed.
Something to think on …
Progress is man's ability to complicate simplicity.
— Thor Heyerdahl, born on this dare in 1914
Tuesday, October 05, 2021
Hmm …
… David Hockney: 'Abstraction in art has run its course'. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Giacometti described abstraction as “the art of the handkerchief”. And that’s what the illustration looked like to me, nothing more… Why was abstraction necessary? I think it was. Its job was to take away the shadows that had dominated European art for centuries. It was only European art that used them.
Sounds tin-eared to me …
… Too Original | Commonweal Magazine. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Reading further through Ruden’s lengthy introduction, I became increasingly uneasy about her claim to “straightforwardness.” She starts by providing a characterization of each Gospel that is, in the main, unexceptionable, if not always accurate. She gives no indication, for example, that the Gospel of Luke is (with the Acts of the Apostles) part of a two-volume composition, and she thinks that this most non-docetic narrative was influenced by Gnosticism. She similarly states that the Gospel of John has the “strongest links to Gnosticism,” a view that few if any scholars after the time of Bultmann would maintain. Unless Ruden has access to evidence unavailable to the general run of competent New Testament scholars, one would have to declare these statements simply erroneous.8
No kidding …
… No One Trusts Public Health Officials -- Not Even Health Care Professionals.
Oh, I don't know about "no one." : I certainly encounter enough people who seem to have pledged fidelity to whatever the so-called experts say — even if better-qualified experts disagree.
Great news …
… Lt Colonel Stuart Scheller Jr. is being released from military brig TODAY | Daily Mail Online.
Next step is to fire the traitorous Milley.
Just so you know …
… People just love dead Jews > New English Review. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Certain intellectuals, Jews among them, attempt to hide their rabid Jew-hatred by focusing on the European Holocaust—on all the dead Jews—as a way of diverting attention from the impending (slow motion) Holocaust against living Jews. Because they oppose what was done to the Jews in World War Two, they feel justified, credentialed, to say that today’s attacks on Israel are ‘justified,’ that the Palestinians are now the true victims, (the ‘new Jews’ in a sense), and the Israeli Jews are their ‘Nazi’ persecutors.”
As George Orwell pointed out, “There are some ideas so absurd that only an intellectual could believe them.”
This may offend …
… The Unbreakable Will of This Pennsylvania Town.
Ellis said what is most important to know is what happens after someone wins one of the guns in the raffle. “If it’s the pistol, they can’t be under 21,” he explained. “If they won the rifle or shotgun, they have to be 18, and then they have to fill out the federal 4473 form.”
If they pass the federal background check, they have to go through the Pennsylvania state background check as well. “So it’s a quite extensive process that they have to go through,” he said. “They’re not handed over to them like, ‘Hey, you won. Here is your gun.’ There’s a legal aspect to it that they have to go through first.”
After all, it's published by something called American Greatness, and that can't be good, right? And the people involved are obviously not woke, and don't necessarily believe whatever the "authorities" tell them. Got to be careful of those.
Cause for hope …
… A ‘Pacemaker for the Brain’: No Treatment Helped Her Depression — Until This. (Hat tip, Dave Lull)
Twelve days after Sarah’s device was fully operational in August 2020, her score on a standard depression scale dropped to 14 from 33, and several months later, it fell below 10, essentially signaling remission, the researchers reported.
A priest for our times …
… Ronald Knox as Spiritual Master ~ The Imaginative Conservative. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
There is something gentle yet hard-edged here—Knox encourages us not to be taken in by desires to experience the effects of God’s grace; we should instead want to experience God. And as it is in the small arenas of our lives, so it is as we experience the large things of society and life.
Something to think on …
Follow the man who seeks the truth; run from the man who has found it.
— Václav Havel, born on this date in 1936
Monday, October 04, 2021
Never underestimate an index …
… Anthony Grafton — Fake it till you make it: Indexing — LRB 23 September 2021. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Good indexes actually worked as they were supposed to, but they still attracted plenty of criticism. Even the greatest experts on indexing – the scholarly print professionals who compiled them – feared that they might prevent readers from going through their texts with the proper energy and attentiveness.
Nice guy …
… Mastermind behind Insulate Britain eco-mob says he would have REFUSED to move for crying woman | Daily Mail Online.
Just the kind of guy I wouldn't mind beating the shit out of
Hmm …
… Miscellaneous Musings : Top 10 Best Novelists of All Time?
They should take a look at Willa Cather, and try reading people who did not write in English. There's that guy Dostoyevsky, for instance.
Something to think on …
When we accept what happens to us and make the best of it, we are praising God.
— Teresa of Avila, who died on this date in 1582
An elusive fellow …
… Colm Toibin on Thom Gunn Letters, edited by Michael Nott, August Kleinzahler and Clive Wilmer. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
As these letters make clear, Gunn came in many guises. At one moment, he is all drift and easy-going charm; at other times, he is filled with determination. He can be dogmatic, especially about poetry, but he can also be open-minded, ready to learn.
Sunday, October 03, 2021
So there!
… “Not one single case of throat irritation”.
I never git in into cigarettes that much, but I certainly. did my share of weed
Worth getting to know …
… Heroes of the Pandemic.
Dr. Robert Malone is a medical doctor and an infectious-disease researcher, and is recognized as the discoverer of in-vitro and in-vivo RNA transfection and the inventor of mRNA vaccines while he was at the Salk Institute in 1988. His research was continued at Vical in 1989, where the first in-vivo mammalian experiments were designed by him. Between 1988 and 1989, the doctor wrote the patent disclosures for mRNA vaccines.
Well, why should we trust him instead of a hack like Fauci?
Something to think on …
America — it is a fabulous country, the only fabulous country; it is the only place where miracles not only happen, but where they happen all the time.
— Thomas Wolfe, born on this date in 1900
Saturday, October 02, 2021
A close look at a close reader …
… Christopher Ricks: the artful noticer - Prospect Magazine. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Allusive and playful, Ricks corrects easy critical assumptions in ways that would entertain any literature lover.[In] another essay re-composed from a lecture, “TS Eliot and ‘Wrong’d Othello”’ … he analyses Eliot’s notorious claim that, in his sonorous final monologue, Shakespeare’s Othello is “cheering himself up” (the italics are Eliot’s). Ricks shows you what perhaps you had heard but did not really see before—how Eliot’s criticism takes on the phrasing and diction of what he criticises. Far from distancing himself from Othello, Eliot is deeply involved in his words and thoughts. Suddenly you see that lines in The Waste Land that you have read a hundred times echo this marital tragedy. Eliot meets Shakespeare in a net of quotations and allusions
Something to think on …
It is not everyday that the world arranges itself into a poem.
— Wallace Stevens, born on this date in 1879
Goethe - Part II
I surprised myself earlier this year when I read -- and enjoyed -- the first part of Goethe's Faust. That part, which contains the famous 'bargain,' I was able to follow. And as I say, there were parts which I even enjoyed.
Sadly, I struggled to make my way through part two. There's a lot happening here, clearly; but without the necessarily background and training, I found it a challenge to connect each of the five acts, and to understand how Faust himself fit in. The references -- both implicit and explicit -- to Greek drama, too, seem largely to have been lost on me.
All of that said, there are some beautiful passages in the second part -- most of them, in my reading, unfurling with a sort of organic quality. No doubt, Goethe's language is sweeping, his sense of rhythm and meter highly attuned. And so while I can't claim that I followed the intricacies of the plot or cultural references in part two, I can say that some of this poetry, at least, will stay with me.
Have you wishes without number?
Watch the promise of the dawn!
Lightly you are wrapped in slumber:
Shed this husk and be reborn!
Venture boldly; hesitation
Is for lesser men -- when deeds
Are a noble mind's creation,
All his enterprise succeeds.
Friday, October 01, 2021
It’s come to this …
… Macron, France Reject American 'Woke' Culture That's 'Racializing' Their Country.
One of France's leading magazines, Le Spectacle Du Monde, ran a cover story titled "The Suicide of America." The magazine blamed America's retreat from Afghanistan on "a woke dictatorship" and questioned whether the American "empire was collapsing."
What a wonderful piece this is …
… Horace, Rattigan and me - Lindsay Johns - The Oldie. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Horace and Rattigan’s understanding of the ways of men and women, of life itself and of what it means to be human have seldom been better articulated - or expressed with a better choice of words, more polish or greater technical virtuosity. Petronius’ famous line about Horace’s careful felicity (“Horatii curiosa felicitas”) still stands, as does Rattigan’s strict adherence to the model of the “well-made play”.
Something to think on …
The greatest obstacle to discovery is not ignorance - it is the illusion of knowledge.
— Daniel J. Boorstin, born on this date in 1914
Thursday, September 30, 2021
And the nominees are …
… The Petrona Award: The Petrona Award 2021 - Shortlist. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Catholic wong-balls …
… The American Pageant: The forgotten story of the Christian Front.
Coughlin was never spoken well of at any of the Catholic schools I attended. The attitudes I encountered ranged from embarrassment to outright hostility. I think that is still true.
Appreciation …
… Reading Walter de la Mare, edited by William Wootten book review. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
De la Mare … as Wootten argues, often seems to be “less interested in the thing itself than in the effect it happens to produce”, a Symbolist poetics that fosters mystery as a stylistic equivalent to the pervasive theme of otherness. Modernism might have seen poets like de la Mare as escapist, retreating from a direct engagement with objective reality, but as this often metaphysical poet illustrates, the imaginative world has its own veracity, seeking to offer not absolute truths but intuitive ones. Looked at like this, de la Mare’s fascination with childhood (and, in many cases, his desire to write poems that could be enjoyed by children and adults alike), seems less a regress than a deeply felt belief that this period was “the fullest of life”, one where “imagination and perception were more acute and alive than they could be again”. De la Mare might even be considered a discreet Surrealist, occasionally anachronistic but of a mind with André Breton’s claim that “childhood is the only reality”.
In case you wondered …
… Arguing about justice - If Marx or Freud had never lived? - Presses universitaires de Louvain.
We certainly wouldn't notice their absence.
Something to think on …
Whenever you are alone, remind yourself that God has sent everyone else away so that there is only you and Him.
— Rumi, born on this date in 1207
Devoutly to be wished …
… Nigeness: 'To re-enchant the view'. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
One of the themes of Scruton's short but dense book, as it is of England: An Elegy, is 'enchantment'. For a people with a reputation for prosaic common sense, the English, he argues, have been peculiarly prone to investing the most commonplace realities with an air of magic, mystique, enchantment. In An Elegy, Scruton speaks frequently of 'the enchantment that lay over England' (note past tense).
In case you wondered …
… Q&A with Arika Okrent, author of Highly Irregular: Why Tough, Through, and Dough Don’t Rhyme—and Other Oddities of the English Language. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
I think people generally know, and accept, that language changes, but a lot of the illogical bits in language come from the fact that language also stays the same. Certain parts resist the change around them and they become fossils, part of the language today, but stuck with the forms of a previous era. Language is two opposing things at once: an infinitely creative tool for expressing any kind of meaning that comes along in the world, and a very conservative tradition that must be stable enough to pass from one generation to the next. We are able to say things that have never been said before, while most of the time repeating the same things over and over again. The repetition embeds and entrenches habits. The creativity introduces departures from the habits. It needs to be both. It’s amazing that it’s both!
Wednesday, September 29, 2021
This is more than just worrisome …
… YouTube is banning prominent anti-vaccine activists and blocking all anti-vaccine content.
Apparently YouTube thinks it need not obey the First Amendment. Twitter and Facebook and Google apparently feel the same way. Punitive action should be taken against all if them.
Maybe they should have gone on the air with him …
… and provided rational arguments against what he had to say: Campus Reform | PPU students petition to remove classmate from campus after Fox News interview.
In praise of a master …
… A World Outside Time: Pico Iyer on the Deep Pleasure of Handel’s Chorale Music. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
- Handel has been my unexpected companion, across several continents, for thirty years now. It feels strange to say that because if my friends were asked, they’d likely tell you that I listen to Jackson Browne and Joni Mitchell, to Springsteen and U2, and in recent times to my wife’s beloved Green Day. My colleagues recall how close I was to a boyhood hero who became in time a boon companion, Leonard Cohen, whose liner notes I used to write. But my private joy, known only to my wife, perhaps, is George Frideric Handel, and in particular the choral music.
The New Criterion after 40 years …
… The Permanent War for Culture. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
The Critical Temper contains four sections of essays: One excoriates venerated figures and notions, one celebrates artists who have divided opinion, one explores the importance of our Anglosphere patrimony, and one gathers pieces that do not quite fit into the other categories. Ayn Rand, kitsch, V. I. Lenin, and the 1619 Project get a proper seeing-to; Harry Flashman, Madame Bovary, P. G. Wodehouse, and Edmund Burke are heaped with laurels.
Something to think on …
Fascism is cured by reading, and racism is cured by traveling.
— Miguel de Unamuno, born on this date in 1864
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