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.
In youth, one needs and wants stuff: a roof over one's head, maybe a spouse, transportation, some domestic machines and comforts, recreational toys (guns, tennis raquets, boats, speakers, etc), appropriate clothing, and decent schools for your kids.
In midlife, one begins to hunger for an accumulation of life experiences - or at least I do. I haven't wanted any stuff for years except maybe good cigars, good food at good restaurants, interesting beers, books, and Teaching Company CDs. I buy nothing else anymore - not even an iPad. Well, I did need to replace a couple of computers recently, and it did not go very well. I guess I'd buy more art if I had money to burn, because I look to look at pictures.
My skis are 12 years old, as are my ski boots.
I do not say this from some sort of moral or anti-materialistic standpoint; it's just something I noticed. People tease me about having inexpensive cars and obsolete cameras, but that isn't on my life agenda right now. My father-in-law has always advised "Do it now. Later, you won't be able to enjoy it."
To read things, learn things, go places, see things, do things. That's what I want. What I want is my good work, one cultural outing per weekend day (just one per day, mind you, Mrs. BD), time with my spouse, friends and kids, good energetic manual labor at home and at the farm, interesting and adventurous travel, and a tangible relationship with God.
I sort-of gave up on pursuing the rational goal of financial security long ago: it's a fool's errand, one keeps raising the bar - it can be life-destroying. Furthermore, whenever you think things are going swell, a surprise happens to mess it up. Everybody worries about money, even Warren Buffet. Worry is part of life but it should not be allowed to get in the way of living. Otherwise, what's the point?
Do you feel the same way? Or am I suffering from "Midlife Disorder"? (If so, I sure hope this is only midlife, and that there is a pill or an app for that.)
The most recent Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM-IV) defines PTSD as the presence of three symptom clusters — reexperiencing via nightmares or flashbacks; numbing or withdrawal; and hyperarousal, evident in irritability, insomnia, aggression, or poor concentration — that arise in response to a life-threatening event.
Both halves of this definition are suspect. To start with, the link to a traumatic event, which makes PTSD almost unique among complex psychiatric diagnoses in being defined by an external cause, also makes it uniquely problematic, for the tie is really to the memory of an event. When PTSD was first added to the DSM-III in 1980, traumatic memories were considered reasonably faithful recordings of actual events. But as research since then has repeatedly shown, memory is spectacularly unreliable and extraordinarily malleable. We routinely add or subtract people, details, settings, and actions to our memories. We conflate, invent, and edit.
I am skeptical about the existence of the diagnosis as a disease entity, because it sounds like a normal, or at least unremarkable, reaction to me. Intense reactions to intense things in life is not pathological. It's how life shapes us, twists us, and eventually wears us down and ultimately kills us. Who said "Reality is for people who can't handle drugs"?
Show me one adult who does not harbor some deep pain which affects his life in mostly negative ways. I'd like to meet them. There's a CS Lewis quote which I cannot remember but which goes something like "Be kind, because everyone you meet is enduring some deep struggle and pain." It's not called "a vale of tears" for nothing. People - and kids - are commonly permanently wounded by divorce, for example. Some joy and delight in life too, thank God.
However, I do understand that nowadays people want their struggle called a disease so they can get insurance and/or disability checks.
Were zoning abolished, rent control repealed, and developers given free rein in New York, could growth rates remotely comparable to sunbelt cities possibly be matched? Not likely. Even equaling Houston's growth rate – a city with abundant vacant land in and around its downtown – would probably be a challenge. Affordability is an even more distant goal using supply-based strategies alone. Relaxing development restrictions that worsen affordability and hinder supply is a crucial goal, but not one which is likely to lead to rapid population increases, or housing cost relief, in built-out and geographically-constrained cities.
In media, connectivity is all about getting content out in as many ways possible, as quickly as you can. There is no worrying about how information is processed. When there were limited forms of media outlets, the ability to add discussion (Op/Ed pieces in print, news shows on TV) created some context and helped the information flow. With the myriad resources available today, and the speed at which information arrives, context is being pushed to the side in favor of raw data. The medium is no longer the message. The message predominates.
How is this impacting youth?
It's troubling question, leading researchers to address the different potential outcomes. There are indications that people's brains are becoming 'wired' differently. But whether that wiring is improving decision making or analysis is open to question.
My point of view is that shortened attention spans and more breadth of knowledge (exchanged for less depth) is the likely outcome, which is not necessarily beneficial.
the immersive nature of 24/7 connectedness creates the illusion that Millennials can somehow tap into a form of collective intelligence just by being online, while looking impatiently for messages every three minutes.
I can only remember bits and pieces of the game. I was psyched. I had a feeling of euphoria. I was zeroed in on the (catcher's) glove, but I didn't hit the glove too much. I remember hitting a couple of batters, and the bases were loaded two or three times. The ball was small sometimes, the ball was large sometimes, sometimes I saw the catcher, sometimes I didn't. Sometimes, I tried to stare the hitter down and throw while I was looking at him. I chewed my gum until it turned to powder. I started having a crazy idea in the fourth inning that Richard Nixon was the home plate umpire, and once I thought I was pitching a baseball to Jimi Hendrix, who to me was holding a guitar and swinging it over the plate. They say I had about three to four fielding chances. I remember diving out of the way of a ball I thought was a line drive. I jumped, but the ball wasn't hit hard and never reached me.[6]
A young woman recently commented to me that she thought one reason she was in love with a certain man was because he "made her feel safe." "Safe from what?" I asked. She thought for a minute and said "Safe from the world, I guess."
It's not an unusual topic of conversation among some of my more conservative lady pals to speculate about why women have some tendency to vote more Leftist than men do.
We have lots of theories, but more questions than anything else.
For some examples, Women are more caring and nurturing, less aggressive or more needy than men (maybe, possibly, I sort of doubt it but, if so, why would women think of government as a vehicle for those feelings?)
Or, Women are fearful of losing a man, and want government to step in as a husband if needed
Or, many women don't have a man, and would rather lean on government than on charity
Or, Women are more prone to parental transferences to powerful government, while masculine pride resists accepting government "help" because it makes them feel diminished
We have other theories too.
Here's a piece on a related topic at Reason: "Women vs. the State. It’s time to liberate ladies from unequal and unjust government policies."
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.
In youth, one needs and wants stuff: a roof over one's head, maybe a spouse, transportation, some domestic machines and comforts, recreational toys (guns, tennis raquets, boats, speakers, etc), appropriate clothing, and decent schools for your kids.
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 