Wednesday, September 7. 2005
 Matisse
However familiar his work is, the man himself has been a mystery. No longer. From Schjeldhal's review of Spurling's multi-volume biography of Henri Matisse, in The New Yorker: How can intellectual potency be claimed for an artist whose specialty, by his own declared ambition, was easeful visual bliss? It’s a cinch, now that Spurling has cleared away a century’s worth of misapprehensions and canards. Take, for example, the popular notion that Matisse was hedonistic. Hedonists seek pleasure. Matisse served it, as a monk serves God. He was a self-abnegating Northerner who lived only to work, and did so in chronic anguish, recurrent panic, and amid periodic breakdowns.
Read the whole review to learn more about the man who said that art should be like a good armchair.The piece above is Matisse's Seated Dancer - in an armchair. Notice the way he patterned her skin, like upholstery. The website Artcyclopedia has a good Matisse section here, with paintings listed by museums, and links to photos.
Tuesday, September 6. 2005
 LNG Tankers
Natural gas used to be flared off at the top of oil wells, but it has become economically worthwhile to transport and sell it by means in addition to pipelines. Thus liquefied natural gas tankers are a growing component of fuel transport. As of 2003, there were only 151 operating, and more being built. Most, but not all, have the distinctive row of bell-shaped containers. Their construction is double the cost of oil tankers due to the costs of refrigeration and insulation, and only eight shipyards in the world are building them. We can expect to see more of them around in the future, but their construction is limited by the numbers of unloading terminals. There's some good info on the economics of LNG transport here, and a fine gallery of LNG tanker photos here.
Sunday, September 4. 2005
On an early Sunday morning, we like to call this view from the front porch of the hunting and fishing camp "The Church of Azicohos Lake" (Maine). Use your imagination to add the spooky call of the loons, or, for the real thing, click here. Not a bad spot for morning prayer and worship.
Friday, September 2. 2005
A few quotes from Stratfor Geopolitical Intelligence "During the Cold War, a macabre topic of discussion among bored graduate students who studied such things was this: If the Soviets could destroy one city with a large nuclear device, which would it be? The usual answers were Washington or New York. For me, the answer was simple: New Orleans. If the Mississippi River was shut to traffic, then the foundations of the economy would be shattered. The industrial minerals needed in the factories wouldn't come in, and the agricultural wealth wouldn't flow out. Alternative routes really weren't available. The Germans knew it too: A U-boat campaign occurred near the mouth of the Mississippi during World War II. Both the Germans and Stratfor have stood with Andy Jackson: New Orleans was the prize." and "The Ports of South Louisiana and New Orleans, which run north and south of the city, are as important today as at any point during the history of the republic. On its own merit, POSL is the largest port in the United States by tonnage and the fifth-largest in the world. It exports more than 52 million tons a year, of which more than half are agricultural products -- corn, soybeans and so on. A large proportion of U.S. agriculture flows out of the port. Almost as much cargo, nearly 17 million tons, comes in through the port -- including not only crude oil, but chemicals and fertilizers, coal, concrete and so on." and
"...it seems almost as if a nuclear weapon went off in New Orleans. The people mostly have fled rather than died, but they are gone. Not all of the facilities are destroyed, but most are. It appears to us that New Orleans and its environs have passed the point of recoverability. The area can recover, to be sure, but only with the commitment of massive resources from outside -- and those resources would always be at risk to another Katrina.
The displacement of population is the crisis that New Orleans faces. It is also a national crisis, because the largest port in the United States cannot function without a city around it. " I would quote more from the excellent report by Friedman at Stratfor, but it is a subscription site, and a valuable one, so I hope they won't mind our quotes if we provide their site, here.
Wednesday, August 31. 2005
Sunday evening, Long Island Sound, looking for stripers and blues.
Tuesday, August 30. 2005
Translation Re our piece on translating Petrarch posted yesterday, a reader sent in this quote from the Hebrew poet H. Bialek: "Reading poetry in translation is like kissing your mother, through a veil."
Monday, August 29. 2005
 Sail a 12-Metre
Does this sound good? 12metre.com on St. Maarten has five retired 12 meters, and they run several races per day. Yes, they have professional crews, but you can go too and they will put you to work.
Friday, August 26. 2005
 Parker
We reported on the death of Rick's black lab Buzz last week, a reformed felon (Buzz, not Rick, well...hmmm, um) who was a hunting machine. The good news is that Parker has just joined Rick's household.
Thursday, August 25. 2005
From the Chronicle of Higher Education: |
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8th grade or less | 6.3% | 6.5% | 6.1% | 8.2% | 6.6% | 9.6% | 5.8% | 6.4% | 5.3% | 25.1% | 25.7% | 24.6% | 3.3% | 3.3% | 3.3% | Some high school, no degree | 8.6% | 8.7% | 8.5% | 5.0% | 4.7% | 5.4% | 13.6% | 13.3% | 13.9% | 16.5% | 17.0% | 15.9% | 6.7% | 6.8% | 6.6% | High-school diploma | 32.0% | 31.1% | 32.8% | 19.8% | 17.5% | 21.8% | 36.0% | 38.4% | 34.1% | 27.7% | 27.4% | 28.0% | 32.8% | 31.6% | 34.0% | Some college, no degree | 17.0% | 16.8% | 17.3% | 10.3% | 10.8% | 9.9% | 19.2% | 18.7% | 19.6% | 13.2% | 13.3% | 13.2% | 17.6% | 17.2% | 17.8% | Associate degree | 8.4% | 7.5% | 9.3% | 7.3% | 6.7% | 7.8% | 7.8% | 6.8% | 8.6% | 5.4% | 4.8% | 6.0% | 9.0% | 8.1% | 9.9% | Bachelor's degree | 18.1% | 18.6% | 17.6% | 29.9% | 29.1% | 30.6% | 12.3% | 11.4% | 13.0% | 8.8% | 8.4% | 9.1% | 19.8% | 20.8% | 18.9% | Master's degree | 6.7% | 6.9% | 6.6% | 12.2% | 15.0% | 9.6% | 4.1% | 3.6% | 4.4% | 2.2% | 2.2% | 2.2% | 7.6% | 7.7% | 7.5% | Doctoral degree | 1.3% | 1.8% | 0.8% | 3.6% | 5.4% | 2.0% | 0.5% | 0.6% | 0.4% | 0.4% | 0.5% | 0.4% | 1.4% | 2.0% | 0.9% | Professional degree | 1.6% | 2.1% | 1.1% | 3.8% | 4.3% | 3.3% | 0.8% | 1.0% | 0.6% | 0.7% | 0.7% | 0.6% | 1.7% | 2.5% | 1.1% | | Number of adults (in millions) | 186.9 | 89.6 | 97.3 | 8.0 | 3.8 | 4.2 | 20.8 | 9.2 | 11.6 | 21.6 | 11.0 | 10.6 | 134.1 | 64.4 | 69.7 | Note: The figures are based on a Census Bureau survey of 50,000 households conducted in March 2004, and |
Thursday, August 18. 2005
Light Blogging through the Weekend Many of us at Maggie's are on well-deserved vacation breaks, but we will pre-post some archival items. First, however, apropos of blogging, I will leave you with a piece in the New Yorker by Holt, concerning the quiddity of bullshit: Philosophers have a vocational bent for trying to divine the essences of things that most people never suspected had an essence, and bullshit is a case in point. Could there really be some property that all instances of bullshit possess and all non-instances lack? The question might sound ludicrous, but it is, at least in form, no different from one that philosophers ask about truth. Among the most divisive issues in philosophy today is whether there is anything important to be said about the essential nature of truth. Bullshit, by contrast, might seem to be a mere bagatelle. Yet there are parallels between the two which lead to the same perplexities. Read the whole thing.
Summer Reading Suburban Safari, by Hannah Holmes. Ordered it from Amazon, but haven't read it. But it seems like a great idea, well-executed. It's about Nature in a small suburban backyard. Excerpt from the Amazon review: When science writer Hannah Holmes decided to spend a year studying the inhabitants of her 0.2-acre patch of ground in suburban Portland, Maine, she went about the task with an ecologist's enthusiasm and a scientist's compulsive eye for detail. The result is an entertaining and effortlessly compelling examination of nature's stubborn (and successful) struggle to exist in the face of daunting manmade challenges. Holmes's lawn, unfertilized and rarely mowed, turns out to be a surprisingly diverse ecosystem of bird, mammal, and insect life--a self-perpetuating, constantly evolving community of chipmunks, ladybugs, spiders, slugs, and crows. These creatures, and the complex relationships between them, are the raw material for Holmes's incisive reflections on natural history, urban ecology, and the ignominious story of the over-irrigated, pesticide-laced American lawn--rolling out, Holmes notes, at a rate of one million acres per year.
Google Earth Very cool. Thanks, RRWH: See the earth - any location, zoom in, etc., all in 3D. GoogleEarth. It's a free download.
Wednesday, August 17. 2005
 Some excellent misc. sample quotes on Big Topics:
Hansen: Any Western country with open immigration from the Middle East is committing cultural suicide, and for all the politically correct pieties, legislators seem to know it. Right Thinking, on the Islamic bombings in Bangladesh yesterday: Once again the Religion of Peace™ kills civilians because their government refuses to submit to the fascist rule of militant Islam. Beck on Dalrymple and the fragility of civilization, in the New Criterion - Click here: Diagnosis: decadence by Stefan Beck : But the piano, considered as a product and emblem of civilization, is a reminder that to create is the work of centuries, to destroy, the work of a moment. Hence, many of the essays in the present volume are concerned both with great creators (Shakespeare, Turgenev, Gillray, Cassatt) and with thoughtless destroyers (Marx, Lawrence, Kinsey, Virginia Woolf) Barone on Multiculturalism: Multiculturalism is based on the lie that all cultures are morally equal. In practice, that soon degenerates to: All cultures all morally equal, except ours, which is worse. But all cultures are not equal in respecting representative government, guaranteed liberties, and the rule of law. And those things arose not simultaneously and in all cultures but in certain specific times and places--mostly in Britain and America but also in other parts of Europe. Auster, quoting Norman Davies, at View from the Right: Hitler’s democratic triumph exposed the true nature of democracy. Democracy has few values of its own: it is as good, or bad, as the principles of the people who operate it. In the hands of liberal and tolerant people, it will produce a liberal and tolerant government; in the hands of cannibals, a government of cannibals. In Germany of 1933-4 it produced a Nazi government because the prevailing culture of Germany’s voters did not give priority to the exclusion of gangsters. Thomas Reeves, at History News Network, on the temptations of secularism: It is commonplace these days for some journalists and many intellectuals to blame religion for much of the worlds ills. Look at foreign affairs, they say. The Muslim fanatics blowing themselves and others to bits really think they’re going to rewarded in heaven with 40 virgins. Those cowboys and Zionists who are running American foreign policy and endangering the world think they are doing the will of the God. At home, Catholics and others are at work to prevent the research necessary to cure many diseases. Right-wing evangelicals constantly plot to impose their moral restrictions on others. It is only the sober, educated rationalists, we are told, who can see realities beyond the superstitions and bring justice and truth to a world hungering for peace and prosperity. Rid the globe of religion and you free the human mind, at last, to create the wonders of which it is capable.
This is the dogma of the 18th century Enlightenment, of course, later embraced by Marxists who murdered clergy and destroyed churches whenever the opportunity arose. This secular dogma lives still, especially among leftist intellectuals and media moguls who often see themselves as the high priests of knowledge and learning. Woven into their arguments are almost always appeals to end definitions of right and wrong, a move that has the advantage of destroying all moral inhibitions and sanctions. Free sex for a free people. Phelps on God and Science, at Acton Inst, Click here: Commentary: Miracles of God and Miracles of Science : In the minds of many, there is a vague notion that somehow God and science are necessarily in competition. We see this opposition take form in the debates between creationism and evolution, between church and state, where faith is pitted against reason, the secular against the sacred. Why isn’t this opposition more often transferred to our discussions of medicine as well? The reason may be that physicians recognize more readily the relationship between God and science. A recent study by the University of Chicago showed that seventy-six percent of physicians believe in God, and fifty-five percent say their faith influences their medical practice. It seems that the dichotomy between faith and science, while common in popular discourse, is not as popular as among doctors themselves.
Thursday, August 11. 2005
Great minds think alike. The same week we sent out a request for rational and thoughtful liberal blogs, Rick Moran produces a leftist Moonbat Blog Taxonomy, as does QandO Blog. So our betters have saved us a lot of work. Review their pieces to see if there are any there that you might enjoy, even if disagreeing. As I have said, we don't want to be part of a giant echo chamber or a Rush dittohead blog. We have reviewed many more than mentioned below - just the highlights thus far: I find Atrios boring and predictably partisan, but partisan for no principled reason that I can decipher. Tom Paine too - just another Party hack site for their own echo chamber. And don't even talk about Kos - it is bedlam. Yglesias, like most of the Democratic Party Line blogs, has a mean streak with a "gotcha" schtick going which is unattractive to the open-minded. I had high hopes for Washington Monthly but they also seem part of the gotcha game. Waste of time. In fact, the entire angry attack mode is probably unproductive, or even counter-productive in political blogs, because it doesn't make anyone think. I like Pennywit very much. Also Brendan Nyhan. Will continue to pan for gold in them thar internet hills...developing, as Drudge would say.
Tuesday, August 9. 2005
 Lobster Pots, The Lobster Pot, and P'town
Everything you ever wanted to know about lobster pots and lobster-fishing, here. Cool facts, such as the biodegradable escape hatches for lost pots. Our family's favorite restaurant on Cape Cod for many, many years? The Lobster Pot in Provincetown. Excellent authentic Portuguese seafood - Kale soup, squid stew, stuffed cod or haddock, Sopa Do Mar, etc., - plus all the regular stuff, fresh off the pier a half-block away. They sometimes have bluefin toro. P'town, once known for its fishing fleet and its artist colony, is now probably better known as a gay vacation haven. However, it is still full of Portuguese fishermen, great seafood, and has both the old-time and the new-time local color. Don't miss the Gay Parade, if you like parades - it's unique, the height of exuberant exhibitionism, and definitely not for the "homophobic".
Monday, August 8. 2005
Discovery's return home delayed by a day- read cool details about the ride home they will take tomorrow. Plasma blowing by the windows?
Why most shrinks don't take many notes This is why, re Marilyn Monroe. Her doctor is dead, but someone supposedly got notes and/or tapes. Who does tapes? Bad idea. BTW, Atlas Shrugs has a charming photo - art, not porn - of Marilyn, here.
 Little Milton Dies at 70
Thanks RRWH, or I wouldn't have known. He never made it too big outside of the blues circuit, but what's wrong with that? All soul and blues fans knew him well. Another loss of one of the wonderful old-time guys. Chicago Sun Times. Music here. Little Milton Campbell's website here.
Friday, August 5. 2005
Blair Takes on the "Compensation Culture" Same thoughtful speech could and should be equally well given in the US: Samples from his speech on May 26 at University College: It is what I call a sensible debate about risk in public policy making. In my view, we are in danger of having a wholly disproportionate attitude to the risks we should expect to run as a normal part of life. This is putting pressure on policy-making, not just in Government but in regulatory bodies, on local government, public services, in Europe and across parts of the private sector - to act to eliminate risk in a way that is out of all proportion to the potential damage. The result is a plethora of rules, guidelines, responses to 'scandals' of one nature or another that ends up having utterly perverse consequences.
and: So, for example, one piece of research into a supposed link between autism and the MMR single jab, starts a scare that, despite the vast weight of evidence to the contrary, makes people believe a method of vaccination used the world over, is unsafe. The result is an increase in risk to our children's health under the very guise of limiting that risk. And before we all just complain about the regulators, the public servants or indeed the Government, let us just pause for a moment in sympathy. A civil servant or regulator who fails to regulate a risk that materialises will be castigated. How many are rewarded when they refuse to regulate and take the risk? Bodies set up to guard the public interest have one-way pressures. It is in their interest never to be accused of having missed a problem. So, it is a one-sided bet. They will always err on the side of caution. It seems to be part of the DNA of regulatory bodies that they acquire their own interests and begin to grow. Max Weber famously noted the tendency of bureaucracies to tidiness.
Read the whole thing here: Click here: Speech on Compensation Culture given at University College London
Thursday, August 4. 2005
Globalism, Thomas Friedman, and Karl Marx John Gray reviews Friedman's The World is Flat in the NY Review of Books: The belief that a process of globalization is underway which is bringing about a fundamental change in human affairs is not new. Marx and Engels expressed it in 1848, when they wrote in a justly celebrated passage in The Communist Manifesto: All that is solid melts into air, all that is holy is profaned, and man is at last compelled to face with his sober senses his real conditions of life and his relations with his kind. The need of a constantly expanding market for its products chases the bourgeoisie over the whole surface of the globe. It must nestle everywhere, settle everywhere, establish connections everywhere. The bourgeoisie has through its exploitation of the world market given a cosmopolitan character to production and consumption in every country.... It compels all nations, on pain of extinction, to adopt the bourgeois mode of production; it compels them to introduce what it calls civilisation into their midst, i.e., to become bourgeois themselves. In one word, it creates a world after its own image. Read the whole thing. It's about "market utopianism," and makes some provocative points albeit, I feel, against a straw man.
Thursday, July 28. 2005
A Very Good Thing - The London Review of Books - the best book review periodical in the world. You have to subscribe, but its price is fair - $42/yr. Here.
Monday, July 25. 2005
New York, Bloomberg, and A Play Spent the past two days banging around NYC, like a tourist, with visitors from California (who headed off last night to Brazil to tour that famous tourist trap, the Amazon River). All I can do is to offer kudos to Mayor Bloomberg. His polls indicate plenty of people agree (although his assertion that NY will not profile for terrorists is either ridiculous or disingenuous - I hope the latter). I thought Guiliani had done a good job with my favorite American city, but NY now looks and feels as wonderful as it did when I was a kid. NYC requires a world-class manager - not a politician - and that is what it has. There are millions of people on the streets til late at night, happy-looking cops walking their beats instead of prowling in cars, young familes and packed open-air restaurants everywhere, and a feeling of safety and festivity which is pure delight in a place that saw some bad times in recent history. The parks, large, medium, and small - are the most striking change. Rather than being filled with dog and human feces, drug addicts, criminals, winos, and the occasional dead person, with dead plantings and menacing vibes, they all look immaculate, with healthy lawns, musicians, tasteful plantings, great looking people, and a welcoming and civilized atmosphere. My poor shot of the eastern edge of Union Square Park here reminds me of what that park was like in the 1970s when I lived nearby on University Place, when you would cross the street to avoid getting near it. Now it is everything - and more - than Olmstead could have imagined. Interestingly, four of New York's ten most popular restaurants are now in the recently-abandoned Union Square area. Union Square is just a block from the Lee Strasberg Theater Institute, where on Sat night we saw the world premiere of Patrick Feigelson's one-act play "World Premiere." Patrick is pals with our California friends, and now Patrick and the French playwright David Valayre have just completed translating their "Edellstein" into English, a dark drama set in German-occupied Paris. We wish them good luck with that play.
Friday, July 22. 2005
 The Met's Own Mona Lisa
Recently acquired by the Metropolitan Museum of Art for about 45 million, this 11"X8" Duccio, c. 1300, Madonna and Child, is one of the most dramatic and important acquisitions by the Met in decades. Calvin Tompkins explains why, in The New Yorker. A sample: "We are at the beginning of what we think of as Western art; elements of the Byzantine style still linger—in the gold background, the Virgin’s boneless and elongated fingers, and the child’s unchildlike features—but the colors of their clothing are so miraculously preserved, and the sense of human interaction is so convincing, that the two figures seem to exist in a real space, and in real time." And he covers the interesting provenance of the painting. (Sorry - you cannot go and see it - it's undergoing minor renovations right now but will be back on display "soon".) Note the ancient candle burn-marks on the frame - they will remain.
Wednesday, July 20. 2005
A Visit to Roald Dahl's House In The New Yorker
Tuesday, July 19. 2005
Your Inner Geek Dr. Bliss always says "Stop looking for your inner child. Look for your inner adult." What about your inner geek? Take the test.
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