Sunday, January 10. 2010
The piece at Intelligent Life begins:
When Wallace Stevens died, few of his Connecticut insurance colleagues even knew he was a poet. With the recent release of his "Selected Poems", Ryan Ruby revisits a man who proved that to be a great poet, no great experience is necessary ...
Whole thing here.
Most commentators bemoan the decline in readers of the dead-tree editions of major newspapers. Most explanations center on ideological bias of the local newspaper turning off readers or the availability of news on the Internet or the cutting of size of newspaper sections.
In my case, the local newspaper, the San Diego Union-Tribune, is politically centrist most of the time, so I’m not turned off or away. It has cut the size of its sections but mostly eliminated excess, so my time with the paper is better focused. And, yes, the Internet offers more depth and diversity, but one does have to specially search and scan many posts and sites to get the depth, diversity or local news, if one wants it, which takes up lots of time.
The local newspaper, by contrast, handily offers the highlights of national and international news, so I’m aware of them, and if interested can then decide whether to spend more time (than the too much time I already spend) on the Internet.
Most important, I can only find extensive coverage of California or of San Diego area news in the local newspaper.
And, I can do it all in 10-minutes of scanning the print newspaper. I’d have to spend several-fold longer clicking all the links in the U-T’s online edition and another several-fold longer scanning numerous websites.
Here’s an example of how it works, to quickly connect the dots via the print edition of the San Diego Union-Tribune:
- Page 4 of today’s newspaper has an AP report of a 6.5 earthquake offshore of Eureka, in northernmost California, that onshore broke some windows. The report is not online, because the U-T is economizing by not paying the wire services extra to put their pieces online at the newspaper’s web site. That saves funds that can be spent on enlarging local reporting.
- Page 1 headlines “Questionable firms getting stimulus cash” in San Diego (written for the newspaper by an independent investigative news service) with this telling quote:
To government watchdogs, such contracts raise concerns about the way the $787 billion stimulus program is being administered.
“It is very upsetting that the government doesn’t do more due diligence before it hands money out,” said Laura N. Chick, California’s inspector general for stimulus funds. “We’ve gotten very used to handing out taxpayer dollars and not so good at overseeing to whom are we giving them and how they are being spent.”
- Page 1 of the Regional section has a regular columnist’s headline, “Tsunami spending? Wave your money bye.”
Imperial Beach spent $47,000 in grant money. San Diego County, $30,000. San Diego City has received $1,500 and may seek another $150,000 to protect us from a terrible tsunami….
The federal government has been pushing tsunami awareness since 1995, when it formed the National Tsunami Hazard Mitigation Program, out of concern one could hit along the coasts of Oregon, Washington and Northern California because of seismic activity nearby…. [Note: not the San Diego area; nor did a severe offshore earthquake near northernmost California's Eureka cause a tsunami.]
But what are the odds? The National Safety Council puts the odds of dying in an earthquake in your lifetime at one in 153,597.Dying from a lightning strike is one in 81,701. Bee stings? That’s a mere one in 62,950.
A tsunami? It’s so rare, you can’t even put odds on it.
But we won’t need to worry. Once the feds pony up more of our money, we’ll all be TsunamiReady™.
In less than 10-minutes to scan the entire, shrunken, print edition I have an investigative report with a top insider’s indictment of wasteful and reckless stimulus spending and two additional specific related examples of how.
Try being aware of that connect the dots online.
In addition, my 9-year old son eagerly reads each morning’s sports section, taking it along to school to discuss with his classmates during lunch. The print edition helps to create a young person interested in knowing more than from the 5-minutes of TV sports news, and being aware of a wider range of sports topics. Those habits will carry over into a later interest in the news.
Postscript:
Across the country, in Baltimore, the PEW Research Center studied how state and local news happens by one-week’s local and state news reporting from all sources. Some key findings:
-- Among the six major news threads studied in depth—which included stories about budgets, crime, a plan involving transit busses, and the sale of a local theater—fully 83% of stories were essentially repetitive, conveying no new information. Of the 17% that did contain new information, nearly all came from traditional media either in their legacy platforms or in new digital ones.
-- General interest newspapers like the Baltimore Sun produced half of these stories—48%—and another print medium, specialty newspapers focused on business and law, produced another 13%.
-- Local television stations and their websites accounted for about a third (28%) of the enterprise reporting on the major stories of the week; radio accounted for 7%, all from material posted on radio station websites. The remaining nine new media outlets accounted for just 4% of the enterprise reporting we encountered.
But, here’s the “bad” news: the new media hasn’t filled the hole left by declining newspaper resources; instead, government and special interest groups have a freer hand than before to push their own viewpoints with less examination by the media for completeness or truth:
-- As the press scales back on original reporting and dissemination, reproducing other people’s work becomes a bigger part of the news media system. Government, at least in this study, initiates most of the news. In the detailed examination of six major storylines, 63% of the stories were initiated by government officials, led first of all by the police. Another 14% came from the press. Interest group figures made up most of the rest.
Our intertubes friend Right Wing Prof died on Thursday. He invited us to post this piece from him (which we did) in 2007 because he didn't think it fit the tone or purpose of his site -
Almost heaven, West Virginia
Blue Ridge Mountains
Shenandoah River -
Life is old there
Older than the trees
Younger than the mountains
Growin like a breeze
Country roads, take me home
To the place I belong
West Virginia, mountain momma
Take me home, country roads
Our friend Right Wing Prof at Right Wing Nation is a guest author today. His reminiscence is about West Virginia, clans, ancestors, his youth, and snake-handling preachers.
You've probably never heard of the Big Sandy River, the tributary of the Ohio River that separates eastern Kentucky from western West Virginia. It's even less likely that you've heard of the Twelvepole Creek, also a tributary (well, if you can call a creek a tributary) of the Ohio, in the mountains of West Virginia, or Wayne, the largest town in Wayne County.
So let me take you there.
I assume you've been through West Virginia on the interstate. If not, you're missing perhaps the most beautiful state in the United States. The license plates say Wild, Wonderful West Virginia, and a drive across the state on I-64 shows you how wild and how wonderful the state is. But to really see West Virginia, you have to get off the interstate and drive into the mountains.
If you take WV-152 from I-64 in Huntington, the state highway rapidly becomes a narrow, two-lane road that winds like a snake up and down the mountains and twists through the valleys, only a few miles, incidentally, from where the Hatfields and McCoys live. You are in Wayne County, and the beauty of the landscape contrasts sharply with the early twentieth-century shacks. Suddenly, you begin to climb the side of a mountain, and you realize you're driving into a town. The buildings are well-kept and much nicer and larger than the small shacks and rundown farms you were seeing along 152. The crest of the mountain is downtown Wayne, an attractive town with several large churches and local shops.
As the road takes you down the other side, though, you feel as if you are in a different community: The buildings on the back side of the mountain, deeper into Wayne County, are ramshackle, falling apart, very unlike the buildings on the front side and the top. Wayne feels almost like a movie set, presenting its best side to visitors from the city, and hiding its worst side behind the mountain.
Wayne is the county seat, with a little over 1,100 people. Our destination is East Lynn. Turn on 37, and the road gets even narrower as it takes you further into the mountains. You will suddenly see the steep, narrow valley widen in front of you as the road makes a sharp right turn, and before you is the Twelvepole. Just down the road is East Lynn, somewhat larger than Wayne, but noticeably poorer.
I have before gotten nasty cracks from people when they asked where my family was from and I told them. Let me say it now: I am not ashamed of these people. These are Scots-Irish, deeply religious, and fiercely proud, too proud to take government handouts, preferring instead to get along as best they can, people who work hard all their lives and live in poverty, yet give to their families and communities and do well by their families, not white trash sitting around on the front porch smoking corncob pipes and collecting welfare.
My great-grandfather, Laban, was born here in East Lynn, three days before Jefferson Davis was elected president of the CSA. Laban was from a poor branch of a prestigious family (my great-great-great-grandfather was Henry Clay's first cousin), and he married Nancy Ellen, from a land-wealthy local family (the wealthier branches of the Clay family live in Kentucky). My great-grandfather was a schoolteacher (mathematics), but had been afflicted all his life with some sort of stomach problem. Somehow, he managed to talk his wife into leaving not only the clan, but the state, and moved his family to southern Indiana, where he believed the sulfur water springs would help his health problems.
Continue reading "Clay Bond, aka Right Wing Prof, RIP: Country roads, take me home"
O.K.....the game is on!! Travel Scrabble. Keep it going. Change one letter of the bottom word posted in the comments and let's see where we get stuck and can't continue!
Rules: You cannot add letters. You can only use English. You can only change one letter - one letter only, please - and you cannot change the letter sequence.
Our starting word is TRIP - We will do the first one below, and all can add their words below (don't violate the rules, tho).
Friday, January 8. 2010
When my sibs were too young to ski, I would take ski buses with pals on weekends to ski at Mohawk Mountain and Butternut for the day.
When the other kids got older we would ski all around New England as a family (my Mom skied, but Dad read books by the fire and shepherded), but most regularly at Stowe, Stratton, Bromley and good old Magic Mountain where I got skewered with a ski pole by my cousin one time.
A widely accepted truism in marketing is that sex sells. A recent academic study of movies finds that sex doesn’t sell. The study’s co-author found those attached to the truism resistant to the facts:
"When I presented these results at European Science Days this summer, I was struck by how hard it is to overcome preconceptions about the box-office consequences of highly graphic sexual content," says co-author Dean Keith Simonton of the University of California, Davis. "But not all truisms are true."
It wasn’t until I noticed a small squib in this morning’s newspaper that I was aware of the research report, which CNN reported about December 29th. (I wasn’t distracted by watching porn or looking at the lovelies occasionally appearing here at Maggie’s Farm. Actually, I’ve been enjoying the unfolding of my Optimist’s Prediction For 2010, as the portents darken for liberal-left activism and brighten for center-right activism.)
According to the study of 914 films released between 2001-2005, the largest sample yet studied, CNN leads with: “A recent study concluded that nudity and explicit sex scenes don’t translate to success for major motion pictures,” at US or international box offices or at the Academy Awards. A researcher at the Culture and Media Institute finds similar results for 2009:
This research also holds true for the 10 highest grossing movies of 2009. None contained graphic sex scenes and only one, "The Hangover," a raunchy comedy about a bachelor party in Vegas, featured a lot of sexual content. Others on the list, such as "Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen" "Star Trek" and "Avatar" contained mild sexual content while the rest contained little or no sexual content.
CNN quotes an author of the study:
"Sex did not sell, whether in the domestic or international box office, and even after controlling for MPAA rating," said Simonton, who is a professor of psychology at the University of California, Davis. “In other words, even among R movies, less graphic sex is better."
What did sell? “The top-grossing films in the study included movies like "Shrek 2;" "Spider-Man;" "Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith" and "The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King," all of which contained mostly minor to mild sex and/or nudity.”
What about horny young men?
Tom Jacobs, staff writer for the research-driven consumer magazine Miller-McCune, wrote about the study and said there has long been the belief that the many young males who make up movie audiences are enthralled by female nudity.
"These researchers really put that belief to the test and crunched the numbers," Jacobs said. "What I took from the study is that a hint of sex is perhaps more enticing than out-and-out nudity."
That isn’t a surprise to those of us who love the great movies from the 1930’s to the 1950’s, where romance flourished, scenes faded away after the kiss, and viewers projected their own emotions and desires on to the screen, rather than today having to sit through another repetitive graphic humping on the screen.
At Maggie’s Farm, a few of us contributors enjoy occasionally posting a salacious photo, but the success of Maggie’s Farm is mostly owed to its cultural observations and photos. Our chief Bird Dog keeps that at the forefront of focus.
Let’s take an informal poll: readers please comment on our blog’s mix.
Thursday, January 7. 2010
What are "intellectuals" anyway?
When I was young and vain I thought I was one. I read lots of books, got myself overly-eddicated, used to read the New York Times daily, and robotically held most of the socially-acceptable, arrogant, bien pensant views. Now I know I am a regular person who just tries to live in reality as best I can, fully aware that many non-tweedy, non-Ivy grads understand life far better than I do. Uncommon sense and sensibilities can replace common sense. From Tom Sowell's new book, with interview video, at SDA:
Thomas Sowell on Intellectuals and Society - intellectuals certainly can renounce war, “and that does not stop your neighbor from building up the biggest army in the world and coming in and killing you.”
We used to ski the places on Rte. 93 quite a bit when the pups were younger. Wildcat and Gunstock Mtns, too. Less crowded and, truth be told, more genteel folks on average than on the Vermont slopes. I am partial to Loon, but Cannon Mtn. gets the prize for NH's funkiest, old-style place. Here's a brochure from the 1970s (Mittersill has been closed since the 70s):
Tuesday, January 5. 2010
Via Thompson. One of them:
Monday, January 4. 2010
New Year's Eve. Thanks for the pic, BL.
Sunday, January 3. 2010
 At the wonderful Hall of the Fishes at New York's American Museum of Natural History there is a preserved female Anglerfish. Attached to her is a bump with a tiny tail on it, which looks like a parasite.
It isn't. It's the shrunken remnant of a male Anglerfish. The males attach themselves to a female, and their bodies shrink away into nothing but male gonads permanently attached to the females. (You can read about Anglerfish here.)
I was reminded of Anglerfish by Kay Hymowitz's piece at City Journal, "The Incredible Shrinking Father," which takes a look at voluntary single motherhood in America and the role of artificial insemination. It is remarkable that, in one generation, something that had been considered a family tragedy is now considered, by some anyway, a "lifestyle choice."
A quote from her essay:
You’d think that we had enough problems keeping fathers around in this country, what with out-of-wedlock births (over a third of all children are born to unmarried women, and, in most cases, the fathers will fade from the picture) and divorce (the average divorced dad sees his kids less often than he takes his car in for an oil change). But these days, American fatherhood has yet another hostile force to contend with: artificial insemination. This may sound a tad overheated. After all, AI has been around, by some accounts, for over a century. And the number of kids born through the procedure each year, though steadily growing, remains quite small relative to the millions of babies conceived, as we can now say completely without irony, the old-fashioned way.
But aided by a lucrative sperm-bank service industry, an increasingly unmarried consumer base, a legal profession and judiciary geared toward seeing relationships through a contractual lens, and a growing cultural preference for individual choice without limits, AI is advancing a cause once celebrated only in the most obscure radical journals: the dad-free family. There are multiple ironies in this unfolding revolution, not least that the technology that allows women to have a family without men promotes the very male carelessness that leads a lot of women to become single mothers in the first place. And fatherless families are a delicate proposition, as AI families are discovering, since all the scientists’ technology and all the lawyerly contracts can’t take human nature out of human reproduction.
Leaving aside the fact that single motherhood accounts for a large percentage of America's poverty stats (that's another article in itself), I consider voluntary single motherhood to be the height of selfishness, immoral, irresponsible, and no favor to a kid. I do not believe that "it takes a village" to raise a family, but I do think that, for a number of practical and psychological reasons which I will not go into now, it takes two parents to do it - one of each type. A couple of sets of grandparents, and some aunts and uncles, are good too, if you can get 'em. Paid help is no substitute because blood is thicker than money.
Fortunately, we live in a free country, and freedom implies the freedom to make stupid and irresponsible choices. That is why freedom requires maturity, education, intelligence, and restraint for things to work. Being a free citizen in a free republic demands a lot from a person, and all of us have to dig deep to find the strength.
You can read Hymowitz's entire piece here.
Image: A lovely female Anglerfish
Our old English long-case clock rang 12 times on New Year's Eve, as it has for my wife's family here in New England for between 240 and 300 years. There’s a note pinned inside by her great-great grandfather that reads “This clock was buried in the basement of one of our ancestors during the Battle of Bunker Hill” (which you will recall took place on June 17, 1775). History records that the London clockmaker, Devereaux Bowly, opened his shop in 1710 and died in 1773, so the clock had to have been made between those dates. My wife’s patronymic ancestor, a sea captain, was in Boston by 1736, so he could have brought it to Massachusetts any time during that period.
Of all the furniture that the past bequeathed to the current day, most of us have a particular soft spot for the long-case, or grandfather clock (so-named after the popular 1876 song, My Grandfather’s Clock). It is still and no doubt will be for many years to come the most popular form of household timepiece. Clocks give life to a room, but the tall clocks of the peculiar form that is now 300 years old have a special dignity. To the early American colonist, owning a clock was a status symbol. Most people of that time could not afford a clock of their own and had to rely on the church clock on the town common for the time of day. Privately owned clocks were only found in the finest of homes and were certain to be displayed in a prominent place for all to view.
Long-case pendulum clocks were still a new invention in 1736. In 1580 the Astronomer Galileo observed a swinging lamp suspended by a long chain from a cathedral ceiling. He studied its swing and discovered that each swing was equal and had a natural rate of motion. He later found this rate of motion depended upon the length of the chain or pendulum. In 1640 he designed a clock mechanism incorporating the swing of a pendulum, but he died before building his clock design.
It wasn’t until 1656 that Galileo’s pendulum principle was put to use by Dutch scientist Christian Huygens, who was the first to develop a pendulum based clock. Huygens’s invention however allowed clocks to run accurately to the point of three minutes loss or gain per day. Some years later in 1670 the English clockmaker William Clement noticed that a longer pendulum kept better time, so he lengthened the pendulum to over three feet. This of course required a longer case for the clockworks, and so the long-case clock was born. From then on the clocks were variously called long-case clocks, floor clocks, and even coffin clocks because they resembled the shape and size of the simple wooden coffins of that time.
Grandfather clocks were first made for royal families and nobles, but in time their production cost were cut down to where they were affordable for merchant families and became a symbol of socio-economic status and wealth.
Around 1685, long-case clocks were imported into American colonies for the first time and roughly 10 years later their construction in the New World began. New York, New England, Pennsylvania and Virginia became long-case clock making centers, but, until the 19th century American introduction of inexpensive brass movements, English clockmakers reined supreme.
Ed. note: I'm sure most of our readers are familiar with My Grandfather's Clock:
There are lady soldiers, lady cops, lady firepersons, lady mailpersons, lady everything - for better or worse.
Why are there no lady garbagepersons?
(By the way, I appreciate this past week's Dr. Bliss Festival of Reruns. When I read them, I honestly cannot remember having written them. I would write each post differently if I were to write them today - or maybe not write them at all.)
Saturday, January 2. 2010
This morning. If you are deprived by not being familiar, that's the eastern edge of Central Park on the right, around 92nd St - a darn pleasant neighborhood.
Is there such a thing as failure in science? From Accept Defeat: The Neuroscience of Screwing Up (h/t, Neptunus):
How to Learn From Failure
Too often, we assume that a failed experiment is a wasted effort. But not all anomalies are useless. Here’s how to make the most of them. —J.L.
1 Check Your Assumptions
Ask yourself why this result feels like a failure. What theory does it contradict? Maybe the hypothesis failed, not the experiment.
2 Seek Out the Ignorant
Talk to people who are unfamiliar with your experiment. Explaining your work in simple terms may help you see it in a new light.
3 Encourage Diversity
If everyone working on a problem speaks the same language, then everyone has the same set of assumptions.
4 Beware of Failure-Blindness
It’s normal to filter out information that contradicts our preconceptions. The only way to avoid that bias is to be aware of it.
A melancholy chore to take ye olde tree down. However, it will have an extended life outdoors for a couple of months as the needles slowly drop, providing some cheery outdoor light and a place for the sparrows to hang out in and in which to hide from the Sharpies that haunt our area.
Friday, January 1. 2010
 His wonderful 1936 essay, Shooting an Elephant. One quote:
I did not want to shoot the elephant. I watched him beating his bunch of grass against his knees, with that preoccupied grandmotherly air that elephants have. It seemed to me that it would be murder to shoot him. At that age I was not squeamish about killing animals, but I had never shot an elephant and never wanted to. (Somehow it always seems worse to kill a large animal.) Besides, there was the beast's owner to be considered. Alive, the elephant was worth at least a hundred pounds; dead, he would only be worth the value of his tusks, five pounds, possibly. But I had got to act quickly.
 I have been taking a little time to think about how participating in a website like Maggie's, if you don't watch out, can have the effect of making you run faster and faster to keep up with the latest idea/opinion/reaction etc.
(Here's a clip from Dylan's 1978 No Time to Think from his Street Legal album. Lyrics here)
I can react, but I cannot really think, while looking at a screen - or while reading at all. I can reflect on something when I put down the book or close the page. I can reflect, and perhaps generate a thought, only by getting away for a bit from external input so I can hear some "internal input."
Am I unusual? Almost everybody I know thinks they have some degree of ADD.
I know everybody's mind works differently under different circumstances. My brain tends to think impressionistically, not sequentially and in linear fashion (except when it is demanded of me or, less often, when I demand it of myself - then it kicks into gear), and works best when I am under some sensory deprivation, like in the shower, in the car with the radio off, or with closed eyes. That's when ideas and connections come to me from my pre-conscious.
Giving myself a writing assignment is one way to force myself to think sequentially. Most of the time, no interesting thoughts appear and I end up trashing the piece. Opie likes to say "Those who can, think. Those who can't, link." We link a lot here at Maggie's, but I'd like to try to steer Maggie's away from trying to cover news. Had we the time and the brains, I'd like to post more pieces like neoneo's Give Me Liberty or Give Me Social Justice along with our usual eclectic mix of fun and/or informative non-political stuff.
Having thoughts and ideas is a discipline, like prayer. But disciplines can become good habits over time.
This year, I resolve to think more.
Related, College asks students to power down, contemplate
And here's a Google Tech Talk on the topic from Computer Science Prof. David Levy -
The charming New Year's Babe is via Theo, of course.
Thursday, December 31. 2009
Except for the lift lines one can expect this weekend, I wouldn't mind waking up tomorrow morning in Killington:
So I learn from my post yesterday about HDR that I now have to learn about Ansel Adams' Zone System. Sheesh. I just like to take casual family snaps.
I do not aspire to be an expert in this. Can't do everything.
Wednesday, December 30. 2009
 Probably yes.
While I am quite pleased and content with my own (first) marriage, when I talk with unhappy people, which I do all day, I am often reminded that the nuclear family is a very recent invention, that the notion of romantic love is also recent, that arranged marriages and marriages of convenience or necessity were the norms of the past, and that humans are not "naturally" monogamous - whatever I might mean by "naturally".
When you put the nuclear family together with dreams of enduring romantic love, it's a set-up for disappointment. The nuclear family, unlike the extended family (or the tribe), is isolating and does not provide a broad base of support in life. Intense romantic love, unlike plain old-fashioned strong attraction and desire, is a regressed state of mind - some shrinks half-jokingly call it a form of insanity. Not that it isn't great fun, but it gives way to reality in time, although the best marriages can rekindle the old feeling from time to time.
One thing that is probably not talked about enough is how many marriages are not founded in "true love," but instead are founded on loneliness, desire for companionship, desire for babies, desire for security, fear of becoming an old maid, friendship, desire for a social foundation, etc. This is not a bad thing, but I sometimes wonder whether the contrived and ridiculously costly fairy-tale trappings of the typical American wedding is designed to obscure those facts. Young folks these days often talk about having "friends with benefits" while they await true love, without realizing that "friends with benefits" can be one description of one kind of satisfying marriage.
But to get back on track here, yes, I believe that we tend to wish that a marriage could meet all of our emotional and physical needs. Shrinks term that a regressive, ie childish, wish - not just because it is unrealistic, but also because if emphasizes the "meeting my needs" aspect of a relationship rather than emphasizing "how can I try to give these people (wife, kids) a good life".
It's a truism that people thrive when they have multiple sources for emotional care, and many outlets for love and caring. Friends, colleagues, neighbors, members of clubs or churches, etc, Making and keeping good friends is not really an easy thing to do, and I don't know anyone who doesn't want one, or doesn't want another one. In fact, I suspect that one reason moms want jobs these days is because they feel isolated with their kids.
Althouse noted a NYT op-ed piece by History Prof Stephanie Coontz about the limits of marriage. Althouse comments:
The problem, in Coontz's view, is not only that we deny ourselves the happiness to be found in friendships, but also that by expecting so much from one romantic relationship, we can put so much pressure on it that it breaks. What's worse, if the marriage was our source of happiness, we have nothing.
Quotes from the Coontz piece:
A study released this year showed just how dependent we’ve become on marriage. Three sociologists at the University of Arizona and Duke University found that from 1985 to 2004 Americans reported a marked decline in the number of people with whom they discussed meaningful matters. People reported fewer close relationships with co-workers, extended family members, neighbors and friends. The only close relationship where more people said they discussed important matters in 2004 than in 1985 was marriage.
In fact, the number of people who depended totally on a spouse for important conversations, with no other person to turn to, almost doubled, to 9.4 percent from 5 percent. Not surprisingly, the number of people saying they didn’t have anyone in whom they confided nearly tripled.
The solution to this isolation is not to ramp up our emotional dependence on marriage. Until 100 years ago, most societies agreed that it was dangerously antisocial, even pathologically self-absorbed, to elevate marital affection and nuclear-family ties above commitments to neighbors, extended kin, civic duty and religion.
Read the whole thing here.
Mr. Nyquist has a post about truth, with abundant cool quotes including this from Nietzche: "Nobody dies nowadays of a fatal truth. There are too many antidotes to them." A quote from his piece:
Truth never grows old, unlike the daily news or petty gossip. The truth, furthermore, requires special handling. Those who bungle had best carry a lie. In this regard, we should think on government and bureaucrats. "It is error alone that needs the support of government," wrote Thomas Jefferson. "Truth can stand by itself." And of course, it usually does stand by itself -- with nobody anywhere near it. "I tell the truth, not as much as I would but as much as I dare," wrote Montaigne. "And I dare more and more as I grow older."
There is also Oscar Wilde's admonition: "If one tells the truth, one is sure, sooner or later, to be found out." Or as they say in Yugoslavia, "Speak the truth and run."
This one came in over the transom a few years ago:
Sales: "You want answers?"
Finance: "I think we are entitled to them!"
Sales: "You want answers?!"
Finance: "I want the truth!"
Sales: "You can't handle the truth!!! Son, we live in a world that requires net license revenue. And that revenue must be brought in by people with elite skills. Who's going to find it? You? You, Mr. Operations? We have a greater responsibility than you can possibly fathom.
You scoff at the sales division and you curse our lucrative incentives.
You have that luxury. You have the luxury of not knowing what we know:
That while the cost of business results are excessive, it drives revenue. And my very existence, while grotesque and incomprehensible to you, drives REVENUE! You don't want to know the truth because deep down in places you don't talk about at staff meetings ... you want me on that call. You NEED me on that call!
We use words like upgrades, another round, top-shelf, medium-rare, on-the-rocks, cabernet, Cohiba and foursome. We use these words as the backbone of a life spent negotiating something. You use them as a punch line!
I have neither the time nor the inclination to explain myself to people who rise and sleep under the very blanket of revenue I provide and then question the manner in which I provide it. I would rather you just said "thank you" and went on your way. Otherwise I suggest you pick up a phone and make some sales calls. Either way, I don't give a damn what you think you're entitled to!"
Finance: "Did you expense the lap dancers?"
Sales: "I did the job I was hired to do."
Finance: "Did you expense the lap dancers?!"
Sales: "You're goddamn right I did!"
Monday, December 28. 2009
I should have known that the line to get into the Guggenheim yesterday would wrap around the block. Thus we just returned the pupette to her apartment with her Christmas loot in time for her to cook a post-Christmas dinner for friends (I think Julia and Julie inspired her), and we banged around town a little. Lousy photographer.
I do love NYC for its vitality. I think this is the Ukrainian mission to the UN on the right:
The walk-up in Yorkville on 85th where Mrs. BD first lived when she moved to NYC. I hiked up those stairs many times to the fifth floor. It was worth the effort.
Very convenient to the dry-cleaners -
More below the fold -
Continue reading "NYC yesterday"
"The Flanker is by far the most extraordinary, high-performance aircraft you can own. Period."
There are two restored Sukhoi SU-27s for sale to the general public here. Military hardware removed, alas. Travel in style and speed - if not in comfort, and no worry about Jihadist bombers.
Why not buy both of them for a matched pair? When one is in the shop, no problem.
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