Wednesday, December 5. 2007
34 days out (4736 miles) - Lat 1.40" S Long 29.50 W June 5th We are enjoying the lovely climate of the S.E. Trades. The atmosphere is perfectly fine and the air cool and bracing. The sky is of a most lovely blue and at Sunset the clouds assumed colors which I have never seen but in these latitudes. "Parting day / Dies like the Dolphin, whom each pang imbues / With a new color as it gasps away / The last still loveliest till - 'tis gone - and all is grey."
We educated people better in 1843 in one-room schoolhouses with wood stoves than we do now. Read the (literate) whole thing.
Tuesday, December 4. 2007
This wonderful. It will make you hope you never arrive at your destination, in your car: The History of Ancient Rome. It was not all that long ago, and not much has changed in the world, except on the surface. Prof. Fagan is spellbinding.
Saturday, December 1. 2007
 Just finished reading Marianne Wiggins' The Shadow Catcher, about which the San Francisco Chronicle said:
The Shadow Catcher tells two different stories set in two different times. The first is about famed Western photographer Edward S. Curtis. It's told by his wife, who finally divorced him after bearing his children and suffering his neglect. He preferred the open skies of the outdoors to family life. The second story is told by a writer named Marianne Wiggins, who is writing a novel about Curtis. She's also investigating the man who stole her father's identity, a man who committed suicide years earlier. As the writer digs deeper into both stories, she finds that they intersect. The Shadow Catcher has received mixed reviews with the San Francisco Chronicle saying, "Wiggins' net effect is vertiginously enjoyable, a rambunctious puzzle-box that rewards dives into murky interpretive waters: The more effort you devote to thinking the book through, the greater its rewards."
I am not advising you to read the book. However, it did spark my interest in the famous turn-of-the-century photographer Edward S. Curtis, best known for his photos of the West and especially his Indian portraits. (He also was the photographer for Alice Roosevelt's wedding.) . You can read about Curtis here. One interesting but unsurprising aspect of his excellent Indian photos is that they were taken well after the days of the "wild Indians." These were reservation Indians who he asked to dress up in the old style and to pose for the photos. The photo of the old Crow Warrior, above, was taken in 1908. Samples of his photos at Curtis' Wiki entry above, and more here, whence we borrowed the image.
Monday, November 19. 2007
 A wave of the long, fat, Freudian cigar to Dr. X, who found that Jason Jones at Bookslut is re-reading his Standard Edition (24 books), at the pace of one book per month.
What is most worthwhile about reading Freud, preferably with a guide of some sort, is watching a powerful mind at work, searching for patterns and understanding, having ideas, then rejecting them, revising them, and often just getting stuck. Looking for a path through the wilderness of the soul. Book 1 includes A Project for a Scientific Psychology, a remarkable effort in which he admittedly reached a dead end, and asked for the manuscript to be burned. Jones' reflections on Book 1 here, and Book 2 here. We will try to keep up with these as they come out. Comment from Dr. Bliss: It is a sad fact that Freud's thinking, over time, has become deeply misunderstood, trivialized, misinterpreted, abused, and misused - and his errors magnified. His goal, most simply put, was to create a framework for understanding the irrational in mankind, with the hope that this might help individuals gain mastery over their lives and their destinies.
Reposted from 2005: By Ernie Pyle, January 10, 1944, here.
Saturday, November 17. 2007
 Myron Magnet tours Monticello, and reflects on the mind of Jefferson. A quote:
It’s true that Jefferson had his moments of wanting to withdraw into “intellectual pleasures” that “ride serene and sublime above the concerns of this mortal world,” as he told Maria Cosway: his taste for unworldly abstraction is nowhere clearer than inside Monticello’s empty dome, a stupendous and costly exercise in pure geometry, breathtakingly beautiful with its giant, Michelangelesque baseboard and the light pouring in from its round windows and central oculus, but virtually unusable because its echoes make conversation impossible, it’s unheated, and its access is steep and narrow. Even the sumptuous mahogany double doors built for symmetry opposite the dome’s entrance open only onto a jumble of rafters and attics. But usually Jefferson’s intellectual pleasures fully engage the world: for him, the increase of knowledge is meant to improve man’s condition. When Buffon “affected to consider chemistry but cookery,” for instance, and to equate the laboratory with the kitchen, Jefferson took sharp issue; chemistry, he lectured the count, is “big with future discoveries for the utility and safety of the human race.” Did not people justly esteem “Dr. Franklin’s science because he always endeavored to direct it to something useful in private life”? Were not phosphorous matches, for example, a boon to mankind, and would not interchangeable musket parts, which he saw in France long before the Colt factory used them for mass production in America, change history?
Whole thing at City Journal
Thursday, November 15. 2007
Tuesday, November 13. 2007
From Prof Deneen, Giving a Damn. A quote: Can it be any coincidence that within a decade of the supposed renewal of political philosophy in America - the publication of John Rawls's A Theory of Justice in 1971, perhaps the most intricate theoretical justification of the welfare state ever penned - that the welfare state in America, and increasingly throughout the world, was being dismantled? The American welfare state increases in scale especially during those decades when our thicker communities are being dismantled or abandoned ("The Great Society" - in the singular). As Tocqueville predicted, it would be the ascent of individualism itself that would give rise to the felt need for a "tutelary State" to compensate for what had once been provided - albeit unevenly, informally, unequally - within the thicker webs of familial and local life. The dismantling of the welfare state is seen as a victory by the Right, but they are often uncognizant of the corresponding dismantling of communal forms that their valorization of individualism - especially the individualism of the marketplace - effectively undermines. The Left believes that the battle can be won by getting the correct philosophical articulation of Rawls's thesis, and are fundamentally oblivious to the wholesale dismantling of any real commitment to civic concern that has been a consequence of their wholesale efforts at achieving individual liberation and autonomy. Contemporary liberalism and conservatism (so-called) alike are fundamentally incoherent.
This echoes some of Dr. Bliss' comments a week or so ago on The Problem with Women. Link is above to the whole essay.
The new counter-insurgency aircraft, the A-67 Dragon, is similar to the P-51, observes A Jacksonian, who compares their specs and capabilities. A restored P-51 below: 
Sunday, November 11. 2007
 Another one from the Belmont neighborhood of Nashville. Who wouldn't want to live in this charming little home? Look at that front porch - crammed with potted and hanging plants, and with a big white rocking chair just inviting you to sit down with a good book and a tall glass of sweet tea. And despite its small size, there is great attention to detail in every part of the house, from the windows to the decorative supports for the eaves. Another quote from the Standard Home Plans catalog from 1926:
"To the wife and children home means infinitely more than to the husband whose duties are elsewhere. To him it is a place for recreation and rest, but to them it is their kingdom. The hearts of many wives will go out to The Bristol, not with selfish designs, but with earnest maternal longings for better conditions for the culture and refinement of their children."
Saturday, November 10. 2007
 12th Century Londoners put it away, from breakfast onwards. But what about the dread afternoon hangover in the pre-Tylenol era?
Speaking of which, apparently even social boozing damages the brain. That's a damn shame, because it is difficult for anyone to go through life cold sober 24 hrs/day, 7 days a week. We all need some forms of relief from reality, sometimes. But, on the other hand, "No brain, no pain:" a bit of brain damage might be a good thing. Photo: One of my dutiful wives, bringing me my daily allotment. Photo on continuation page: A fun pub, NSFW.
Continue reading "A gallon per day"
Wednesday, November 7. 2007
I stand in awe of the people out there in the world who can design and make the real things that make the real world work, while the rest of us take it all for granted as we pursue other things. There is an entirely unjustified arrogance, I think, often found in those of us who have more purely abstract work and interests, as if there were something lesser about building things that make trains run. There is surely some insecurity hiding behind that superiority - the insecurity of knowing eternal Shakespeare perhaps, but not having a clue about magnetic detection of invisible flaws in rails - or even about how trains really work. Like me, many of us would be lost and helpless - thrown back into the stone age - if the everyday, underpaid and underappreciated practical geniuses disappeared. The Sperry Rail-flaw detector is my case in point today. You could not run a safe railroad without these funky yellow machines, which you can see around regularly, perched on sidings, if you ride rails. Nowadays, they use ultrasound probes. Photo of an older one below, and details of Dr. Elmer Sperry's remarkable career here. As you can see, his useful company - one of 8 manufacturing businesses he created - is still in business in good old Danbury, CT, once the hat-manufacturing capital of the US (and the home of Charles Ives). Thanks, C., for the inspiration. 
Tuesday, November 6. 2007
Why the long hike from Grand Central Station to the platform for the 42nd St. shuttle to Times Square (the S Train)? Here's the answer.
Saturday, November 3. 2007
Article the Eleventh: The enumeration, in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people. Article the Twelfth: The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved by the States respectively, or to the people. I enjoy reviewing quaint, obsolete documents like the Bill of Rights. The online, handy source for the 100 most important documents of the Republic: Click here: Our Documents - Home
Monday, October 29. 2007
Coming up at dawn, battalion executive officer Major Odell M. Conoley first discovered the answer to our question: How many able-bodied Marines does it take to hold a hill against two regiments of motivated, combat-hardened infantrymen who have never known defeat? On a hill where the bodies were piled like cordwood, Mitchell Paige alone sat upright behind his 30-caliber Browning, waiting to see what the dawn would bring. One hill: one Marine.
Guadalcanal. Read the whole thing. h/t, Small Dead Pangolins
Saturday, October 20. 2007
The American Precision Museum in Windsor, VT. Looks like it's well-worth a side-trip. h/t, piece at Synthstuff about the place.
Wednesday, October 17. 2007
 About Benjamin Disraeli, by Gelernter in the Weekly Standard (2005). A quote:
Like nearly all successful politicians, he was a fine actor and first-rate manipulator, accustomed to saying things he didn't necessarily (wholly) believe. Like nearly all brilliant men, he could be hard to read. Like all celebrated wits and superstar parliamentarians, he was a champion improviser, superb at making things up as he went along. For all these reasons, historians tend to forget his passionate sincerity on the topics he cared about most: Britain, the Jews, the Tories, the government of England. No man ever left behind so many pregnant thoughts for his followers, admirers, and professional interpreters to ignore.
Read the whole thing.
Monday, October 15. 2007
God and Gold: Britain, America, and the Making of the Modern World, by Walter Russell Mead. Quotes from Mead about the book at Dino or Powerline. Sample: The conventional wisdom says that the history of the last 300 years is the story of the rise and fall of Europe. I think that is wrong. The main trend in world history has been the development and continuing growth of a global system of power, finance, culture, ideology and trade based first on the power of Britain and then on that of the United States. Since the Glorious Revolution of 1688, Britain has only been defeated in one major great power war – the war of the American Revolution. To put that another way, since the seventeenth century, either Britain or the United States or both together have been on the winning side in every great power war in which they have participated. God and Gold is a book about this Anglo-American world system. Why have the British and the Americans established the most powerful and influential international power system in the history of the world? What does history teach us about the dangers we now face from the conflicts in the Middle East and from other challenges of the 21st century such as the rise of Asia? Are the best days of Anglo-American power already behind us, or do we still have an important role to play in world history?
Wednesday, October 3. 2007
Israeli astronaut Ilan Ramon died in the blow-up of the Columbia. Among his gear was a drawing of the earth, from beyond the moon, by Petr Ginz, a Czech author, pamphleteer (he would be a blogger today), and drawer of pictures who was killed in Auschwitz in 1942 at the age of 16. Petr never ceased believing that he and his young friends would be rescued. His sister survived the Holocaust. The story of Petr is in The Diary of Petr Ginz.
Sunday, September 30. 2007
Hero of Alexandria, of course (c.10-70 AD). He also may have invented the use of the windmill, and built a wind-powered organ (h/t, Stumbing and Mumbling). Who knew they had organs back then, before churches and before rock bands?
Saturday, September 22. 2007
There is no place in the US with more interesting historical walking tours. The Battle for New York. h/t, Buddy
Monday, September 17. 2007
Today is Constitution Day. Good piece in Charlotte Observer, via Oxford via Burkean. 
Friday, September 14. 2007
A tip of the old camo cap to David Thompson, who found a site about New York's 1939 World's Fair. I know that my Gramps took my Mom and my uncle to see it all. Lots of images at the site. Here's a postcard of the Underwood Typewriter exhibit: 
Monday, September 10. 2007
In Belgium there are two communities. One are called Walloons and they speak French, the others are called Flemings and they speak a kind of low Dutch. They can't live together. After the war, we should make two states, one known as Walloonia and one as Flamingia, and we should amalgamate Luxembourg with Flamingia. What do you say to that? US President Franklin D. Roosevelt to Oliver Lyttelton (Lord Chandos) of the British War Cabinet, 1942
Belgium was part of Holland until 1830. It is just another artificial state, and may be on the verge of falling into pieces. The above quoted from Crisis in Belgium at Brussels Journal.
Ron Howard's new film. Trailer.
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