We are a commune of inquiring, skeptical, politically centrist, capitalist, anglophile, traditionalist New England Yankee humans, humanoids, and animals with many interests beyond and above politics. Each of us has had a high-school education (or GED), but all had ADD so didn't pay attention very well, especially the dogs. Each one of us does "try my best to be just like I am," and none of us enjoys working for others, including for Maggie, from whom we receive neither a nickel nor a dime. Freedom from nags, cranks, government, do-gooders, control-freaks and idiots is all that we ask for.
From Part 5 of Takuan Seiyo's The Bee and the Lamb, a rambling but interesting essay at Gates:
What emanates now from important Christian leaders, not to speak of such bona fide faithful as the Johnson, Carter, Kennedy, Bush, Blair, Brown and Atlee names adduced in a previous chapter, is something entirely different: it is secular solipsism and utopian eschatology masquerading as enlightened Christianity. It harks back to 2nd century Gnostics and not to the great Christian thinkers of the Renaissance or Enlightenment. It’s the lamb lying down with the lion that’s still a lion. It’s redistributive socialism and minorities-exalting Progressive doctrine that has nothing to do with the recognition of God’s presence on Earth.
and
The glow of Jesus has come to us distorted by the distance light has to traverse over 2000 years to reach the here and now, bounced along the way off such cracked mirrors, bent copper pans and dented silver chalices that the Gospel writers and Church leaders have been, and all men are. It’s miraculous that unknown outside a little sliver of a remote, benighted province at its inception, and multiplexed with great noise as it has been since, the transmission has reached us at all. Admitting that we don’t know where the noise ends and the transcendent music begins could rebuild a stout foundation for a new Christian spirituality. “There lives more faith in an honest doubt,“ wrote one of the great 10-percenters of the 19th century, Alfred Tennyson, “than in half the creeds.”
This is what I term "a real job." These guys have balls. You may have seen this one before. I hate the way he has to make sure to tighten each hand-hold bolt on the final stretch. It's a nightmare for me.
Why moralism spoils the appetite - Adam Gopnik makes a powerful and entertaining case for why we shouldn’t ruin the aesthetic pleasure of food by adding a side order of moralism.
We have often posted here about food cranks and food Nazis, "organic food" nonsense and "natural food" nonsense, and even the concept of "healthy food". The "moral food" fad is just the latest incarnation of cranky food Calvinism - which is another incarnation of cranky Calvinism.
There is no doubt that guys enjoy variety, or at least the idea of it. They are liars if they claim they do not. Nature made them that way. Good character can make some of them acceptable, however, despite their nature.
Halfway through my first year as a history teacher at an inner-city comprehensive in England, I am reeling from the volley of abuse and misbehaviour that makes up my daily grind. I can be sure that at some point in my day I will be aggressively confronted, blithely disobeyed, and probably sworn at. Restless nights are common, and nervousness ongoing. Still, talking to my friends from teacher training, I feel I'm having a comparatively easy ride. I have not yet been physically assaulted, and so far I have avoided the much-feared mid-lesson breakdown.
At schools such as this, the deprived background of the children is routinely presented as a catch-all explanation for bad behaviour. The pupils' chaotic home lives, their lack of prospects, and an absence of aspiration in the local community are all popular excuses for the pandemonium that pervades inner-city schools. These factors undoubtedly have an effect, but such thinking lets schools like this off the hook. The endemic discipline problem within the state sector is in reality self-inflicted. At least half a century of "progressive" thinking on pupil behaviour has had disastrous consequences. In the competitive field of follies wrought by 1960s radicalism, there is a very good case for progressive education being the most socially destructive.
In recent decades, key sectors of the American economy have experienced huge and disruptive transformations — shifts that have ultimately yielded beneficial changes to the way producers and customers do business together. From the deregulation that brought about the end of AT&T's "Ma Bell" system, to the way entrepreneurs like Steve Jobs forever changed the computer world once dominated by IBM, to the way the internet and bloggers have upended the business model of traditional newspapers, we have seen industries completely remade — often in wholly unexpected ways. In hindsight, such transformations seem to have been inevitable; at the time, however, most leaders in these fields never saw the changes coming.
The higher-education industry is on the verge of such a transformative re-alignment. Many Americans agree that a four-year degree is vastly overpriced — keeping many people out of the market — and are increasingly questioning the value of what many colleges teach. Nevertheless, for those who seek a certain level of economic security or advancement, a four-year degree is absolutely necessary. Clearly, this is a situation primed for change. In as little as a decade, most colleges and universities could look very different from their present forms — with the cost of a college credential plummeting even as the quality of instruction rises.
If this transformation does come to pass, it could have profound and beneficial implications.
When a struggling student getting D’s or F’s hears over and over that the only future for him is college, but college is an unrealistic expectation because the student isn’t academically oriented, resists school work, and has no educational career plans he can achieve without intense support and personal motivation (which he lacks), the student has only one alternative, and that is to drop-out. The F student who never studies or does a shred of homework often has no plans for the future. The lack of a life goal often leads to dropping out. The student who cannot or will not study sees a professional, college trained career as unattainable because all these professions require academic effort and knowledge, and this is a student who is academically behind appropriate level, sometimes by a significant gap. This leads to a “why try?” attitude. “Why try/” leads to quitting, floating along and letting life happen to you, teen pregnancy, dropping out, and gangs.
By insisting that everyone should attend college, college stops being a training place for the brightest minds. When everyone goes to college, it doesn’t elevate the unmotivated, non-studying student. It lowers the bar for everyone else.
Another consequence of the belief that everyone should go to college is that the high school student who graduates and gets a job is therefore seen under this paradigm as a failure. This is grossly unfair. This country has always valued the person who labors honestly, starts his own business, or provides people with desired goods and services. Historically these backbone working people have not needed a college degree. To this day many successful store or restaurant owners, plumbers, contractors, mechanics, and on and on, thrive despite never having graduated from, or perhaps never attending even a day of college. These people and their contributions should be valued. They obviously have all the education they need to create a business, provide needed services, and to succeed.
It's all about "The Dark Triad." From Yes, Chicks Dig Jerks, and evolutionary science gives us a good idea why:
The Dark Triad is a combination of psychological traits — subclinical psychopathology, subclinical narcissism, and what Professor Jonason calls “Machiavellianism” — that are, he believes, in fact a unitary phenomenon associated with a higher level of sexual success, defined in the literature as a larger number of total lifetime sexual partners. The correlation of the Dark Triad with larger numbers of sexual partners holds true for both men and women, but the effect is much more pronounced in men. This is unsurprising, inasmuch as men’s relative preference for larger numbers of short-term sexual relationships and women’s relative preference for long-term relationships is, as Professor Jonason notes, “one of the most consistent and strongest sex differences in the field.”
So: Machiavellianism, subclinical psychopathology, subclinical narcissism: not exactly the stuff of a Jane Austen romance, but apparently the stuff of sexual success. Professor Jonason concludes: “Together with low amounts of empathy and agreeableness” (I warned you this was depressing stuff) “such traits may facilitate — especially for men — the pursuit of an exploitative short-term mating strategy.”
But you knew that already, if you are a homo even half sapiens and went to high school.
That's all true of my experience with skirt-chasing seducers. They know how to say exactly what you need to hear but, in the end, you will never be enough for them because, Psychiatric as it may sound, they are really manchilds looking for Mommy while having fun with pseudo-adult seduction, romance and sex along the way.
Image is Luigi Bassi in the title role of Don Giovanni in 1787, via Wiki.
This is as fresh as the day he wrote it. The great (young) man himself conducted the premiere of this astonishing (comic?) opera in Prague, in 1787:
James Q. Wilson had been frequently referred to that way. He knew about everything.
My first reading of him was in his The Moral Sense, back when it had just come out. The book made a lot of sense to me (if you haven't read it, those Amazon comments on it are helpful).
Here's a Wilson quote from the end of the book:
Mankind’s moral sense is not a strong beacon light, radiating outward to illuminate in sharp outline all that it touches. It is, rather, a small candle flame, casting vague and multiple shadows, flickering and sputtering in the strong winds of power and passion, greed and ideology. But brought close to the heart and cupped in one’s hands, it dispels the darkness and warms the soul.
Being a loyal and dutiful husband, of course I showed up. All the husbands show up in their finest and tend bar for the opening night cocktail party, and later to see the big show again. We learn to look at these things, and to appreciate them as ephemeral sculptures.
Garden clubs, I know, are not only great creative outlets for gals, whether they work at jobs or not, but, like so many organizations, they also constitute a form of social capital. I even met a lady at this show who lives down the street from my Mom and belongs to my Mom's garden club.
I grabbed a few pics right after they folded up the show, before we took it down:
Except for some Romanesque churches and monasteries, and a few old tenuta, there is very little Medieval left in tourist Italy.
The reason is because they became so wealthy during the Renaissance that they knocked down all of the old stuff to build new. The "old stuff" in Florence today is mostly Renaissance-era, except for some early churches. San Miniata is a good old one, and it's a fun walk over the bridge, over the Michelangelo-designed defensive walls, and up the hill from downtown, and you can sit and listen to the monks chant if you visit during a chanting time. Very friendly monks, too, who speak excellent English.
Italy never really bought into Gothic style in the 1200s. Too French. Many Brit builders did buy into it, though.
Photo: The Baptisterie in Firenze is Medieval, begun in 1059 long before the current duomo was built (by Cannobio, with the dome by the great Brunellesci in the 1400s. The fancy facade of the duomo is new - 19th C - which most visitors do not realize. The churches were always renovating and updating.) The previous church had stood in the square when the Baptisterie was built. A Baptisterie was always needed then: unbaptised kids could not enter the duomo. As in many areas of northern Italy, the Eastern Orthodox style of art (thought, at the time, to be based on original images of Jesus, Mary, etc) is prominent inside this wonderful jewel-box. The doors are masterpieces, as is the ceiling art inside. The Baptisterie in Pisa, just down the road a piece, is similarly wonderful.
Sadly, I can't find the video, but a classic SNL skit for the season. One of the best minute and a half seasonal sketches. Belushi was a great talent, unable to tame his demons.
Over the course of quite a few visits to Italy, I have read a good deal about Italian history, art, and architecture. Much of what I learn, I eventually forget unless I use it.
It begins with Medieval, and runs through to late Renaissance in the 1600s. Tons of pictures, and very well-written in almost-scholarly detail. Rich in detail.
The authors blend history with cultural history. A great pleasure to read. And how else would you really know what you are looking at?
Went to the opening of The Steins Collect show at the Met Museum this weekend. It's a large exhibit, lots of interesting stuff but mostly stuff that the Steins (Leo, Gertrude, Michael and Sarah) could afford to buy. I did learn that Gertrude's older brother Leo was really the aesthete in the family, while Gertrude was the one who hogged the limelight.
However, I took notice of some things that I have known, but never attended to, before. Mainly, the attitude and behavior of the museum-goers (place was packed this weekend).
Everybody is hushed, like in church or in a library. People whisper, if they speak at all. Nobody laughs. Nobody talks to strangers. As on NYC sidewalks, eye contact is forbidden. It's a reverent but unfriendly atmosphere.
Nobody looks as if they are having fun, all so somber and serious. When I have my earphones on (I enjoy the audio guides) and end up making some wisecrack comment to Mrs. BD, she frowns and says I am talking too loud. A few times I have made comments to people who were looking at what I was, and they look at me as if I had produced a loud fart in church.
Why is this? I know serious aesthetes are studying the pictures - probably with knowledge and sophistication which far exceed my own - and I agree that Cezanne and Picasso were mind-bogglingly good and inventive at their craft, but their pictures are not objects of worship. Not only not objects of worship, but 20th C art was produced to be commercial - to sell to people to hang on their walls to add interest and enjoyment to their parlors. And to convey to others that you had some avant-garde taste in pictures.
The minute people get outside the museum, they get cheerful and chatty again - like normal people - and finally begin talking about what they have looked at.
Mind you, I agree that it is annoying and uncivilized to be loud, goofy, or boisterous in public spaces (other than in sports venues or the aquarium), but it now strikes me that the reverent hush is really sort of strange and unnatural.
The International Center of Photography is running a retrospective on Weegee, also known as Arthur Fellig, who was known for his stark black and white photos. His story is very inspirational, but most interesting was how he remade himself in the midst of the Depression.
Some economic historians observe that while crises might make it riskier to strike out on one’s own, by depressing pay they also lower the opportunity costs of leaving a job.
Weegee had an eye for the presentation of America's social life. It was generally optimistic, tinged with dark humor. This developed only after he redirected his career as a studio photographer into one following a police radio, and is the portion of his career the retrospective focuses on in "Murder is My Business." As this career path began to fade, Weegee recreated himself again by documenting society and individuals in an America that was enjoying itself. The mythology surrounding him was primarily of his own creation, which today adds an extra dimension to what makes him so fascinating.
One of his pieces of work become the model for Mad's Alfred E. Neuman.
The story of Arthur Fellig is the story of individual American exceptionalism.
We all surely agree that lying is immoral and, most of the time, a terrible thing to do. We all surely agree that lying by omission is equally evil, most of the time. As we say here, a lie is the theft of somebody else's reality.
In life, we tend to identify liars and to distrust them, figuring reasonably that if they lie about one thing, they just tend to be liars. It's not always true, of course, but it's a safe rule of thumb.
Claiming military honors offends a lot of people in a way that claiming honors for other subjects doesn’t. Personally, I think that outlawing things merely because they offend people is a bad idea (and unnecessary–you’ll note that the offender in this case got his comeuppance even before the law was applied), but that’s another argument.
Making lying illegal seems crazy to me. For starters, every politician would be convicted.
Public housing today, even in the post-welfare-reform era, continues to give priority to those of lowest income, which, as a practical matter, means female-headed, single-parent families, who still dominate the projects and the Section 8 housing-voucher program. Census data from the 1950s makes it possible to compare marriage rates in white and black St. Louis neighborhoods. The numbers show that black marriage rates have long lagged behind white rates. In nine predominantly black census tracts, married persons (husbands and wives, not including children) constituted 16.4 percent of the population. In predominantly white census tracts, the number was 24.5 percent—half again higher, before the advent of public housing. Without question, the perverse incentives of public housing and public assistance worsened this situation. In contrast, the incentives created by the private housing market—to maintain two-parent households so as to pool incomes in order to get ahead—would have worked in just the opposite direction.
It's really all about help that wasn't helpful - or even wanted - and perverse incentives.
Related: The Left Is Still Ignoring the Costs of Family Breakdown. In my opinion, the Left ignores it because it creates more household poverty, and thus more government dependency. When has the Left ever championed family values?
The sports news in New York has been dominated the past week and a half by Jeremy Lin. A city overwhelmed by Super Bowl mania has quickly moved on to basketball and a great story in an overlooked point guard who has raised his game and put his team back in the race for the playoffs.
One of the difficulties, however, has been the racism which has been glaringly evident in the coverage. Saturday Night Live did a wonderful send up of this last night, showing the double standard which exists in media today.
Lin is the NBA's Tim Tebow. He has brought a wonderful story to the pros, an inspiring, unlikely, and unexpected story.
One of the most annoying situations you can run into at the office is inertia. The belief that something is done, or happens, just because "that's the way it happens." I've lived my corporate life (for better or worse - usually worse, for me) in a relatively idiosyncratic fashion. I have never enjoyed being a 'Yes Man', and if I sensed groupthink, I'd usually ask a question designed to break the logjam, even if I agreed with the emerging groupthink pattern:
don’t be intimidated by high-level obstructionistswho temporarily impede progress. If it is an idea whose time has come, obstructionists can be overcome by engaging high-level sponsors or they can be circumvented. Bureaucratic inertia yields to an aggressive parallel approach— quick, precise and simultaneous action.
Sometimes these approaches don't work, and you don't win friends this way.
We docs see this all the time, and some docs seem to almost encourage it: "There is always hope," etc.
Aggressive treatment of terminal cancer can be the worst. Refusal to give in to nature's natural processes. Death as the great enemy. Guilt. There is always a time to let go of relationships, and a time to let go of life.
It is often said that "old age is not for sissies," but I have seen terminal torture treatment which the Geneva Convention would hold illegitimate. A friend lost her 52 year-old sister to pancreatic cancer yesterday. Due to heroic efforts, her last three months on earth were made hell when she could have had a peaceful, morphinized passage.
America is swiftly becoming a granny state. Less frail and more involved, today's grandparents are shunning retirement homes and stepping in more than ever to raise grandchildren while young adults struggle in the poor economy.
The newer grandparents are mainly baby boomers who are still working, with greater disposable income. Now making up 1 in 4 adults, grandparents are growing at twice the rate of the overall population and sticking close to family — if their grandkids aren't already living with them.
The modern invention of the nuclear family never really worked out that well, did it? Too isolated, too little support and help, etc. Farm families consisted of extended families.
I have been posting about the value of a rigorous high school education, and the frequently minimal value-added of college for many kids. I forget the average number of study hours of American college kids these days, but it is low. High school can prepare anybody for a lifetime of learning. Maybe you can't take a class with Jacques Barzun, but anybody can read his books.
So here's my question for my readers: Let's hear about people you have known who have led interesting and challenging lives without a college degree, including yourselves if applicable.
I'll start with a few:
- The omniscient, cynical, whiskey-breathed City Editor of an urban newspaper where I worked summers during college - The guy in town who started his plumbing contracting company and now has 50 employees - Bill Gates (I don't really know him) - Our Shakespeare scholar electrician - my Master Gunsmith
His perspective on cultural history is so wide as to view history as a series of births, flowering, decay and finally decadence. “When people accept futility and the absurd as normal, the culture is decadent. The term is not a slur; it is a technical label. A decadent culture offers opportunity mainly to the satirist…”4 which describes our time perfectly. But just as in the natural world, the cultural world holds the seeds of rebirth within.
She wants one of these (the convertible, please) to show the love:
I want this pair:
However, back in reality, what I am going to do is to make dinner for She Who Must Be Obeyed: Cherrystone clams on the half-shell with lemon slices, then a steamed 3 lb. lobster with home-made horseradish mayo, cucumber slaw and potato salad, with champagne or maybe a nice Meursault. Valentine cupcakes for dessert.
What emanates now from important Christian leaders, not to speak of such bona fide faithful as the Johnson, Carter, Kennedy, Bush, Blair, Brown and Atlee names adduced in a previous chapter, is something entirely different: it is secular solipsism and utopian eschatology masquerading as enlightened Christianity. It harks back to 2nd century Gnostics and not to the great Christian thinkers of the Renaissance or Enlightenment. It’s the lamb lying down with the lion that’s still a lion. It’s redistributive socialism and minorities-exalting Progressive doctrine that has nothing to do with the recognition of God’s presence on Earth.
It's all about "The Dark Triad." From 
James Q. Wilson had been frequently referred to that way. He knew about everything.
Except for some Romanesque churches and monasteries, and a few old tenuta, there is very little Medieval left in tourist Italy.
Over the course of quite a few visits to Italy, I have read a good deal about Italian history, art, and architecture. Much of what I learn, I eventually forget unless I use it.
Went to the opening of 
One in four Americans are grandparents, soon to be 1 in 3. From 
I have been posting about the value of a rigorous high school education, and the frequently minimal value-added of college for many kids. I forget the average number of study hours of American college kids these days, but it is low. High school can prepare anybody for a lifetime of learning. Maybe you can't take a class with Jacques Barzun, but anybody can read his books.
