… A Commonplace Blog: The books I’ve stolen. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Sunday, December 16, 2012
An absolute must-read
… The Anarchist Soccer Mom: Thinking the Unthinkable. (Hat tip, Dave Lull)
A few weeks ago, Michael pulled a knife and threatened to kill me and then himself after I asked him to return his overdue library books. His 7 and 9 year old siblings knew the safety plan—they ran to the car and locked the doors before I even asked them to. I managed to get the knife from Michael, then methodically collected all the sharp objects in the house into a single Tupperware container that now travels with me. Through it all, he continued to scream insults at me and threaten to kill or hurt me.
That conflict ended with three burly police officers and a paramedic wrestling my son onto a gurney for an expensive ambulance ride to the local emergency room. The mental hospital didn’t have any beds that day, and Michael calmed down nicely in the ER, so they sent us home with a prescription for Zyprexa and a follow-up visit with a local pediatric psychiatrist.
Inquirer reviews …
… Stranger in a strange flat.
And that's all I can find on Philly.com, though there is a list of recommendations on the entertainment section front of the print edition.
And that's all I can find on Philly.com, though there is a list of recommendations on the entertainment section front of the print edition.
The writing life …
… John Updike: Letter to our young writer — Pumpjack Press. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Thought for the day …
It's discouraging to think how many people are shocked by honesty and how few by deceit.
— Noël Coward, born on this date 1899
Saturday, December 15, 2012
Socialist bollocks...
...François Hollande wants to abolish homework. Is that a good idea?
That still leaves the homework abolition as a downside. Hollande, however, defends it not in terms of student learning but as a way to equal the playing field for all students. Poor children, he argues, are less likely to get parental aid for homework, and so requiring homework can widen the achievement gap.
How does preventing people from doing homework contribute to a better society? If indeed I am better educated and can help my kid at his education, will it matter if he brings homework from school? Am I supposed to feel guilty that I am better educated than my poor brethren? This is precisely the sort of nonsense that harms societies and does no one any good.
More than just the facts …
… Andre Aciman on Writing Realistic Fiction | Word Craft - WSJ.com. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
With all due respect …
… I disagree: Bryan Appleyard American Guns. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
The principal argument against gun control in the U.S. is that it doesn't work — in fact, cannot work. Some years ago I did some research and found that at the time, according to one estimate, there were as many as 200 million illegal hand guns circulating in this country. I am certain, were I to get in touch with some of the friends in low places I used to have, should they still be around, I could get a hand gun by tomorrow, if not this afternoon, and all without paying any attention to the gun laws.
There is also the fact that the right to bear arms in this country is precisely that: a Constitutional right. Citizens of other lands and posturing politicians may not like it, but the Second Amendment is not about to be repealed anytime soon. I myself don't want to live in a country where the government and criminals have guns and law-abiding citizens do not.
The UK, I believe, has draconian gun laws, and yet, according to this three-year-old article, it also has a Culture of violence: Gun crime goes up by 89% in a decade.
It is also worth noting that those parts of this country where guns are readily available also have correspondingly lower rates of crime. There is a professor in Florida who has compiled some pretty impressive data showing how many crimes have been prevented because the intended victims were armed.
I believe that Norway has some pretty tough gun laws, but they didn't prevent what happened there last year. There simply is no easy solution to the sort of ghastly thing that happened in Connecticut yesterday. Blind faith in the power of legislation to prevent disaster strikes me as, at best, naïve.
That said, the NRA too often does come off as recalcitrant in many ways. There are reasonable steps that can be taken. No one, for instance, should be allowed to purchase a gun who has not been certified as competent to use one. A license to have a gun should be like the license to drive a car.
I pretty much agree with this assessment: What Can We Do to Stop Massacres?
See also: Gun-free zones provide false sense of security.
I pretty much agree with this assessment: What Can We Do to Stop Massacres?
See also: Gun-free zones provide false sense of security.
A world of intelligible law …
… W. H. Auden's Defense of The Lord of the Rings : The New Yorker. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Last lecture …
… Father James Schall’s ‘Final Gladness’ | Daily News | NCRegister.com. (Hat tip, Dave Lull)
Joe of New York sends along a video of the lecture (you'll probably have to click onto YouTube to actually see it, though; embeds don't seem to be working these days):
Joe of New York sends along a video of the lecture (you'll probably have to click onto YouTube to actually see it, though; embeds don't seem to be working these days):
Thought for the day …
You ask: what is the meaning or purpose of life? I can only answer with another question: do you think we are wise enough to read God's mind?
— Freeman Dyson, born on this date in 1923
Friday, December 14, 2012
Odds, ends, and a falling out …
… apple polishers, DJs, India — Elberry's Ghost. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
I hope the differences can be resolved. Elberry's a most talented fellow.
I hope the differences can be resolved. Elberry's a most talented fellow.
Hmm …
… Seeing God in the Third Millennium - Oliver Sacks - The Atlantic. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
On the other hand, consider this, from Graham Smetham's "On ‘Known-To-Be-False’ Materialist Philosophies of Mind":
On the other hand, consider this, from Graham Smetham's "On ‘Known-To-Be-False’ Materialist Philosophies of Mind":
Although experiences and thought-processes are certainly dependent upon the higher level properties of the quantum field as it becomes organised into more-familiar material structures, the potential stuff of the quantum grounds must be the ultimate source of both the material structures of the world and of the experiences of sentient beings within it. In the most up-to-date understanding of quantum theory, it is quite clear that all apparently material structures and processes, including the brain, are emergent from insubstantial quantum ‘dream stuff’, to use a description by physicist Wojciech Zurek. In other words, acts of perception create material reality from the ground quantum ‘dream’ stuff. So Zurek reiterates Stapp’s point that acts of consciousness produce reality from quantum potentiality. So quantum theory clearly tells us that even the existence of a brain is a result of mental acts upon a deep quantum ground of potentiality. This means that the material of the brain is ultimately immaterial.
Survival of the fittest …
… Nassim Taleb Channels Charles Darwin | Institutional Investor's Alpha. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
More for the season …
… 24-Dec-71 by Joseph Brodsky | The New York Review of Books. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Thought for the day …
I very much dislike writing about myself or my work, and when pressed for autobiographical material can only give a bare chronological outline which contains no pertinent facts.
— Shirley Jackson, born on this date in 1919
Thursday, December 13, 2012
Turns out, it has its benefits …
… Happy To Be Panned | EDIT INNOVATION | matthew e. may. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Odd indeed …
… Cycnos: Nabokov, Ayn Rand, and Russian-American Literature or, the Odd Couple. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Could be worse …
… An evening of bad sex…but is it bad enough? | The Book Haven.
Sex is a relatively simple physical act. There really isn't a lot to say about it. The personal mystery that leads to that act and is affected by it is something else. There is a world of beauty and peculiarity to be dealt with in that.
Hmm …
… Krugman, Krauthammer and Their Implied Authors - Bloomberg. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
This strikes me as among the dumbest literary commentaries I have ever read. Consider this:
As for columnists, of course they adopt a voice, a persona. That's why you can parody them, because they employ a tone that you can, if you wish, caricature.
You don't think of the author while reading. You think of what the author is telling you. If he tells it well, you get caught up in it.
This strikes me as among the dumbest literary commentaries I have ever read. Consider this:
As horrible company, Booth invokes Peter Benchley’s “Jaws,” which begins by preparing readers for a violent encounter between a woman who has recently “thrashed” with her boyfriend in “urgent ardor on the cold sand” and the “big fish,” the shark, moving “silently through the night water,” with eyes that are “sightless in the back” and “a small, primitive brain.”No one, while reading a novel, thinks of himself as keeping company with the novel's author. With the novel's narrator maybe, if there is one, or the various characters. (Even if the novel is autobiographical, most readers are savvy enough to know that the protagonist is a fictional rendering, not a non-fictional one. We keep company with Philip Carey, not Somerset Maugham, in Of Human Bondage.)
As for columnists, of course they adopt a voice, a persona. That's why you can parody them, because they employ a tone that you can, if you wish, caricature.
You don't think of the author while reading. You think of what the author is telling you. If he tells it well, you get caught up in it.
Something for Dave …
… a librarian sketch: Instapundit — “SNIDE UNIVERSITY?” “Or wherever it is you went.”…
Anti-religious kitsch …
… Feel-Bad Religion Books | The American Conservative. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
In 2012, a lapsed gay Irish Catholic writer publishes a novel in which the Virgin Mary is a hag pushed around by her dead son’s disciples, who mistakenly believe he was the Messiah. Ho-hum. Next!
Thought for the day …
Experience is a good school. But the fees are high.
— Heinrich Heine, born on this date in 1797
Gratuitous cruelty...
...V.S. Naipaul on the Arab Spring, Authors He Loathes, and the Books He will Never Write
Naipaul, who won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2001, is known for what one commentator described as a “terrifying honesty”—but not so much for his sensitivity. As his first wife, Patricia Hale, battled breast cancer, Naipaul left her alone for long periods, carrying out serious affairs with other women. When Hale was temporarily in remission, in 1994, Naipaul discussed his past visits to prostitutes in an interview with The New Yorker. “I think she had all the relapses after that,” he told his official biographer, Patrick French. “All the remission ended.” Of her death two years later, he added, “It could be said that I killed her. It could be said. I feel a little bit that way.” The day after the cremation, Naipaul invited Nadira, a Pakistani journalist, to move into the Wiltshire home he had shared with Hale.
“I must thank Nadira for bringing Augustus into my life,” Naipaul continues. He is visibly upset, and I ask when the cat passed away. “This last September,” he replies. It is October 1, and I offer a cliché about time healing all wounds. “No, no, the previous September 26th,” he explains, sounding deeply wounded. “A year ago. The terrible part of it is that people suggest to me that I get a new cat, that I invite this new cat into the home I shared with Augustus. As if this one should just be replaced so soon. It shows a lack of understanding.”
Wednesday, December 12, 2012
Tantalizing dance …
… Antifragile: Things That Gain from Disorder - The Barnes and Noble Review. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Oh, really …
… Maine’s Only Catholic College Removes Cross from Brand — Campus Notes. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
“This is about much more than a logo or a look,” said Brent Wooten, director of online marketing for Saint Joseph’s in the college’s magazine. “It’s about who we are.”
And who — or what — exactly might that be? Oh, I see, "The Saint Joseph’s brand will be a holistic concept about who we are and how we tell others who we are.” Whatever the hell that means. The best response to this sort of thing is merciless ridicule.
Celebratory volume …
… the power and the allegory - bookforum.com / current issue. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Well, this sounds right …
… The Wrong War Over eBooks: Publishers Vs. Libraries - Forbes. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
If I were heading off to college these days, I'd probably aim to be a librarian. Not sure I'd be any good at it, but it would be worth looking into.
If I were heading off to college these days, I'd probably aim to be a librarian. Not sure I'd be any good at it, but it would be worth looking into.
Enter now …
… Seal Press Publishing Contract: Contest Guidelines - She Writes. (Hat tip, J. Chovanes.)
Maybe …
… Free online news era on its way out - CNN.com. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)
Well, they may just find that people won't pay.
Well, they may just find that people won't pay.
A first …
… Lesbian Eloise Klein Healy Named LA's First Poet Laureate | The Bilerico Project. (Hat tip, Rus Bowden.)
Thought for the day …
Heroes, whatever high ideas we may have of them, are mortal and not divine. We are all as God made us and many of us much worse.
— John Osborne, born on this date in 1929
Tuesday, December 11, 2012
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