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December 27, 2005
Viciousness
What are we to make of scenes from the eighth-century in Fallujah? Random murder, mutilation of the dead, dismemberment, televised gore, and pride in stringing up the charred corpses of those who sought to bring food to the hungry? Perhaps we can shrug and say all this is the wage of Saddam Hussein and the thirty years of brutality of his Baathists that institutionalized such barbarity? Or was the carnage the dying scream of Baathist hold-outs intent on shocking the Western world at home watching it live? We could speculate for hours.Yet I fear that we have not seen anything new. Flip through the newspaper and the stories are as depressing as they are monotonous: bombs in Spain; fiery clerics promising death in England, even as explosive devices are uncovered in France. In-between accounts of bombings in Iraq, we get the normal murdering in Israel, and daily assassination in Pakistan, Turkey, Morocco, and Chechnya. Murder, dismemberment, torture—these all seem to be the acceptable tools of Islamic fundamentalism and condoned as part of justifiable Middle East rage. Sheik Yassin is called a poor crippled "holy man" who ordered the deaths of hundreds, as revered in the Arab World for his mass murder as Jerry Falwell is condemned in the West for his occasional slipshod slur about Muslims.
Yet the hourly killing is perhaps not merely the wages of autocracy, but part of a larger grotesquery of Islamic fundamentalism on display. The Taliban strung up infidels from construction cranes and watched, like Romans of old, gory stoning and decapitations in soccer stadiums built with UN largess. In the last two years, Palestinian mobs have torn apart Israeli soldiers, lynched their own, wired children with suicide bombing vests, and machine-gunned down women and children—between sickening scenes of smearing themselves with the blood of "martyrs." Very few Arab intellectuals or holy men have condemned such viciousness.
"The Mirror of Fallujah: No More Passes and Excuses for the Middle East," by Victor Davis Hansen, Jewish World Review, April 4, 2004
Posted at 10:38 PM · Comments (0) · TrackBack (0) · Categories: Nihilism , Terrorism
December 26, 2005
Once they outlaw Claritin, only outlaws will have Claritin
My mom's no meth producer (as far as I know). But she does like to take a daily decongestant to clear her sinuses. According to her, before Tennessee enacted the legislation, she was able to buy unlimited amounts of Claritin D over the counter. Now, she can only buy it from the pharmacist himself, and she has to show ID. And she can only get a 10-day supply at a time.After learning about this a couple months ago, I decided that a supply of decongestants would make a great (if not very traditional) holiday gift. So last Friday, I found myself in the security line at Reagan National Airport, my bag stuffed with several boxes of "contraband." I tried to appear nonchalant, but I was sweating at the possibility that a security agent might rifle through my carry-on and discover the stash. Somehow I thought "They're for my mom" wouldn't make a very convincing excuse.
"The 'D' Is For 'Desperado'," by Zach Patton, 13th Floor, December 26, 2005
Posted at 07:57 AM · Comments (0) · TrackBack (0) · Categories: Humor
December 21, 2005
Astrology = Bullshit
MetaFilter has a thread on "Is there any basis to astrology?"
We agree with this comment by edgeways:
? How can one associate personality traits with the position of bits of rock millions of miles away? Much astrology even uses star charts that are thousands of years out of date. If I read that mars effect article correct it says sports legends are more likely to be born in one half of the year then another? If you look enough you will find statistical anomalies everywhere. To try and ascribe meaning to them beyond that they exist requires more evidence then simply pointing to them as proof after the fact.The article also notes that he could find no other proof that astrology is effective. Astrology is, in my opinion, the flakiest hokum out there.
we think "flakiest hokum" is a charitable description ...
Posted at 07:13 AM · Comments (0) · Categories: Humor
Remembering Dad, and being Dad
We also had a Dance Recital at the neighborhood community center; like the church concert, it’s one of those events that defines a community, and is completely off your radar if you don’t have kids. Ever see those pictures of how insects perceive flowers, how they see structures and colors we don’t? That’s what having kids does to you. Or, to put in other terms, it’s like finding yourself in another country and discovering the community of people who speak your language and eat your foods. You become aware of a world that lives side by side with the one you knew, and you fall into it without effort or complaint. There’s a vast difference between remembering Dad coming to your recital and being Dad at the recital. The first is a memory that dead-ends with you; the latter connects you to him and to all the kids and dads to come.
The Christmas Bleat, 2003, by James Lileks, Dec. 22, 2003
Posted at 07:12 AM · Comments (0) · TrackBack (0) · Categories: Children
December 18, 2005
Islamofascism
Despite their rhetoric of annihilation and the glories of death, the leadership of al Qaeda and other Islamofascist groups seem to have little stomach for actually partaking of such glories. This is hardly surprising. Their agenda involves remaking the world to suit their desires, and as such they naturally want to enjoy the fruits of their labor.
"Unfortunate Rendition," by Andrew Olmstead, December 5, 2005
Posted at 11:05 PM · Comments (0) · Categories: Nihilism
December 16, 2005
Pajamas Media/Open Source Media/Open Sores Media/Flannels Media/whatever it's called
The Commissar has just launched "capitalist" Flannels Media (FLM), destined to be like … well .. one of the most important blog things ever, in the history of the planet.As one of the few "chosen" blogs, I'm pleased to host the first in what may be a continuing series of "Flogjams" - stream of consciousness "rap sessions" in which experts, media professionals and bloggers enter a "virtual room" to hash out the "issues" of the "day".
"Flannels Media: Flogjam #1," WuzzaDem.com, November 29, 2005
Posted at 07:04 AM · Comments (0) · Categories: Humor
December 11, 2005
Teen fiction
She was wont to proffer eccentric advice to readers such as not to buy "teen fiction" for their children: "They are narcissistic enough and should be encouraged to snap out of it. Make them read Crime and Punishment and dock their pocket money if you catch them reading tripe."
Alice Thomas Ellis, novelist; born September 9, 1932, died March 8, 2005, The Herald (Glasgow, Scotland), March 11, 2005
Posted at 08:04 PM · Comments (0) · TrackBack (0) · Categories: Children
December 10, 2005
Free speech in Britain
So voicing concern about gay adoption now gets the police to finger your collar. Expressing the ‘wrong’ opinion is no longer considered acceptable by the state, which has decided what views are acceptable and what are not. Is this not the definition of a police state? And are the views of Lynette Burrows not shared by many, if not most, of the population? And how does this sit with all the harrumphing over the Terrorism Bill provision to outlaw material which glorifies terrorism, which is being ferociously opposed on the basis that we must never ever surrender freedom of speech, the principle at the very heart of our democracy?
"A free country?" melaniephillips.com, December 10, 2005
Posted at 09:42 AM · Comments (0) · Categories: Stupidity
December 09, 2005
Improperly discounting future risks ...
Improperly discounting future risks against current gains is a vice not confined to executives of large corporations.
"I know! If we want to reduce abortions, let's keep women from getting pregnant in the first place!" by Jane Galt, Asymmetrical Information, December 5, 2005
Posted at 08:21 AM · Comments (0) · Categories: Economics
December 07, 2005
John Lennon - buffoon
If people want to make a fuss about what a cultural phenomenon the Beatles were, and comment on their innovative and interesting music, well that is just peachy and not at all hard to understand. What is a bit baffling is why so many folks are trying to suggest John Lennon was anything more than a talented musician.
. . .
The guy was a buffoon. A talented, gifted, artistic, charismatic buffoon. Just stick to celebrating his art.
"Imagine a world without 'Imagine'," by Perry de Havilland, Samizdata.net, December 6, 2005
Posted at 02:19 PM · Comments (0) · Categories: Humor
December 06, 2005
Tolerance of how much intolerance?
To be an anatomist of totalitarianism is also to be a connoisseur of freedom, its many beguiling counterfeits as well as its genuine aspirations. The question—the lure, the never fulfilled but inescapable promise—of freedom stands at the center of much of Kolakowski’s work. In "The Self-Poisoning of the Open Society," reprinted in Modernity on Endless Trial (1990), Kolakowski dilates on an antinomy of liberalism that beset Western societies during the Cold War and is, if anything, even more pressing today as we negotiate what amounts to a moral war with fundamentalist Islam. The antinomy is this: liberalism implies openness to other points of view, even (it would seem) those points of view whose success would destroy liberalism. Tolerance to those points of view is a prescription for suicide. Intolerance betrays the fundamental premise of liberalism, i.e. openness.Kolakowski is surely right that our liberal, pluralist democracy depends for its survival not only on the continued existence of its institutions, but also "on a belief in their value and a widespread will to defend them."
Do we, as a society, enjoy that belief? Do we possess the requisite will? The jury is still out on those questions. A good test is the extent to which we can resolve the antinomy of liberalism. And a good start on that problem is the extent to which we realize that the antinomy is, in the business of everyday life, illusory. The "openness" that liberal society rightly cherishes is not a vacuous openness to all points of view: it is not "value neutral." It need not, indeed it cannot, say Yes to all comers. American democracy, for example, affords its citizens great latitude, but great latitude is not synonymous with the proposition that "anything goes." Our society, like every society, is founded on particular positive values—the rule of law, for example, respect for the individual, religious freedom, the separation of church and state. Western democratic society, that is to say, is rooted in what Kolakowski calls a "vision of the world." Part of that vision is a commitment to openness, but openness is not the same as indifference.
"Leszek Kolakowski & the anatomy of totalitarianism," by Roger Kimball, The New Criterion, June 2005
Posted at 06:11 AM · Comments (0) · TrackBack (0) · Categories: Nihilism
December 05, 2005
"largest civil engineering disaster in the history of the United States"
New Orleans' 17th Street Canal levee was doomed. This is something we've heard from more than one source, most recently from a native who swore she saw the pilings going down into the muck as easily as a hot knife through butter. Trouble is, we're not seeing widespread support for these facts (which are coming mostly out of the New Orleans' local paper). There was plenty of coverage during the storm - most of it bad (as some in the media later admitted). This story represents an opportunity to make amends for prior shortcomings - if only the press would take it!
"A meme that bears (and needs) repeating," mister snitch!, November 30, 2005
"This is the largest civil engineering disaster in the history of the United States. Nothing has come close to the $300 billion in damages and half-million people out of their homes and the lives lost," he [Robert Bea, a University of California, Berkeley professor who led a National Science Foundation investigation of the levee failures] said. "Nothing this big has ever happened before in civil engineering."
"17th Street Canal levee was doomed: Report blames corps: Soil could never hold," by Bob Marshall, The (New Orleans) Times-Picayune, November 30, 2005
Posted at 10:26 AM · Comments (0) · Categories: Stupidity
December 03, 2005
How to start a blog network
"How to start a blog network and hang onto your pajamas." by liberalcowboy, November 30, 2005
Posted at 04:52 PM · Comments (0) · Categories: Technology
Homosexuality and the Priesthood
Deep-Seated?: As for the vexed document on gays in the priesthood itself, like Amy Welborn, I'm troubled by some of its language - particularly the exclusion (or suggested exclusion, more accurately, since all of this will be actually decided on a seminary-by-seminary basis) of men with "deep-seated homosexual tendencies." If by "deep-seated" the authors mean "desires that the candidate is unwilling or unable to avoid acting on," then that kind of ban makes sense - just as you would probably exclude a proudly lecherous heterosexual from the priesthood. (This seems to be the interpretation favored by, among others, Fr. Joseph Fessio.) But if, as seems much more likely, "deep-seated" is meant to refer to anyone who lives with more-or-less permanent same-sex attraction - well, then as Amy notes, it seems like the Vatican is neglecting "the complex point that men with homosexual tendencies, same-sex attraction, whatever can be good priests, and have put spiritual orientation before sexual orientation, and have put on Christ, becoming new creatures in Him."There are two ways of looking at this, I think. One is to view the document as a somewhat clumsy and overly-sweeping response to two very real problems facing the Catholic Church, by which I mean 1) the sex-abuse scandals, which were largely a phenomenon of priests abusing teenage boys, not pedophiles preying on children, and which raised serious questions about the influence of homosexuality on the culture of the priesthood, and 2) the presence, within the Church and particularly within seminaries, of a large body of priests who simply reject Catholic teaching on human sexuality. The other way, Andrew and Will Saletan's take, is to assume that this document is another step in Ratzinger/Benedict's supposed decades-long campaign "for a purge of homosexuality," as Saletan puts it. To this, I would say two things. First, while there's little question that Benedict takes a more stringent line on homosexuality than some Catholic theologians, it's easy to overestimate the extent to which every document that emanates from the Vatican is a reflection of "the Pope's take" on a given issue. As John Allen points out, "the new instruction was not explicitly issued in forma specifica, meaning with the weight of a papal act, and hence it carries the authority of a Vatican office rather than the pope himself" - which among other things, makes it more likely than other documents to be revisited and revised at a later date. (That's exactly what the Vatican did, he notes, with the question of admitting alcoholics to the priesthood - issuing a blanket ban in the early 1990s, and then revising and softening it later.)
Second, if Benedict has a long-running obsession with homosexuality, he's got a pretty funny way of showing it. Fr. Jim Tucker, a priest-blogger, puts it best:
If a person were to sit down and read the Acta Apostolicae Sedis, the journal in which all the official acts of the Vatican are recorded, he would probably find that about 1% of Roman pronouncements -- actually, probably less -- have to do with sex. If you were to read through all the statements and addresses and public discourses delivered by Pope Benedict since he took the throne in April, you could probably count the statements on sex on a single hand -- two hands at the most. The vast, vast majority has nothing to do with sex.
The problem, of course, is that . . . most people get what they know about Vatican pronouncements from the mainstream media, and the media (which are in the business of selling information -- nothing wrong with that) offer the kind of information that is most likely to grab people's attention and interest them enough to look at the TV for 15 seconds or read the first paragraph or two of a newspaper article. And, like it or not, sex, violence, and controversy are a whole lot more interesting to most people than the nature of Christian charity, building wells in sub-Saharan Africa, or the basis of the New Evangelization in the vows of baptism. So, the market wins out, and your daily bit of Vatican information is about sex -- preferably something controversial about sex.
The same thing goes for Papa Ratzinger's supposed fixation on homosexuality. After twenty years in the Holy Office, Cardinal Ratzinger signed off on, what, two (very short) documents that dealt with the subject? Whatever one happens to think about that handful of pages, one could hardly call it an obsession. And if you set aside those official documents and look solely at his published work as a theologian and writer -- all those heaps of books that none of his harshest critics seems to have opened -- there is next to no sex in them at all. There's a great deal about beauty, about worship as the inner longing of man, about the saving wounds of Christ, about the Cross as the Tree of Life, about faith as a light in life's darkness, about the unity that emanates from Christ's Body, about our brotherhood in Christ's Church, but off the top of my head I can't remember ever having read any passages about sex in general, or about homosexuality in particular. Many of us bloggers and comment box denizens have already written more about sex in the last two months than Ratzinger has in his entire career.
It would be better, perhaps, if Benedict had written more about sex, and particularly homosexuality. Too often, I fear, conservative Catholic intellectuals, including many writers I admire, have avoided coming to grips with the complexity of "deep-seated" homosexuality - as opposed to the more opportunistic variety - and the particular difficulties it creates for otherwise faithful Christians.
"Deep-Seated?" by Ross Douthat, The American Scene, November 30, 2005 (many links in original post)
Posted at 04:26 PM · Comments (0) · Categories: Catholicism
December 01, 2005
CarChip
This for Mom or Dad and provides piece of mind in the form of a USB device called CarChip. The number one killer of teenagers nationwide are not drugs, alcohol or violence (guess I was wrong!) it is the family car.CarChip plugs under the steering wheel of any 1996 or later model vehicle in the port mandated for emission controls testing. CarChip is a smart chip that records up to 300 hour of driving data telling both how the vehicle is being driven and how the vehicle is performing.
"CarChip and CarChip Alarm," gadgets weblog, November 30, 2005
Posted at 09:35 AM · Comments (0) · Categories: Technology