Tuesday, January 27. 2009
"A dark hour for the Netherlands." You may insult Christianity all you want, but don't hurt the tender, sensitive and delicate Islamic feelings. Allah supposedly hates that, and would like your head separated from the rest of your body to emphasize his holy, sacred point.
h/t to Moonbattery for this excellent bit by Pat Condell re Geert Wilders' insane and frightening persecution. Yes, we are all sick and tired of Islam and the multicultural Mafia - and also of the Dutch-style suicidal idiocy. What's in their water? If a religious belief cannot handle a little multicultural criticism, what good is it?
Our version of Godwin's Law: This is like the Spanish Inquisition. Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition.
Deeply related: Never be rude to an Arab
Come and get us, you Dutch moonbats. You are a disgrace to your heritage and your history.
From The Teaching Company. Building Great Sentences: The Writer's Craft along with Argumentation: The Study of Effective Reasoning.
I have listened to the Argumentation series and enjoyed it a great deal. In fact, listening to it persuaded me that structured and rule-bound disputation is an excellent way to get to the heart of things, if not to ultimate Truths.
It is no doubt obvious to readers that I have not yet listened to the Building Great Sentences series.
Monday, January 26. 2009
From Florence, Alabama -- a few shots from this weekend of the remarkable turn-of-the-century homes near downtown:
 Our Editor sent me AVI's piece on the inauguration and the split-verb (and split infinitive) myth. It's clear to me that Justice Roberts' inner grammatical gyroscope resisted the grammatical error in "to faithfully execute..."
This grammatical issue is discussed at Volokh. Well, I will boldly go where many others have gone before, and offer my own views on the subject.
(But first, let me say that some blog writing tends to the off-the cuff, conversational, informal (ie sloppy) writing. Most of us have real jobs, and dash it off. Nevertheless, good habits like good character tends to shine through if we have them engrained. We aren't perfect in that way, and our own Grammatical Sticklers Gwynnie and Dylanologist sit like Jiminy Crickets on our shoulder to try to keep us in line. Grammar School was called that for a reason.)
Are "rules made to be broken"? Well, kinda-sorta. Grammatical rules can be broken for effect. Poets, orators, and good writers do that all the time. However, the effect is lost when the larger context of a transposition of words (a hyperbaton) is grammatically unsound too. Here's a good hyperbaton: "Constant you are, but yet a woman." (Henry IV). Here's one of mine: "I will happily attend your soiree provided that if an interesting selection of single malts and Cuban cigars will be offered."
Life is the same way: if you do one crazy thing, it is dramatic. If you do crazy things all the time, it isn't.
Let's take a look at split infinitives. I am of the school that views them as grammatical errors and as evidence of lousy schooling (but not of lousy intelligence). Split verbs have always been a similar subject of grammatical dispute. It is difficult to have a conversation without using them, but they are awkward-sounding.
I don't want to endlessly beat a dead horse. I suppose my point is that solid grammar and solid language are supportive of clear thinking and clear communication, but that rules can be broken for rhetorical purposes - but only by those who otherwise use the rules most of the time.
Sort of off-topic: One of my pet peeves which I see everywhere these days is the use of the quasi-legal term "absent." It is a kind of Lazy English which some seem to feel sounds elevated. "Absent a coordinated Republican resistance, tax-dodger Timothy Geithner will be approved as the new boss of the IRS." What's wrong with good old "without"?
Image: Sculpture of "Grammar" as one of the Seven Liberal Arts, Munster Church, Frieberg, c. 1270. As the source notes, "Notice that Grammar has a pretty good hold on the ear of one student and is holding a hefty cudgel that could whack the split infinitives and dangling participles from between the ears of any young and stubborn head."
Prof. John Sutherland says those have been the three dominant story-telling tools in English, since Beowulf.
His Classics of British Lit. at The Teaching Company is a delight. (I hate the word "literature." I prefer to call it "story-telling.") Get the CDs and, as Mark Levin would say, Thank me.
Saturday, January 24. 2009
I wish I had written the essay Ted Dalrymple wrote in The New English Review, Beauty and the Best. It is much more than a grouchy complaint about some of the follies and vanities of modern art - but it is partly that. One quote:
Professor Scruton’s suggestion that western art had become impoverished as a result of its radical repudiation of anything transcendent in human existence in favour of the fleeting present moment, however, exasperated and infuriated the professional art critics of Sweden – as, indeed, it would have done the art critics of any western country. They reacted with the fury of the justly accused: for it is the professional caste of cognoscenti who have consistently applauded the trivialisation of art and its relegation to the status of financial speculation at best, and a game for children showing off to the adults at worst.
another
Originality is not, therefore, a virtue in itself, moral or artistic; and a man who sets out to be original without both the technical ability to express something new, and (most important of all) the possession of something worthwhile new to express, is merely egotistical. That is why the art critics, who are inclined to praise works as being original, path-breaking, taboo-breaking and transgressive, without any reference to their transcendent worth, are wrong, and Roger Scruton is right.
Where does the fear in modern art of such qualities as beauty and tenderness towards the world come from? (I am talking here of art that achieves public notice and notoriety: there may be hundreds or thousands of excellent artists who fear neither beauty nor tenderness, but whose work goes unremarked.)
I think it has something to do also with our inflamed egotism, that requires that we should be entirely self-sufficient and autonomous, philosophically, morally, intellectually and economically.
Read the whole thing. Re the latter quote, there are indeed thousands of artists today who "fear neither beauty nor tenderness," and, however unremarked, people do buy their stuff. One example is our friend Elissa Gore, who will be having a gallery show in NYC this winter:
Thursday, January 22. 2009
Nope, none of the above. Sippican built this for me, and the good guy delivered it in person with his heir as porter. I insisted that they stay for dinner, and put the heir to work keeping the fireplaces stoked.
This big box has a name: The Seven Stogey Mountain. Surely one-of-a-kind. Those "pages" of the "book" aren't painted on: they are grooves in the wood.
I think it will hold around 6 boxes of cigars, maybe more. If they come in tubes, I take them out of the tubes before putting them in.
It is not every day that you find a humidor made of 3/4 inch solid Spanish Cedar and solid Maple. The weight and thickness of this wood will hold humidity better than the ordinary, non-electric humidor. This should become an heirloom, if I can only talk my kids into the fine, peaceful, satisfying and serene habit of tobacco enjoyment. They worry about tobacco when driving cars and sky-diving and working on Wall Street are things that are truly dangerous. Hey, Obama has made smoking cool again.
After I took the photos, I began a rapid humidification of the Spanish Cedar with distilled water. I use a sponge for that, repeating daily for several days before putting any ceegars in it. Otherwise, the dry, thirsty wood will suck the moisture out of the smokes.
Wednesday, January 21. 2009
 My favorite photo of George Bush, carrying pesky cedar logs on his shoulder instead of the Free World.
 David Ogilvy had, and still has, a near-mythic stature in the world of advertising and marketing. However, his life was far more interesting than that.
Paul Carroll's WSJ review of a new bio of Ogilvy begins:
David Ogilvy (1911-99) had a grand life. He also had a boundless personality and a lot of fresh ideas, not to mention the luck of a booming postwar economy and the genius to take advantage of it. He helped transform the world of advertising -- and generally in a good way, even for those of us who usually find advertising an annoying distraction from important things, like sports.
Read the whole review.
Tuesday, January 20. 2009
One of the best sites I have seen. Newspapers from 72 countries. Click on a city to read, double-click to biggify. Newseum
The daily life of a solo doctor: Dr. Bob
Saturday, January 17. 2009
The invention of "deep England." From a review of a new Shakespeare bio by Jonathan Bates:
 Of the many influences on Shakespeare, his Warwickshire origins were most important. As the grandson of a yeoman farmer and the son of a failing Stratford-upon-Avon shopkeeper, he belonged to the country, not the city. He did not accumulate property in London, and may even have felt uncomfortable there. Unlike his theatrical contemporaries, he set scenes in Warwickshire and Gloucestershire. He had a wide and detailed knowledge of country lore and the medicinal uses of plants, using names which baffled the London compositors who set his plays into print. Bate believes that Shakespeare invented “deep England”, a rustic idyll centred on the Midlands that delights in mingling morris men and royal spectacle.
Reposted from May 6, 2005:
Save the World on Your Own Time
That's the title of Stanley Fish's oft-quoted 2003 piece in the Chronicle of Higher Education.
It is not paranoid to state that the Left, since the 60's, has targeted non-profits of all kinds, including churches and universities, as easy take-over opportunities, and the "nice" but well-intentioned, naive, denizens of these worlds frequently rolled out a red carpet for them.
Where else would they go besides into politics and non-profits?
Some of the most innocent organizations in the US succumbed, especially the national headquarters. The dues go from Dubuque and Atlanta to DC and NYC, where they are used as their HQ staff see fit, ie often promoting, advocating, and lobbying for left-wing causes. (Check to see what some of your favorite charities are doing with the dollars that go to their HQ, but you need to dig deeper than just checking their happy websites. Follow the money!)
Same thing with the universities, which are similarly naive and well-intentioned non-profits. But I digress.
Fish's central statement:
"My concern, however, is not with academic time management but with academic morality, and my assertion is that it is immoral for academics or for academic institutions to proclaim moral views.
The reason was given long ago by a faculty committee report submitted to the president of the University of Chicago. The 1967 report declares that the university exists "only for the limited ... purposes of teaching and research," and it reasons that "since the university is a community only for those limited and distinctive purposes, it is a community which cannot take collective action on the issues of the day without endangering the conditions for its existence and effectiveness."
Read entire piece.
Thursday, January 15. 2009
It would be infra our dig to award a prize to the low-class and monotonous YouPorn.com, but, for Our Favorite Gun P*rn: Mr. Free Market (It would have been a tie with Kim Du Toit, but he wisely retired from blogging.)
Favorite Gun P*rn Site (where you can buy them): Gunbroker.com. It is even fun just to look.
Best Skank Soft Porn Female Art Photos Lovely Women: Theo
Most Frustrating Site Because When You Think You Discovered Some Cool Obscure Article You Find Out That He's Already Linked It: Insty
Our Most-Linked Pro Columnists of 2008: A three-way tie between Krauthammer, Kimball, and Steyn.
Columnist Who Most Often Articulates Clearly What We're Thinking But Cannot Articulate: Sowell
Met some darn nice all-American folks today, delivering an eBay furniture purchase to us. They drove up here from the Eastern Shore of Maryland. He does intel-related stuff for the gummint. She does eBay. We almost never use eBay, but this worked out very well indeed.
Not only were they good folks, but the item was far better than described and the price entirely reasonable. I steered them to a delicious lunch up here before their trip home.
Thanks, friends!
 Since it's going to be as cold as heck everywhere this week and weekend, our group decided that we'd rather freeze skiing at Sugarloaf than freeze with the annoying NYC and Fairfield County crowds in the annoying and tedious Vermont lift lines.
There are excellent last-minute MLK weekend deals, thanks to the lousy economy.
Looks like the weather will be invigorating - around or below 0 (F) all weekend. But I've skiied at -10. The trick is to keep moving, and to try to resist the temptation to lick anything metal.
And to not overdress for the temp. If you do, you'll sweat too much coming down, and the sweat will freeze to you on the lifts. Best to stay cold. After all, it is winter - and the earth is cooling fast.
This is an 8-hour drive for me from NYC. Sugarloaf is up in the Rangely area where I have happily hunted and fished in the past. I'm leaving now, back Sunday night. Will leave some pre-posts for our Editor's kind consideration.
Readers know how much I like outdoor gear, and how I need to remind myself that when I wear a few layers, I need to get trousers a full size larger in the waist or I will be miserable in the woods and fields.
It was a balmy 13 degrees F this morning here, with snow. Beautiful.
Well, I need to remind myself of the same thing with boots. I tried out some new snow/winter boots early this morning to plow and sand and shovel the driveway and walks before going to work in Hartford, and I had not figured for liner socks and heavy socks. It just hurt.
Remind me, readers. I have trouble remembering this: Except for base layers, winter gear needs to be bigger than one's usual.
With the global cooling crisis, even those in the southern reaches will need to learn these details. Here's Dr. Merc's boat this morning in the Florida Keys (cannot find our friend's site right now, and I doubt he can find his snow shovel either):
"Making Room for Miss Manners is a Parenting Basic." NYT
Wednesday, January 14. 2009
I checked with Snopes and found that this story from 2005 was true. The piece at Snopes also includes the gracious and embarassed reply by the guy who had complained about the fly-by noise.
 John Johansen's "Bridge House" in New Canaan, CT, is for sale.
New Canaan is famous for its collection of modern residential architecture. The prosperous town changed from farmland to suburbia during the height of the modernist craze. John Johansen is the only living member of "The Harvard Five," of whom Philip Johnson is probably the best-known.
I like to look at these houses, but would not want to live in them. For life, I prefer rambling, drafty, random, cozy structures with plenty of fireplaces, and which were never really designed, but just kinda grew over time, like Topsy.
They are asking $5 million for this small but striking house. I am told it needs some "repairs." I like it, but I do not want it.
You can read about the Bridge House here.
Tuesday, January 13. 2009
Some people just can't get enough sailing. These folks were frostbiting last weekend in 23 degrees on a breezy Long Island Sound. Yes, there is a rescue boat in case you fall overboard or capsize - which sometimes happens.
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