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.
Women are indeed fickle. Alagna's name was mentioned in our free ad for the Met's HD live series. A transplanted Sicilian raised in France, his preference seems to be French lyric opera. Here he is, not in a French lyric opera but singing with authority out of his oatmeal hole:
For some opera fun, see continuation page below in which Alagna storms off the stage at La Scala (a tough, demanding crowd, unlike the Met, where most do not know the difference and will offer "bravas" to anybody famous regardless of their effort) after being booed, and is instantly replaced by his understudy (in jeans). Wish I had been there.
I read the New York Sun daily, online. However, the full dead tree version is delivered over most of the NY metropolitan area. Their sports department is way above average - and they are not Marxists.
Don't miss the return of the Metropolitan Opera — Live in High Definition.The series opens this Saturday, December 15, with Gounod's ultra–sensual Roméo et Juliette, starring Anna Netrebko and Roberto Alagna in a performance beamed to theaters in 14 countries. Due to high demand for tickets, additional locations have been added, so be sure to check out the links below. In most countries, tickets for the entire series–including encore performances in select locations–are now on sale.
Join us for world class opera this Saturday!
For theater locations around the US and the world, and details, click here. Now this is a fine use of technology.
New Rule: No more gift registries. You know, it used to be just for weddings. Now it's for babies and new homes and graduations from rehab. Picking out the stuff you want and having other people buy it for you isn't gift giving, it's the white people version of looting.
New Rule: Stop giving me that pop-up ad for classmates.com! There's a reason you don't talk to people for 25 years. Because you don't particularly like them! Besides, I already know what the captain of the football team is doing these days --- mowing my lawn.
New Rule: Don't eat anything that's served to you out a window unless you're a seagull. People are acting all shocked that a human finger was found in a bowl of Wendy's chili. Hey, it cost less than a dollar. What did you expect it to contain? Lobster?
New Rule: Stop saying that teenage boys who have sex with their hot, blonde teachers are permanently damaged . I have a better description for these kids: 'Lucky bastards.'
New Rule: If you need to shave and you still collect baseball cards, you're a dope. If you're a kid, the cards are keep sakes of your idols. If you're a grown man, they're pictures of men.
New Rule: Ladies, leave your eyebrows alone. Here's how much men care about your eyebrows: Do you have two of them? Good, we're done.
New Rule:There's no such thing as flavored water. There's a whole aisle of this crap at the supermarket, water, but, without that watery taste. Sorry, but flavored water is called a soft drink. You want flavored water? Pour some scotch over ice and let it melt. That's your flavored water.
New Rule: Stop screwing with old people. Target is introducing a redesigned pill bottle that's square, with a bigger label. And the top is now the bottom. And by the time grandpa figures out how to open it, his ass will be in the morgue. Congratulations, Target, you just solved the Social Security crisis.
New Rule: The more complicated the Starbucks order, the bigger the a ** hole. If you walk into a Starbucks and order a 'decaf grandee, half-soy, half-low fat, iced vanilla, double-shot, gingerbread cappuccino, extra dry, light ice, with one Sweet-n'-Low, and One NutraSweet,' ooooh, you're a huge a ** hole.
New Rule: I'm not the cashier! By the time I look up from sliding my card, entering My PIN number, pressing 'Enter,' verifying the amount, deciding, no, I don't want Cash back, and pressing 'Enter' again, the kid who is supposed to be ringing me up is standing there eating my Almond Joy.
New Rule: Just because your tattoo has Chinese characters in it doesn't make you Spiritual. It's right above the crack of your a ** . And it translates to 'beef with broccoli.' The last time you did anything spiritual, you were praying to God you weren't pregnant. You're not spiritual. You're just high.
New Rule: Competitive eating isn't a sport. It's one of the seven deadly sins. ESPN Recently televised the U.S. Open of Competitive Eating, because watching those athletes at the poker table was just too damned exciting. What's next, competitive farting? Oh wait, they're already doing that. It's called 'The Howard Stern Show.'
New Rule: I don't need a bigger mega M&Ms. If I'm extra hungry for M&Ms, I'll go nuts and eat two.
New Rule: If you're going to insist on making movies based on crappy old television shows, then you have to give everyone in the Cineplex a remote so we can see what's playing on the other screens. Let's remember the reason something was a television show in the first place is that the idea wasn't good enough to be a movie.
New Rule: And this one is long overdue: No more bathroom attendants. After I zip up, some guy is offering me a towel and a mint like I just had sex with George Michael. I can't even tell If he's supposed to be there, or just some freak with a fetish. I don't want to be on your webcam, Dude. I just want to wash my hands
New Rule: When I ask how old your toddler is, I don't need to hear '27 months.' 'He's two' will do just fine. He's not a cheese. And I didn't really care in the first place.
New Rule: If you ever hope to be a credible adult and want a job that pays better than minimum wage, then for God's sake don't pierce or tattoo every available piece of flesh. If so, then plan your future around saying, 'Do you want fries with that?'
Thanks, Lawrence, for linking our Darwin and Religion piece, which was a response to your mini-essay. When we get linked by Insty or Powerline, we usually graciously thank them via email, but these are deeper waters in which to swim. Thanks to a good blog pal on our beloved upper West Side of Manhattan, where I spent many good years, long ago. Chasing girls and talking politics and drinking beer and listening to the music at the West End. "Hey, Jude." Flip side, "Revolution." Am I old? Naw, not yet. A touch of grey.
Vanderleun rates Van Morrison one of the great souls of our time. So do I. I have heard "Brown-Eyed Girl" more than enough times, but not "These are the Days." If you don't know that tune, find it. Read Vanderleun's piece, and listen, if you wish, to this YouTube long version of T.B. Sheets he posted:
Where your treasure is, there will also be your heart. Matthew 6:21
Americans are the most giving, generous people in the world. They may hate giving money at gunpoint (taxes), but they take great joy in giving by choice.
If you feel the desire to give either money or time this Christmas, I highly recommend The Salvation Army to you as a worthy recipient.
(Full disclosure: Besides various local charities and my usual membership donations to orgs like the NRA, The Ruffed Grouse Society, and many others, this year I am giving larger checks to The Salvation Army, my prep school, The Nature Conservancy, my church, Ducks Unlimited, World Vision, Doctors Without Borders, and the Marine Corps Scholarship Fund)
Another one from Nashville, on Blair Boulevard. Even though this house is one of the few on the rapidly gentrifying street (a 20s era streetcar suburb) that has not been repaired and renovated, its charm and authenticity are undeniable. For anyone who's thinking about moving to town, this place was just put on the market for $400,000, as is.
A teleology is a basic component of most religions. As I understand it, Darwinian evolution contains no teleology and is based on random variation which "leads" nowhere.
However, even our non-scientific use of the word "evolution" connotes a sense of "progress." Philosophical naturalism cannot speak of progress, or "success" or "need" or "purpose" - only of temporary adaptations and maladaptations to conditions based on accidental genetic events.
As the very lame Wikipedia entry says correctly:
Teleology would argue that a person has eyes because he has the need of eyesight, form follows function, while naturalism is the reverse of this position: it would say that a person has sight simply because he has eyes, or that function follows form (eyesight follows from having eyes).
Auster discusses this in a short piece on the subject (The Intellectual Fraud which is Darwinism). Fact is, people have a tendency to fallaciously (via the pathetic, or anthropomorphic fallacy -or more specifically, personification) apply human notions like intent or direction to a Darwinian world-view which entirely lacks intent or purpose - but which does contain design (as humans comprehend it - eg snowflakes). Thus they impose a religious-like teleology upon a theoretically meaningless, purposeless and indifferent nature. This has no source in Darwin or in modern evolutionary theory, which reject any meaning or purpose in nature.
In fact, the source of the teleology in science is the human desire to impose human notions of purpose on nature.
Now one might argue that the use of animating figures of speech is nothing more that a way of making something dead feel more vivid and compelling - and that may be the case - but I believe that the figures of speech we use reflect how we really think about things.
Tropes, with repetition, aquire a sort of pseudo-substance - a mental substantiality in the absense of reality. This is termed "reification." Reified tropes may be the origins of religious ideas.
In that way, our animation of an indifferent nature with delusions of purpose and direction permits us to extend the notion of evolution to history, society, human activity, and even to the notion of human perfectability - as if "things" were "leading" anywhere: that is closer to religion than to Darwinism.
But is it even possible to talk or think effectively without using figures of speech, without tropes (outside of math and formal logic, which may also be tropes of a different sort)? And is it possible for a human being to not reify some of their tropes, resulting in a religious-like belief or faith in them? ("My raspberries like full sun," "The earth has a fever," "Mankind and society are stumblingly evolving towards better, kinder realities," "Species seek adaptation," and so forth. Doesn't such language form a teleological foundation for a primitive religion? I say "primitive" because based on a "Ghost in the Machine" category error.)
This is long enough, but these sophomoric musings could go on and on. (Mind you, this is written mainly from the standpoint of philosophical naturalism/materialism, as if that were the ground I stand on. It's not. When I hear the Messiah - or even listen to Alicia Keys, I cannot stand on that ground. And that's my point - no-one really can for very long unless they deaden their brain.)
Many thanks to Ed Driscoll for finding this highly enjoyable talk by Tom Wolfe at Duke last year, titled "What is Southern Today?" (It's about an hour, but well worth it.) Also, thanks to Ed Driscoll for introducing us to FORA.tv.
Best quote: Young writers are told "Write what you know." OK, but what do you know?
The Internet is a wonderful mess. I use it for most everything, including my livelihood now. I am deathly sick of about 90% of it, but that's OK, as you'd have to live to be a thousand to look at 10% of it anyway.
There is an infantile sense of humor on the tubes that I find endearing. There's a really nasty sort of discourse that is its fellow traveler, so you have to sort of pan for your comedy gold, but it's there. And it's not always for the meek.
Anyway, the Internet has decided that Hitler is funny. I applaud this derision. There's a kind of psychosis that goes along with it that we could do without --that decidedly milquetoast politicians or the former CEOs of software companies or people that try to stop you from stealing movies on bittorrent sites are Hitler, who is not funny at all when you're a very emo commenter on webpages looking to get the silly comparison meter to go to eleven. Hitler is very bad when George Bush is Hitler, and very funny the rest of the time, apparently.
It's not new to make fun of Hitler. During WWII, Hitler was made sport of by everybody from Charlie Chaplin to the Three Stooges. In a way, I suppose the dead bastard would prefer to be remembered like he is in Germany -- spoken in a serious whisper with a sense of dread, by law. I like it much better to watch an old Looney Tunes cartoon and see a bunch of Jews in Hollywood make a mockery of him.
GEORGE CARLIN'S NEW RULES FOR 2008 
Where your treasure is, there will also be your heart. Matthew 6:21
A teleology is a basic component of most religions. As I understand it, Darwinian evolution contains no teleology and is based on random variation which "leads" nowhere.
I am an Internaut.