Chicago is going for them (competing with Los Angeles to be the U.S. nomination). Here's the latest, from the Chicago Tribune; and here's some renderings of what the facilities might look like. I think it would be fantastic for the city to get the Games. I, for one, would be thrilled to live in an Olympic city.
I'm for it if (and this is an important if) it is tied to mandatory health insurance, for all Americans. This article is a good one, talking about this issue. Interestingly, it makes the claim that it is only Republican governors (specifically Romney and Schwarzenegger) who are pushing expanded access to health care. Lots talk about it; these two follow through. Good for them.
This is the only way it could happen in Chicago, Illinois, USA, a football title won in the smashmouth mode of Butkus, Ditka and Payton with snow falling, mud in the cleats, fog shrouding the skyline and the upper deck swaying from the delirious bouncing of bodies. A scene considered cold and sloppy elsewhere qualifies as grunting, snorting, Norman Rockwell Americana here, with the city's love for the Bears never more palpable than after the clock ticked to 0:00.
''No one left the stadium,'' Brian Urlacher said. ''The fans all stayed.''
... At long last, a city clinging to all things 1985 can move on to another adventure in the bacchanalian bash. That would be a winnable Midwestern backyard barbecue against the Indianapolis Colts and Peyton Manning, whose shoulders no longer are burdened by a postseason gorilla. He will be the country's sentimental favorite, if also an overexposed pitchman. In the bigger picture of life, Smith will be joined by another African-American coach, close friend Tony Dungy, in a social triumph of major proportion. The Colts will be favored, if for no other reason than the AFC has been superior to the NFC. But seeing how the Bears continue to summarily hush their numerous critics and taunters, who's to say they won't have their way again with detractors who pick Indy?
Hard to underplay the social triumph, to use Mariotti's phrase, of two black head coaches in the Super Bowl. And many of my coworkers (at my ad agency) are wearing Bears hats. And, of course, looking ridiculous.
Twyla and I started our third class in the local Music Together program. The first two were good fun and Twyla liked the classes and teachers quite a bit. We started the first one when she was about 10 months old; even then you could tell she was really listening as us parents sang and danced around. In the second class, I saw a bit more active participation — some clapping, some dancing, more playing with the tambourine and other percussion instruments.
This new one is the first where she's fully walking (which she has been for about six weeks now, I guess). And her participation, and love of music, is really starting to show. I mean, Hannah and I have known she's a music lover, from our day to day being with Twyla and her constant requests for us to sing music (she knows the sign language sign for "music", which is damn cool). But, if my experience is any indication, what children exhibit publically is a rather microcosm of what they exhibit at home just with mama and papa. Which is part of what makes being a mama and papa so much fun. In any event, from the beginning of class yesterday, it was clear Twyla was engaged; she stood and danced much of the time, was clapping her hands (darn near close to keeping the regular beat, this one!) and even vocalized a bit, the kind of very early singing she does more and more.
The new class is occasion for me to read the 40-pg pamphlet given to me at the first class, last summer. It is called Music and Your Child: A guide for parents and caregivers, by Kenneth Guilmartin and Lili Levinowitz. I found a couple passages that caught my eye. Here's the first, about singing:
Most people have the natural and often unconscious tendency to sing to themselves at some point during the day, regardless of their musical ability. Often this singing replays music they heard earlier on the radio, or it is triggered by work, speech, or movement rhythms. Sometimes a person recalls a known song because it curcumstantially or emotionally fits the present events in his life.
In our culture, this kind of inner singing is a very private affair. Often it is not vocalized and takes place only in the mental process of audiation [md: the hearing of music internally without external source]. In general, we are much less likely than other cultures to spontaneously sing out loud.
Perhaps because we are used to the perfection of recorded performances, we have a tendancy to judge imperfect singing rather harshly. We then tend to turn this critical eye to our own singing efforts, causing many of us — even accomplished musicians — to prefer to remain silent in public.(p. 35)
In other words, so much recorded music around us is making us, not more, but less willing to sing. This plays into the second passage:
Not long ago, the musical family [md: where both adults and siblings engage in musical activities] was not as unusual in our culture. Most families were involved in creating music of one kind or another, because they could not consume it from recordings and the media, as we do today. The enriched learning environment generated by these families generally nurtured a higher music achievement in their children than exists in ours today. (p. 45)
Rather than active agents of music creation, we are passive agents of musical enjoyment. Of course, being both is important. But, I mean, this country used to have a piano is every house, as it were. The study of music is one of four subjects studied in the classical quadrivium (which comes after the trivium, developmentally). Everyday people making music — confidently singing, and perhaps also playing an instrument — especially just for fun, is one of the main signs that a culture is healthy, in my estimation. When a culture is healthy, it is one that fosters sustainability — which leads to the passing on of important knowledge from one generation to the next, far beyond mere consumption. Musical knowledge is one important kind. Are we able to pass on musical knowledge to our children? Are our families truly musical?
I'm not even sure I'm going to watch either of the two games, one in the NFC and AFC, respectively. Reason being that, honestly, if the Packers aren't playing, it is tough for me to find a reason to care. Plus, Sunday we are driving for the day up to Sheboygan, Wisc, to celebrate Hannah's grandmother's birthday (and, of course, Twyla's great-grandmother). We are bringing rolls.
So, with regard to football, I don't care a rip about the AFC, and never have. For me, football is an Upper Midwest sport where big, padded men get muddy on a wet field, or a snowy field, and things aren't particularly glamorous. That could be anywhere, if it rains; but, mythologically, that is the Upper Midwest in late fall, and into winter. Football's heyday ended with the 1960s. One watches today for glimpses of the kind of game football was. It isn't all that rare to see the old game emerge.
Thus the Green Bay Packers, with all their storied history and whatnot, provide enough material to keep this fan sustaineed. Mind you, my interest level in football is several orders lower now than it was in high school, and college, when I played quarterback on both levels. And after the Packers won the Super Bowl in 1995/96, I said, "well, they've won it in my lifetime, that's all I need." While I still follow them relatively closely, and watch whenever they are on in Chicago (pretty often), I am fine if they lose. Whereas, in my days of yore, it would have been heart-ache city.
I guess I'm supposed to hate the Chicago Bears. I did when I was younger (programmed to). But I don't, today. I don't really root for them, either. Unlike with me and the Cubs baseball squad, I won't be adopting the Bears as my team. But, since I had so much fun with the White Sox winning the World Series in 2005, going to the ticker-tape parade and whatnot, I say, Go Bears. Jay Mariotti has a nice column about some of the Bear storylines. And, yes, of course the Saints from New Orleans present a very compelling situation. I wouldn't mind if they win, either (and they just might, b/c the Bears have weaknesses).
But with the Bears, besides the fact that this town would go hysterically nuts if the Bears win the Super Bowl, you get a team that, still, after all these years of high-paced, West-Coast-style offenses on other teams, still play football basically the way it was played in the 1930s: the muddy-slog way. Defense first; and just run the ball, baby. There is a more than a little distinct beauty in that. And I'm a fan of that kind of football.
Writing in Time, Richard Brookheiser explores how candidate resume has mattered in the history of American presidents. The lead:
Barack Obama is the freshest face in the early lineup of presidential candidates. Is he too fresh? Would eight years in the Illinois state senate and four in the U.S. Senate qualify him for the Oval Office in 2008? American political history gives an answer: a resounding probably.
Jean Rivard, another POLYSEMY colleague, on political appeal and what drives voters. Kwote:
Obama is charismatic, and he can speak and he's smart. But George W. as we all know can't speak, his intelligence is questionable, and he still won. Why? Because he appealed to people's hearts and to their guts. All you political wonkers can wonk 'till the cows come home about real issues, experience, and so on, but when the basic populace go to the polls they will be voting from their hearts, and there's not one other contender out there who's even playing in the same league as Obama when it comes to that appeal.
Bill Harryman, my POLYSEMY colleague, as a nice post that discusses his own educational path, its successes and challenges, and how he's coming to believe in the Trivium (i.e. the developmental approach at the heart of classical education) as well as the kind of education offered by the University of Chicago's Basic Program for Liberal Education of Adults, in which, as many of you know, I'm a student. He writes, "Maybe, if nothing else, what I learned in college is that my education is up to me."
Human nature doesn't change. And why should it; we need the humor from its folly.
Waukesha - Like a scene from the movie "A Christmas Story," police had to free a boy who got his tongue stuck to a metal stop sign, Lt. William H. Graham said Wednesday.
Whether anyone uttered the infamous "triple-dog dare" that goaded the movie's Flick into sticking his tongue to a pole is unclear, but police said the boy was surrounded by a group of kids when his tongue froze to the sign in 9-degree weather. The group said the boy was "talking smart," Graham said.
Officer Daniel Baumann was the first to arrive at Carroll and Barstow streets at 7:24 p.m. Tuesday, but he had to wait for Officer Raymond Fuerstenberg to show up a short time later with a bottle of water. Baumann poured the water on the boy's tongue and on the sign and then the boy pulled his tongue away.
"He lost some skin from his tongue on the stop sign," Graham said.
In Al Gore's An Inconvenient Truth, the only facts and studies considered are those convenient to Gore's scare-them-green agenda. And in many instances, he distorts the evidence he cites. In fact, nearly every significant statement Gore makes regarding climate science and climate policy is either one sided, misleading, exaggerated, speculative, or wrong.
--Marlo Lewis, Jr., Senior Fellow, Competitive Enterprise Institute
A book, YouTubes, and Powerpoint demonstrations by Mr Lewis, if you click here.
Namely, a revival of it, in terms of the Trivium (of Grammar leading to Dialectic leading to Rhetoric, each of which show up below, which I'll bold, respectively), for the purposes of culvating more wisdom in this country. Classical Education, of course, has become one of the main themes that The Daily Goose explores (not to mention the POLYSEMY Bookshelf). So I'm glad to hear Murray considerable voice in support. Kosmic kwote:
The encouragement of wisdom requires a special kind of education. It requires first of all recognition of one's own intellectual limits and fallibilities--in a word, humility. This is perhaps the most conspicuously missing part of today's education of the gifted. Many high-IQ students, especially those who avoid serious science and math, go from kindergarten through an advanced degree without ever having a teacher who is dissatisfied with their best work and without ever taking a course that forces them to say to themselves, "I can't do this." Humility requires that the gifted learn what it feels like to hit an intellectual wall, just as all of their less talented peers do, and that can come only from a curriculum and pedagogy designed especially for them. That level of demand cannot fairly be imposed on a classroom that includes children who do not have the ability to respond. The gifted need to have some classes with each other not to be coddled, but because that is the only setting in which their feet can be held to the fire.
The encouragement of wisdom requires mastery of analytical building blocks. The gifted must assimilate the details of grammar and syntax and the details of logical fallacies not because they will need them to communicate in daily life, but because these are indispensable for precise thinking at an advanced level.
The encouragement of wisdom requires being steeped in the study of ethics, starting with Aristotle and Confucius. It is not enough that gifted children learn to be nice. They must know what it means to be good.
The encouragement of wisdom requires an advanced knowledge of history. Never has the aphorism about the fate of those who ignore history been more true.
All of the above are antithetical to the mindset that prevails in today's schools at every level. The gifted should not be taught to be nonjudgmental; they need to learn how to make accurate judgments. They should not be taught to be equally respectful of Aztecs and Greeks; they should focus on the best that has come before them, which will mean a light dose of Aztecs and a heavy one of Greeks. The primary purpose of their education should not be to let the little darlings express themselves, but to give them the tools and the intellectual discipline for expressing themselves as adults.
In short, I am calling for a revival of the classical definition of a liberal education, serving its classic purpose: to prepare an elite to do its duty.
And the best to prepare for the elite? Parents, of course.
It is helpful to note that another manner to conceive of the Trivium is Grammar as "Knowledge", Dialectic as "Understanding", and Rhetoric as "Wisdom".
My POLYSEMY colleague Bill Harryman linked to the discussion between Andrew Sullivan and Sam Harris on Bill's personal blog. I thought about doing the same, this morning, when I noticed it on Sullivan's blog. But since nothing thus far of Harris has impressed me in the slightest (no poetry, no drama, no soul), and Sullivan stopped impressing me about 1 1/2 years ago (to the point where I only read his blog to see what pandering and/or cheap point he'll attempt to make next), I was like, "meh".
All of atheism is intellectually dishonest. As I posted before, one can't criticize a religion without having been cultivated within it, in the sense of the influence of its moral sphere. Furthermore, humans are built on belief; and it is impossible not to have religious belief and be a human. Religious believers cannot prove there is God; atheists can't prove there isn't. And atheists are especially naive and arrogant when they criticize, in Harris' case, Christians, in such a profoundly simple-minded way, a point this post by Peter Robinson makes at The Corner:
Michael Novak writes, “I do wish our atheist brothers and sisters would learn a little more than they now know about the profound and thoughtful sorts of believers that surround them, by the millions.”
Me too. I’m always a little taken aback when someone attacks religion because life can prove painful and unjust or because prayers often go unanswered, as if believers simply hadn’t noticed. Praying in Gethsemane, for example, Jesus himself offers a petition that goes unanswered, asking to be spared the bitter cup of crucifixion. Pain? Injustice? Take a look at the Church calendar. The day after Christmas? The feast of St. Stephen, a blameless man executed by stoning. Two days after that? The feast of the Holy Innocents, the infant males whom Herod had slaughtered.
Pain, injustice, unanswered prayers—these are all difficult problems, obviously. But to suggest that Christianity has failed to grapple with them demonstrates ignorance of the scriptures, of Chrysostom, of Augustine, of Aquinas—of the whole body of Christian thought.
For Michael Novak's full post, by the way, click here. For a previous post of mine that deals with the condescension of atheists, click here.
I just watched an approximately 45-min long speech he gave last week at the Heritage Foundation. About demographics, Islamic terrorism, the threat towards Western Civilization, and the attitudes we in the West have about our Western heritage. I recommend it. Click here.
Who ever imagined, during the long terrible history of American race relations, that when the first black candidate made a serious bid for the presidency, the color of his skin would be regarded as close to an irrelevancy.
Close? I'd say for practical purposes, it is irrelevant. Which is another reason I'm glad he's running. As demonstration that MLK's prophecy, "I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character," has seen its fulfillment, and the "Great Society" band-aids can officially be removed.
Others, such as CJ Smith, have (to my mind) rightly cited Newt Gingrich (yes, him) as a man of good ideas for this country. He is politically creative, and, because of his embattled history, I think in a good position to offer innovative possibilities for the rest of the country to consider. Here are a couple that caught my eye, from a recent column of his (yes, there is some boilerplate in there, but I only care about the proposals he offers):
On National Security, the Economy and the Environment,
* Create a series of incentives and prizes to develop a hydrogen economy and return the Middle Eastern oil supply to being a petrochemical feedstock. A hydrogen economy would be better for America and our allies. A hydrogen economy would be better for the environment (no carbon loading of the atmosphere). A hydrogen economy would be better for the American economy because it would keep at home all the cash we are currently sending to Venezuela and the Middle East.
* While working to develop a hydrogen economy, there should also be an interim strategy to include incentives for conservation and for renewable fuels, including wind, solar and biofuels. It is better to send the money to American farmers than to send it to foreign dictators.
* Create a $1-billion prize for the first affordable car to get 500 miles per gallon of gasoline and be manufacturable at a price of $30,000 or less per car with reliability and performance comparable to a gasoline powered car. This car would probably combine an e-85 ethanol fuel with a hybrid motor using electricity (and allowing a plug-in to absorb the 40% of electricity production currently unused at night) with a composite construction modeled off the Boeing Dreamliners very light and very strong (much stronger than steel) composite.
* A second $2-billion prize should be offered for a car getting 1,000 miles to the gallon of gasoline.
On higher education:
* Why are textbooks so expensive when printing costs are dropping and specialized publishing on demand is very cheap? There should be a project to produce textbooks at market costs not monopoly costs.
* How much have higher education bureaucracies expanded since 1960 and how much has that added to the unnecessary increase in the cost of education? A new model of flattening the hierarchy and shrinking the bureaucracy should be aimed at lowering the cost of higher education dramatically.
The most fundamental difference between President Bush and his critics has not been in who has made mistakes, because both have. The biggest difference has been that the President has taken a long-run view of the worldwide war on terror, while his critics are seeking a quick fix.
Critics claim that there is no connection between the war on terror and the war in Iraq. They don’t seem to notice that the terrorists themselves obviously see a clear connection, which they express in both words and deeds.
Terrorists are pouring into Iraq, even at the cost of their lives, in order to prevent a free, democratic government from being established in the Middle East. They see victory or defeat in Iraq as having major and long-lasting repercussions throughout the region and even throughout the world.
Critics seem not to be concerned about anything beyond the 2008 elections.
Not having the long view of war is something I'm concerned about with a would-be President Obama.
The main take away is that Obama ought be taken seriously, which I agree with. His rise as a political force is as close to grass-roots as, I think, anything can be in this day and age. From the end of their editorial:
Critics scoff that Obama is too green to be a serious presidential contender, but he must be taken seriously, like it or not. Politically, the senator’s inexperience in Washington can serve to absolve him of responsibility for the current unpopular state of affairs. His liberal voting record in the Senate, along with his impassioned speech against the war in Iraq in 2002, will play well in his antiwar party’s primaries. It probably will force the once pro-war Hillary to conclude that she has to move farther left, thus reinforcing her image as an over-calculating politician (her latest Iraq trip can be thought of as her “find an excuse to get more left on the war” tour).
Meanwhile, Obama’s brief record will provide fewer targets for the GOP than were available with the long-serving Kerry. And should Obama’s lack of any executive experience prove troubling to voters, he will no doubt argue that the current chief executive’s background in business and a governor’s mansion didn’t ensure success in the White House.
Senator Obama has yet to prove he can take a political punch, and, inevitably, he will experience a serious media downdraft at some point. These perilous times certainly call for a more experienced politician than Obama, and his utterly orthodox liberalism — whatever the seductions of its disarming presentation — is not the answer to the nation’s challenges. But voters have turned once before to a newcomer with thin experience in the midst of a dangerous international environment. His name was Jimmy Carter.
I actually think that, for the purposes of the country changing gears fundamentally, towards something of the vision presented by Charles Murray in In Our Hands — the end of personal and corporate entitlements, an up-to $10,000 grant to every American 21 years or older, the inevitable return to the very-American dynamic of spontaneous civic associations to help people (rather than bureaucratic government) — that Obama might be as good as my other favored candidate, Mitt Romney. I believe that because one of Obama's main issues is "affordability"; the lack of it for regular folks leading regular lives that are just too expensive (for health insurance, mortgages, etc.). Of course, it is next to impossible to know how Obama would be as commander-in-chief, running a war. This is yet to be revealed by him. I wonder when it will.
Just see his website — he's formed a "presidential exploratory committee". I'm glad, because I think he inspires a lot of people.
And he's on Oprah tomorrow; will he fulfill his seeming promise to her that his first announcement would be on her show?
UPDATE: Apparently, he's going to announce Feb 10, after giving his exploratory committee time to, well, explore. Which might include announcing he's not going to run. I would be very, very surprised if he doesn't. Besides, it would kill my Romney vs Obama prediction, which I think would, overall, be the race with the best two candidates for President.
UPDATE II: Looks like announcing on Oprah is a no-go. Rather, from the same place Abraham Lincoln worked, Springfield, IL:
SPRINGFIELD, Ill. (AP) -- Barack Obama plans to formally launch his campaign for president in Springfield, the city where Abraham Lincoln lived and worked before being elected the nation's 16th president.
Jesu, laß dich finden, Laß doch meine Sünden Keine dicke Wolken sein, Wo du dich zum Schrecken Willst für mich verstecken, Stelle dich bald wieder ein!
Jesus, let me find You, let my sins be not thick clouds behind which, to my terror, You would hide from me; appear again soon to me!
I'm going to start a new regular feature of The Daily Goose. As I've spent the last six months rediscovering my love for Bach, especially in the context of my troubled relationship with the Lutheran Church, I've also been giving a closer examination to the scriptural poetry that Bach set to his Cantatas. Obviously it is better to hear the full musical setting, where the lyrics are dramatized amidst Bach's brilliant constructions. In lieu of that, certainly giving close examination to the lyrics themselves provides, if not the fullest experience, certainly something worth the moment of contemplation.
To do this for real, we would all need to know German. Since we don't (though someone buried in the mind of this six-year German language veteran is fantastic fluency), I'll put the German next to the English translation. The manner by which I chose what passage to post is partly chosen for me, since Bach's Cantatas align with the Christian calendar. But even that is a good sized bit of words, so I'll excerpt from a particular cantata from the particular week of the Christian calendar at the time of posting.
Overall, I'm interested in the most enlightened manner of contemplation of Christian scripture possible. The more allegorical, or, in a sense, "universally psychological", reading available. For me, "God" is a force of the Kosmos (internal and external nature) that operates as invisible social force that, because it is so ephemeral, and so true, it is like the sun, or Medusa: it cannot be looked at straight. Thus God is depersonalized nature. It is the spirit of humans. The Holy Ghost left artifacted in sacred words, sacred music, and sacred ritual.
This interesting Chicago Tribune article draws parallels between the two figures. A stretch in placecs, but still, a good article. Here's a teaser:
"When I think about great presidents," [Obama] said, "I think about those who transform how we think about ourselves as a country in fundamental ways so that, at the end of their tenure, we have looked and said to ourselves, that's who we are. And ... you know, there are circumstances in which I would argue Ronald Reagan was a very successful president."
While confessing disagreement with Reagan on many issues, Obama observed that when Reagan left the White House, "People, I think, said, `You know what? We can regain our greatness. Individual responsibility and personal responsibility are important.'"
Reagan said a lot more inspiring things than those, but, still, this is a start.
BTW, because Obama is making his campaign HQ the small town of Chicago, I'll be posting a lot about him, insider-y things, grapevine chatter, and whatnot. Interestingly, he's not the person I believe I'm going to vote for, unless he convinces me otherwise.
Today, Boneless Wonders sit on the benches of both parties in Congress. More are to be found on the Democratic side of the aisle than the Republican. But the herd of Boneless Wonders these days is a bipartisan one. Let's see if we can describe their thinking.
Say you're an average congressman. How do you react to President Bush's Iraq speech? You suspect, deep down, that he's probably doing more or less what he needs to do. We can't just click our heels and get out of Iraq--the consequences would be disastrous. And the current strategy isn't working. You have said so yourself. Last fall you called for replacing Rumsfeld. You've complained that there weren't enough troops. What's more, you've heard good things about General David Petraeus from colleagues with military expertise. So now Bush has fired Rumsfeld, put Petraeus in command, and sent in more troops. Maybe this new approach deserves a chance to work?
But, hey . . . look at those polls! And those op-ed pages! You didn't come to Washington to support an unpopular president conducting an unpopular war. And the Bush administration is doing a crummy job of explaining this change in strategy. The path ahead in any case is going to be tough, and the new strategy might fail. Besides which, being for "escalation" sure doesn't sound good. Wasn't that a problem in Vietnam?
So you work on your talking points: You understand the president has a tough set of choices. You've got doubts about the path he's chosen. You've got lots of questions. But perhaps we should give it a chance . . .
But wait--that doesn't sound like leadership. That doesn't look decisive. And, if you're a Democrat--you didn't put in all that effort getting elected just so you could get a lot of grief from your own activists. If you're a Republican from a Democratic-leaning state--you didn't put in all those hours getting elected just so you could alienate the swing voters you need. So why not take the next step? Condemn the president's approach! There. That's a position.
One is tempted to cite the current "media age", in a McLuhan sense, for the awfulness of politicians of the last decade. Saying things based upon its chances for media play.
Such as this, from Barack Obama (perhaps the dumbest thing I've heard him yet say):"We're not going to babysit a civil war." As Kristol writes, "To serious people that sounds juvenile. To most of his colleagues, it's a good soundbite."
But then you look at politicians of yore, such as during Lincoln's time, and you see enough examples of spinelessness then, as well. No, the issue is deeper than the media age. Too often, I just think shallow people run for office. And, in truth, the populace doesn't expect enough from our leaders. The two work hand in hand.
It is truly is a miracle when a politician people trust to think for him or herself, and not by holding a finger to the political winds, is elected, and it is a double-miracle when that politicians is able to be re-elected. But this is true about the media age: it is very hard to see through mass-media, all the commentary, when a politician of that kind does emerge. It is a kind of act of faith to believe one's own intuitions in that situation. Not to mention an act of courage to discuss this politician with others, who have already decided a person is wrong-headed, stupid, evil, or whatnot.
Finding the genuine in politicians is a difficult as hearing clear music when listening to fuzzy jazz records recorded in the 1920s. Amazing, isn't it, given our hi-fi life of today, that this seems true. Through radio and then television and then the internet, we sit with our leaders in their office, a yard away during their speeches, on the plane with them as they campaign. But are we any closer to understanding them, in their hearts? Yet does that stop millions from thinking they are, anyway?
The new international icon for "breast-feeding friendly", for airports, parks, and such. As suggested by Mothering Magazine, one of the best magazines going, period.
I'm still not sure what to make of it, as I indicated in a previous post. But nonetheless, I'm keeping tabs on what is currently a rather notable squabble between one of the leading conservative radio hosts, Michael Medved, and the author/researcher Jerome Corsi. Here's the latest volley, from Corsi, and it includes lots of links to other volleys.
As an example, passages like this raise my eyebrows that an EU-style Union between the USA, Canada, and Mexico might be on the minds of important people:
As early as July 2, 2001, Robert L. Bartley, then-editor of the Wall Street Journal, directly supported the idea of creating a North American Union in no uncertain terms, writing an editorial titled, “Open Nafta Borders? Why Not.” Bartley wrote:
Reformist Mexican President Vincente Fox raises eyebrows with his suggestion that over a decade or two Nafta should evolve into something like the European Union, with open borders for not only goods and investment but also people. He can rest assured that there is one voice north of the Rio Grand that supports his vision. To wit, this newspaper.
Michael Medved wrote, “If the plans for a North American Union are coming from forces on the left as marginal as the fringies on the right who worry about such schemes, then there is, indeed, no reason for fear.” Perhaps Medved will want to revise this claim in view of the Wall Street Journal quotation his evidently deficient research failed to uncover.
Like, not an unimportant fact to have the WSJ writing favorably about a NAU!
The other notable part of this story is that Corsi discusses the stealth tactics by people in Europe to incrementally bring about the EU, through a series of comparatively small agreements between European countries. So small that they went largely unnoticed by the various peoples of Europe; yet important enough to eventually make the European Union an inevitability. Thus, what Corsi is doing, to my mind, is best characterized thusly: a dilligent monitor, informed by the history of EU, who is ready to fight should it become apparent that an NAU ever enters the horizon. In that, I'm with him. Of course, I hope he's wrong; I'm sure he hopes the same, as well.
In forthrightly acknowledging the failures of his prior Iraq policy and working to change them, Bush has done the right and courageous thing. Now it is a matter of following through. We wish him well, as should all patriotic Americans.
...at exactly the time the world has become more complex, the wired global audience is more impatient, demanding — and inconsistent.
When the Bush administration invaded Iraq in March 2003, it was accused of ignoring old allies and snubbing the U.N. Thus, in the next crisis, a wary United States waited on the U.N. to monitor Iran's nuclear delinquency. With multilateral deference, it also called upon Britain, France and Germany — the so-called EU3 — to reason with Tehran. But for all the inclusive diplomacy, Iran barrels ahead with its nuclear program. In another part world, as North Korea threatened to launch more missiles, America tried to find regional solutions — the so-called six-party talks involving China, Japan, North Korea, South Korea, Russia and the United States. But nothing much happened here, either, and impatient critics did an about-face: They screamed that the asleep-at-the-wheel Bush administration was "outsourcing" solutions and abdicating its responsibility to lead.
And then the kosmic kwote:
It may be hard for the world's new impatient generation to accept the truth: There are no simple black-and-white solutions at little cost in today's technologically connected but politically fragmented world. Restless Americans and a demanding global public are going to have to accept that in Afghanistan, Darfur, Lebanon, Iran, Iraq, North Korea, Somalia and the West Bank, the United States itself —not just the bogeyman George Bush — has only bad and far worse choices.
What sometimes works against jihadists and tyrants in one place won't always in others. Unilateral, multilateral, react or preempt — these have no innate moral value but are just differing strategies for a baffling multitude of new problems that all defy a cookie-cutter approach. After 9/11, caution in the long run may prove deadlier than intervention has in the short term. People will die daily on CNN no matter what we do.
It is one of the most forgotten aspects of the American character. We don't realize the extent that American formed voluntary associations, especially before the New Deal and the Great Society intrusions of federal government into activities that used to be done by civic and religious organizations. For background, Alexis de Tocqueville, writing in 1835:
[Americans are] forever forming associations. There are not only commercial and industrial associations in which all take part, but others of a thousand different types—religious, moral, serious, futile, very general and very limited, immensely large and very minute. Nothing, in my view, deserves more attention than the intellectual and moral associations in America.
The problem with the progressive/left version of the role of government — that of it providing far more than the "public goods" — is that, as Charles Murray writes in In Our Hands, the take-responsibility and do-it-yourself ethos of the American character (the ethos that leads to forming associations) erodes over time, as a natural response to an increased government; as Murray shows, Americans still form associations, but at a far diminished rate than they used to. The reason is the State attempts to perform and manage aspects of American life (education, remedying poverty, giving of loans, and so much more) that used to be handled by associations. Many of the newly formed associations today are lobby groups, to persuade the federal government to do this or that; thus, not attempting to give back responsibilities to the citizens.
An oversized State fosters the attitude that "if I pay my taxes, that is enough!" In other words, someone else will handle dealing with various problems. That someone else is a bureauracy of some kind — an agency, department of government, of federal oversight group. And it fosters a malaise in the citizenry, the kind we see today (made of cynicism, slacker culture, lessened entrepreneurialism, and lack of desire to have a rigorous education).
We have to find a way to shrink the size of government, for doing so returns responsibilities to the citizens, which is precisely the injunction America was founded upon. For Charles Murray (who's In Our Hands I hold to be prophetic), the change will come when two conditions are fulfilled: 1) There is a common consensus that government performs most tasks incompetently; and 2) the costs of this bloated government become so daunting that we will be scared into a positive change. My guess is the year 2010, when fundamental reordering of government will be politically popular, and economically necessary.
Obama is expected to announce formation of his presidential committee this week and is regarded by Clinton supporters as their big threat. But Edwards's populist campaign is coming up fast with potential backing from organized labor.
DETROIT -- The University of Michigan announced Wednesday that it will comply with a new voter-approved ban on affirmative action and immediately stop considering race and gender in admissions.
"I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character." — MLK, Jr.
So it's not like, you know, morality isn't on the side of ending preferences.
But, look here, at the University of Michigan's explanation to its faculty of what it's doing. This part in particular:
The University of Michigan is a national leader in diversity and we remain fully committed to building a campus made up of individuals of varied backgrounds and perspectives.
The fallacy with this formulation is the "diversity" is related to "varied backgrounds". While there are lots of kinds of diversity (including, obviously, diverse skin colors), is that really the kind of diversity relevent to a university? Some may think so, but I think not (and, apparently, so do the citizens of Michigan). Rather, the kind of diversity the university ought be concerned with is a diversity of ideas. Students talking about different things, challenging each other's mind, seeking the truth of the matter at hand through rigorous thought, and good faith jousting.
The inclusion of "varied ... perspectives" is a bit better, perhaps. But that, too, seems more than a little off. A truly liberal education (literally, an "education that frees") insists that every student, for him or herself, employ various perspectives in their thinking. People aren't perspectives; within people's minds are perspectives. So, by definition, "building a campus made up of individuals of varied ... perspectives" is redundant. All it means, ulimately, is to build a campus made of individuals; which is bloody obvious. This whole notion of non-intellectual diversity as somehow relevent to university learning is muddle-headed.
Thus my essential conclusion: The efforts to end real discrimination in the early- to mid-20th century have run their course, past the point of diminishing returns. I'm not questioning people's intentions. I have no doubt people in the position to make such decisions are well-meaning, trying to help the world as best they can. But today, the best help is to remove discriminatory practices in admissions; or, in a phrase, the best help is no help at all.
So, I am grateful that the University of Michigan (spurred by the citizens of the State of Michigan) has decided to forego racial discrimination in their admissions policies. But there is more work to be done, more battle to fight, for the true soul, the beating heart, of what every university in America ought be about: a liberal education.
Will it succeed? I don't know and neither do you and neither does anybody else. But it is this country's last, best, and only hope of prevailing in Iraq.
How true is that second sentence! Continuing...
And the fact that it has been designed thoughtfully, carefully and over a period of more than two months - including the systematic replacement of the entire team that devised the previous unsuccessful strategy with a new team committed to victory - demonstrates the president and his team aren't just putting lipstick on a pig.
What has happened in the past two months in Washington is really without modern precedent: An overconfident president, assured and comforted by his military leaders that they had the only workable strategy for the war they were waging, found himself brought up short by the facts on the battleground and by the dramatic change in the political landscape at home.
He was left with only a few options.
He could have kept going as he had been, which would have been delusional.
He could have given in to the general despair in Washington and sought a quick exit from Iraq, which would have dishonorable.
Or he could have insisted on a gigantic new commitment of forces to the Iraqi theater, which would either have been unattainable or unsustainable.
What he has done, instead, is to devise and present a practical and workable plan - a plan to reduce violence, enhance security and simultaneously fight more aggressively and bring the Iraqi forces to fight more aggressively as well.
Talking about the claim, by current atheists, that they are moral, virtuous, and exemplary without the need for God and religion — this passage, by Carol Ianonne, is quite wise:
...we would need about two millennia of purely atheistic culture in order to learn for certain whether human beings on their own would generate what we today consider moral behavior. Without that, we are perfectly justified in concluding, not scientifically of course, but in a common sensicalway, that the saintly behavior of today's atheists comes from their having absorbed the morality that mankind has developed through centuries of religious belief and that is part of the cultural oxygen we all breathe. As C.S. Lewis says, if you are challenging the Tao, or the idea of a transcendent moral law, it's because you have been cultivated within it. Someone outside of it could not even have the wherewithal to challenge it.
In other words, this is analoguous to trust-funders — those people who live off the money earned by others. As such, the notion is the atheists live off the moral capital, so to speak, earned by their forebearers. They have "absorbed the morality that mankind has developed through centuries of religious belief". The fruits of religious contemplation of others operate within the morality of atheists whether they like it (or are aware of it) or not. And, thus, while atheists think moral education, through God and religion, is not needed, in fact it is. Over time, insights are forgotten; fruits go bad.
This notion of "trustfunders" I think also applies to a different realm, that of education. While to explain this fully would require more time than I have now, here's the basic premise. Hundreds of years of classical education (in the liberal arts of the trivium and quadrivium) created an enormous investment in learning, which we still benefit from today. But the bank of knowledge needs constant replenishment, and the watered-down deracinated public school approach (with its age-indexed progression, environment of social pressure, loss of focus on the basic tools of learning, etc.) does not serve the classical ideal of erudition, individual curiosity, and rigorous training. Thus, a culture that does not invest their efforts to learn classically, the culture becomes populated by trustfunders, following the analogy.
And because the "capital" (beit knowledge, morality) is finite, it must be renewed, every generation, by people facing down unfavorable conditions and doing the work (of learning, of religious contemplation). Else we see a slow but steady diminishing of the precious fruits of both, held in common culture, because the classical manner is ignored, short-circuited, diminished, or forgotten.
That's the skinny. More, I'm sure, at some point. Given that this notion has been in my head for a while, it is nice to just get it out. It is a fundamental reason why home-education, using a classical template, has become a choice for Hannah and I, for our daughter.
So where does that leave us? All eyes now turn to Baghdad and Sadr City and our courageous Americans fighting in them. If they are allowed to rout the terrorists, all will trumpet their victory; if we fail, President Bush alone will take the blame.
In other words, as in all wars, the pulse of the battlefield will determine the ensuing politics. So let’s win in pursuit of victory, and everything else will sort itself out.
I really like the "pulse of the battlefield" part. I'm struck by how difficult it must be to ascertain that pulse, especially when, back home, the pulse of media-age politics (with all its punditry, second-guessing, back-seat driving, pop-political rhetoric, and people who think they understand war, not to mention military strategy, but don't) beats seemingly so much clearer.
I like this term. Writing in The New Criterion, Andrew McCarthy explains what it means:
It is no secret that this internationalist movement is composed of nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), officials of the United Nations and other international organizations; multinational corporations; and ideologically compatible officials and bureaucrats operating within nation states. Nor is there anything novel in the observation that international law is its hammer-and-chisel for sculpting a post-sovereign nirvana, through the efforts of lawyers, judges, and law professors in the movement's vanguard.
What is new, however, is that transnational progressivism has become not merely a prominent jurisprudential current but, in fact, the dominant ideology of American and British courts. With the potent combination of a seismic shift in public attitudes away from democratic self-determination and toward oligarchic juristocracy (or rule by courts), as well as a sweeping infrastructure of so-called "international human rights law," this movement is now poised to realize much of its goal: A world in which the nation state, the organizing geopolitical paradigm and engine of human progress since the Treaty of Westphalia, substantially gives way to a post-sovereign order of global governance led by supra-national tribunals (or tribunals that, though nominally "national," pledge fealty to the higher calling of "humanity"). Like other utopian projects, the end of this one is tyranny.
From what I can tell, the basic give-away of a trans-national progressive is the use of the term "international law" without derision.
(Since, of course, there is no such thing as "international law", because the countries of the world are the top-rung of the jurisdiction heirarchy, and no "uber-country" beyond that exists to enforce anything "trans-national". Views otherwise are nonsense.)
I mentioned a while back that I was doing a film score for Ben Rogerson (close friend, Twyla's godfather, fantastic filmmaker and film editor). His film that I've been scoring is a 10-minute short, called Blue Highways. It is a kind of personal narrative, about him going to America's last frontier (Alaska) both as a teenager and as an adult. It is a very cool film, already accepted to a film festival, as it happens.
I have a couple finishing touches to apply to the score, but the bulk of the work appears done. And it's been work (although, of course, of the entirely good kind). Film scoring of the kind I do is uses traditional tonal composition (i.e., the Western tradition). The task is four-fold: first, figure out the overall mood or moods; second, figure out the timings (what moments of the film to bring out, called "spotting"); third, what sort of orchestration (what instruments to use); fourth, given those parameters/constraints, compose something bad-ass.
The particular challenge of this film was that it uses a substantial amount of voice-over, and the images (both original footage as well as archival/found footage) change pretty rapidly. The film is in three parts, each with its own mood; and overall, Ben and I talked from the beginning of the music working with the imagery and narration to create an overall arc. Mixed together are memories, recollections, hopes, dreams, and moments of profound acceptance. So this wasn't scoring a car chase scene through the streets of Queens. (Although, that would be fun, too.)
This project has been rewarding on many levels; one in particular that while Ben has wisely given me deadlines along the way (I should say I've missed a couple, particularly once the Thanksgiving/Christmas season began and things got hectic), he has been very understanding and encouraging of my desire to incubate on the appropriate music for the film, to really get to know the film as a friend, and to allow what strikes me as the "natural choices" for music emerge. This all takes time, which some films and filmmakers don't have, because the project has to be done quick, for whatever reason. In fact, I'm about to start work on a score that I have to complete in about six days, and I only got onboard with the project in late December. So, process-wise, this new film is the antithesis of that for Blue Highways. Which is probably good, just to mix things up.
After that, I'll start work on the full score for Hannah's film, Small Comforts. While she shot the live-action last fall, and at this point has a "rough cut" of that footage, still to be shot are the five sequences of stop-motion animation, which will populate the film for the purposes of flashbacks, to tell the back story of 10-yr old Moira, and her mother Gwen (how they lost their father/husband, and their house). That score will be completely different than anything I've thus far attempted. Right now, I'm thinking a 6-10 piece chamber ensemble, featuring a clarinet perhaps in many moments, for music that has a playful, fantastic feel with a dark, even chaotic, underbelly mixed in.
What film scoring requires (at least the kind I'm interested in, and have been trained for) is a collaboration between composer and director whereby the heart of the film, its most profound pulse, is found, and then the music is created so as to enhance the blood flow (of drama, of emotions, of action, of characters' interiors) in both direct and subtle ways. But finding that heart is key, because that is what gives life, to the film of course, but also to the music. It can be returned to, to generate musical ideas which a good score elaborates and develops. In a manner by which a unitive experience for the audience is fashioned, between image and sound and the requirements of the human being.
The New York Post recently compiled a list of the things that the New York City Council tried to ban — not all successfully — just in 2006 alone: pit bulls; trans-fats; aluminum baseball bats; the purchase of tobacco by 18- to 20-year-olds; foie gras; pedicabs in parks; new fast-food restaurants (but only in poor neighborhoods); lobbyists from the floor of council chambers; lobbying city agencies after working at the same agency; vehicles in Central and Prospect parks; cell phones in upscale restaurants; the sale of pork products made in a processing plant in Tar Heel, N.C., because of a unionization dispute; mail-order pharmaceutical plans; candy-flavored cigarettes; gas-station operators adjusting prices more than once daily; Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus; Wal-Mart.
On Jan. 2 here in Washington, D.C., the city council’s smoking ban was extended to bars and nightclubs. Even private clubs, where members must pay through the teeth to associate voluntarily, are forbidden to allow smoking on their own property. In some states, you can't smoke in your car if young children are present — your own children that is. In California, outdoor smoking bans are all the rage. In 2005, a Pennsylvania legislator received national attention for his effort to mandate that all dogs must wear seatbelts in cars. He got the idea from the winner of his annual "There Ought to Be a Law" contest, a busybody kid who thought it was hypocritical that canines be exempt from mandatory seat-belt laws. My daughter seems well on track to spend her entire childhood in a world where eating a peanut product would be as unthinkable as lighting up a stogie.
In Democracy in America, Alexis de Tocqueville warns: "It must not be forgotten that it is especially dangerous to enslave men in the minor details of life. For my own part, I should be inclined to think freedom less necessary in great things than in little ones. ..."
"Subjection in minor affairs breaks out every day and is felt by the whole community indiscriminately," he continued. "It does not drive men to resistance, but it crosses them at every turn, till they are led to surrender the exercise of their own will." He goes on to note that in the "great things," the burden of (temporarily) lost freedom must inevitably fall "upon a small number of men." For example, in war we understand that some men (and now women) surrender the bulk of their liberties to protect the liberties of everybody else.
This is a typically penetrating insight, and one with new relevance these days. This country seems to have inverted de Tocqueville's hierarchy. On countless fronts, the natural pastures of daily liberty have become circumscribed by dull-witted but well-meaning bureaucrats slapping down the paving stones of good intentions on the road to hell.
In the timeless battle between individual liberty and the State, it is just amazing to me how many Americans, when push comes to shove, wittingly or not, side with the latter.
... over my morning tea and a slice of cranberry orange bread (my late grandmother's recipe) and I'm seeing what's new at Andrew Sullivan's blog. This blog, I might add, fills me with constant dismay. I have read it closely for five years; it used to be that I positively admired it, but today my admiration is negative, and has been for about two years. I still read it, in part, on the unlikely hope that his will return to the days where the blog isn't to shill a book through shallow insinuations, sneering, weasling, and cheap rhetoric. In lieu of that ever happening, my admiration for his blog is "negative"; as in, valuable reminders about what not to do as a writer. He provides those on a, ehem, daily basis.
Anyway, that little set up is just sidebar for why I'm blogging now. Sullivan, in typical making a cheap mountain out of a molehill, has taken to criticize a painter, for the purposes of supposed illustration of "Christianism", a term important Sullivan's larger agenda. (See here.) Well, this painter's work is not my cup of tea, but because I have such lack of faith in Sullivan's conclusions (in fact, going as far on not a few occasions of assuming that the opposite of whatever Sullivan is saying is closer to truths than his clap-trap), I clicked on the link from Sullivan's blog to check out more of this painter's work. His name is Ron DiCianni.
While I'm impressed by the output of Mr DiCianni, not to mention his sincerity, again, his work is not my cup of tea.
But, this one, I like:
It is called "Always". The painting makes me cry. I look at the space between the embrace in the mirror and in front of the mirror; it is a pregnant opera about being a father, what commitment means and what it can lead to, and about the residue precious moments leave on family, and on a home.
If you like, you can read more about the work, here. (Although, it is an example of a distasteful larger trend in art, that of "artist statements".)
Jean Rivard, one of my POLYSEMY colleagues, and who works at a library, has some good insider commentary on the question, "What are libraries for?", on which I crafted a blog entry, here. One kwote among many:
Luckily I work in a system that has, so far, been able to strike a compromise between the "old" library and "new" library model. Our large downtown branch has been designated as the keeper of the classics, as well as where our local history and research departments are located. In addition our downtown branch serves as a location for hosting author speaking events, musical events, art exhibits, and movie screenings - this last fall we presented a wonderful Hitchcock retrospective over a number of weeks, and typically all of these sorts of events are completely free to the public, and usually well attended. These, it seems to me, are wonderful examples of how libraries
