Blithely, Blithely

failed banks and FDIC procedures

2011-08-27T06:56:00.001-05:00

FDIC screwed around with banks, ignoring their compliance and closing them anyway?

Two presidents visit U.S. troops: The styles of Barack Obama and George W. Bush in photos | Top of the Ticket | Los Angeles Times

2010-03-30T20:00:00.001-05:00

One holds the office, the other is (was) their leader.

It happened on Austin Blvd.

2010-03-29T16:41:00.001-05:00

Got shot and stabbed other day at West Sub. I.e., got frozen with a local & had my squamous cell carcinoma excised by expert plastic man. Felt a tug and twinge here and there, but was out on the street in an hour or so walking down Ontario. No problem.

My mother called it a "thing." Had a "thing" removed, she explained, unwilling to dignify it further. Having a college education, I must do so.

So I look it up and read in Wikipedia open-source, AMA etc. people can check it online when they're not puffing DemCare and found this:

Squamous cell carcinoma is the second most common cancer of the skin (after basal cell carcinoma but more common than melanoma). It usually occurs in areas exposed to the sun.

Like my upper right cheek, q.v. if you're in the vicinity. Quod vide, "have a look," for the (tragically) Latin-deprived.

Sunlight exposure and immunosuppression are risk factors for SCC of the skin with chronic sun exposure being the strongest environmental risk factor.

Conundrum: sunshine gives me Vitamin D, currently a hot vitamin, but also maybe SCC. Maybe Jetstream Al Gore and his friends at East Anglia U. can figure that one out and come up with a climate-control solution.

. . . . Now. What if Doc couldn't get all my SCC? I had to wait a half hour for the lab to decide that, lying on my bed of comfort. What if I lived where single-payer rules Canada, UK? and though covered could not get care and had to wait till my cheek was exploding?

I would have to check in with my detachment philosophy. This would be my father's "A hundred years from now, nobody will know the difference," which he applied to minor irritations, followed in my experience with Ignatius Loyola's requiring 15 minutes to accept a hypothetical disolution of his Society of Jesus (Jesuits).

That's right. The great man said it would take him 15 minutes. To accept the crushing loss of his life's work. It's what he preached, of course, variously known as detachment, indifference, abandonment (to Divine Providence), and other Stoic virtues.

Marx the answer?

2006-12-24T09:37:00.000-06:00

Walter Benjamin, a long dead German genius . . . dissects [19th-century poet Charles Baudelaire] the author of "Les Fleurs du Mal" ("The Flowers of Evil") with a Marxist scalpel, among other unusual literary procedures.

Unusual? The reviewer, Leslie H. Whitten, Jr. in Wash Times, must be kidding. The Marxist scalpel is standard in many quarters, where the great visionary’s notions hold full sway. Thoroughly romantic notions, we must add, to go with us latter-day romantics who love grand schemes and never heard of Occam’s advice not to multiply things without good reasons.

When Stanley Fish, recently UIC dean and much-cited Milton scholar, became head of English dept. at Duke U., for instance, “he pretty much single-handedly transformed a staid and tweedy department of old-fashioned litterateurs into a teeming, buzzing hotbed of trendy, avant-garde professors touting the very latest in Marxist, Queer, feminist, and deconstructionist criticism,” said Edward T. Oakes in First Things for Nov. 2001.

When Frederick Crews sent up Fish with his “How Milne Works” panel, a takeoff on Fish’s How Milton Works in his 2001 book Postmodern Pooh, one of the panelists was the Marxist Carla Gulag, who quotes her mentor Frederic Jameson, including Jameson’s real-life contention that the German philosopher Heidegger's "political commitment" to Hitler was "morally and aesthetically preferable to apolitical liberalism."

Of course, the Marxist preference much predated Fish at Duke in 2001. “Marx goes to the heart of the problem,” the critic Dwight MacDonald wrote to a college classmate in 1936. To the same man he wrote: “I’m growing more and more intolerant of those who stand—or rather squat — in the way of radical progress, the more I learn about the conservative businesses that run this country and the more I see of the injustices done people under this horrible capitalist system.”

Joseph Epstein is quoting MacDonald in his review of A Moral Temper: The Letters of Dwight Macdonald (Ivan R. Dee) in The New Criterion for November 2001.

It’s all an infitesimal part of the American intellectals’ love affair with pie in the sky as offered by the sage of the British Museum, who had not the slightest idea how his vision would become reality but loved it anyhow, as did and do his followers in academe — like the guy looking into the clear but deep pond (still waters, you know) who bent over to kiss his reflection and fell in, never more to breath God’s air. Yes, it’s you I’m talking about, Narcissus, wherever you are in 2006.

As for Benjamin, he “saw in Baudelaire a tragic magnificence,” says reviewer Whitten, who credits him with giving us “extraordinary insights” into Baudelaire, who died of illness related to the veneral disease he had gotten in his teens. The book is THE WRITER OF MODERN LIFE: ESSAYS ON CHARLES BAUDELAIRE, by Benjamin, ed. Michael W. Jennings (Belknap Press). Whitten, author of The Rebel: Poems by Charles Baudelaire -- American Versions, takes Benjamin seriously here, let the record show.

Shirt wisdom

2006-12-14T15:28:00.000-06:00

Shirt in Shirtworks window: “I’m sorry (in advance).” Very good. Captures the pro forma nonsense of the very public apology, as by comics who go off half-cocked.

You were wondering about me?

2006-12-08T10:26:00.000-06:00

So was I. I took a test at How Liberal Or Conservative Are You? and discovered this:

***Your Political Profile:***

Overall: 85% Conservative, 15% Liberal

Social Issues: 75% Conservative, 25% Liberal

Personal Responsibility: 50% Conservative, 50% Liberal

Fiscal Issues: 100% Conservative, 0% Liberal

Ethics: 100% Conservative, 0% Liberal

Defense and Crime: 100% Conservative, 0% Liberal

============

How did I merit this? By my answers to these qq:

Protecting the environment is a primary social responsibility we have, regardless of how it effects businesses.

· Not exactly

· True

Immigration policies

· Should be less strict. Immigrants enhance this country.

· Should be more strict. Too many people enter illegally.

Gay marriage

· Should be legal and given the same rights as heterosexual marriage.

· Should not be legal. Marriage is between a man and a woman.

Public education could be improved by

· Having a voucher system

· Revoking No Child Left Behind

If you smoke marijuana...

· You should be punished with a slap on the wrist

· It's your business

Affirmative action

· Gives minorities and women a level playing field

· Is unfair, outdated, and hurts those with the most merit

Carrying a gun is:

· Taking responsibility for one's own defense, and admirable

· Dangerous and sketchy

Some people have less luck than others

· False

· True

Social Security:

· Is simply a transfer payment that should be replaced by personal accounts

· Can easily be fixed by making the rich and employers pay more

Taxes should be...

· Cut to stimulate the economy and give people more of their money back.

· Something the rich pay more of. They can afforded.

It's more important for our country

· Reduce the deficit and national debt

· To help the poor and helpless

The Fed should be more concerned with

· Controllling unemployment

· Controlling inflation

The only social responsibility of a company should be to deliver a profit to its shareholders.

· False

· True

Everyone has a right to health care, even if they can't afford it

· False

· True

All authority, by its nature, should be questioned

· False

· True

Abortion should be...

· Completely legal and available

· Restricted, discouraged, or illegal

Military action that defies international law is sometimes justified.

· True

· False

The war in Iraq is justified

· True

· False

The problem with the US justice system is:

· Too many plea bargains and loose interpretations of law

· Not enough rehabilitation and prisoner's rights

The death penalty

· Is appropriate in select cases

· Is a violation of human rights

Close call

2006-12-04T09:25:00.000-06:00

Firefox just saved my bacon, as it does with its anti-phishing service. Bank of America stuff this time. BEWARE!

Trapped

2006-12-03T21:29:00.000-06:00

Ostensibly picking up on gospel notion of not being distracted by lesser concerns, preacher digs up tried and true chestnut, list of woes of rest of world compared to us, offering exercise in guilt-tripping for one of your most guilt-prone of audiences: sunday churchgoers, especially those eager beavers who show up at early mass.

It's like telling a dirty joke at Vegas, easy way to get a laugh; so here it's easy way to get attention. Cheaply. It's a double win for preacher, who fills his need (a) to get our attention and (b) to promulgate his sense of what's right and wrong with the world.

Meanwhile, as to being caught in a trap, which is the gospel message, one in which Christians are too often caught is that of self-flagellation. But the preacher prefers to see us in that trap and in fact facilitates it.

Delicious, informative

2006-11-11T18:39:00.000-06:00

Red Baron four-cheeze pizza deserves a huzzah or two or three. The lady of our house and I just had it for Sat. night dinner after a hard day of shopping and reading — she did the former, I the latter (about blogging). And we are ecstatic or at least well pleased. Buy some today!

The reading was of a book I can also recommend, Blog Wild!: a Guide for Small Business Blogging, by Andy Wibbels, a Portfolio book from Penguin. Even for the blogger of several years like me, it has good info, mainly so far, at p. 50 of 275, on technical aspects. The author, “a blogging evangelist,” offers his GoBlogWild site for further reference.

Bon Mot

2006-09-01T08:16:00.000-05:00

“When I run, I feel God’s pleasure,” said the runner in “Chariots of Fire,” quoted by Bill Bennett just now on his “Morning in America” show on WIND-AM-Chi.

That’s a good one.

Let's get our verbs right

2006-08-30T09:56:00.000-05:00

A jump in advanced placement test scores is good news to Oak Park-River Forest High School administrators, though it's dampened by a drop in the number of minority students enrolling in AP classes,

says Oak Leaves.

Dampened? The writer means caused? Unless the gap has been closed, in which case this blog missed a major story.

Govt schools suck?

2006-08-30T08:48:00.000-05:00

The teachers union didn't like my "government monopoly" comment [says ABC’s John Stossel], but even the late Albert Shanker, once president of the American Federation of Teachers, admitted that our schools are virtual monopolies of the state -- run pretty much like Cuban and North Korean schools. He said, "It's time to admit that the public education system operates like a planned economy, a bureaucratic system in which everybody's role is spelled out in advance and there are few incentives for innovation and productivity. It's no surprise that our school system doesn't improve. It more resembles the communist economy than our own market economy."

A teachers’ union president said that? Phew.

Sleepyhead?

2006-08-27T09:40:00.000-05:00

Sunday, 9:35 a.m. Email to Oliver M. Thomas Jr., President, New Orleans City Council

Mr. Thomas:

Did you oversleep this morning and therefore miss (a) Fox on Sunday with Chris Wallace and (b) a briefing on Hurricane Ernesto, as Wallace just said? "Apparently overslept" were his words.

-- Jim Bowman

Later:

----- Original Message -----

From: Oliver M. Thomas

To: jimbowman@ameritech.net

Sent: Sunday, August 27, 2006 9:37 AM

Subject: Re: Sleepyhead?

No was at there studio and he wouldn't let me go on because he had sheriff Lee on , so I went to WDSU and did my report there .
--------------------------
Sent from my BlackBerry Wireless Device

At Bread Kitchen

2006-08-26T11:47:00.000-05:00

. . . a few weeks ago, two women, probably mothers:

#1 with boy, probably son, age 6 or so, at his beck and call, hops up from little table of his choosing (she meets his requirements) many times in course of 15–minute muffin breakfast, depositing stuff in trash container or getting napkins. She has an itch.

#2 with little girl, probably daughter, tells her to pick a table, she picked an adult one, settles self there while woman gets muffins, even saving stool for her with her yellow and red mini-backpack, waits. Woman brings muffins, sits on saved stool, crosses long legs, pulls out paper, reads while little girl eats, looking into space, relaxed. A few bites and she's off to the little kids’ area and book shelf, gets a picture book, returns and looks it over.

Funny Jewish fella

2006-08-24T12:03:00.000-05:00

"Why are you dressed like that?" asks the Jewish mother of her son when he visits her wearing the uniform of a naval officer. "Because, Mama," he explains, "I just bought a boat, and I'm the captain." To which, smiling fondly, she replies, "Well, by you you're a captain. And by me you're a captain. But by a captain are you a captain?"

That’s Norman Podhoretz in Opinion Journal, asking Is the Bush Doctrine Dead? The president's critics are wrong. That includes the neocons.

He continues.

Which is to say that, like Ronald Reagan before him, George W. Bush may be an ideologue "by" most politicians (who believe in nothing much and are always ready to trade a principle for a political gain), but "by" an ideologue he's no ideologue.

Which is to show you can be funny while serious.

Sexual innuendo

2006-08-03T09:48:00.000-05:00

How’s this for Lib-Dem crude? It’s a list of Republicans and other undesirables who support Sen. Joseph Lieberman in his primary race with an anti-war zealot:

Who Blows Joe?

Impediment

2006-08-03T09:08:00.000-05:00

Juan Cole lost out as a tenured prof at Yale because of his insufficient scholarly record, says David White, not because right-wingers pressured anyone, as charged. The relevant committee did, however, note other matters:

"What first blindsided them," [former Yale Prof Mary] Habeck explained, "was his political involvement in so many controversial topics. I can say unequivocally that at the beginning, they weren't aware of Juan Cole's blogging life." [Italics added]

Yes. How can you be a trustworthy scholar while so involved? Can’t be done, sez I.

Lost for words

2006-08-03T07:49:00.000-05:00

Call it McLuhan’s revenge:

[O]ur new post-literate Democrats have largely come to live in an image driven, magical world, where a picture of a coffin coming back to the United States or a weeping Iraqi in a war-torn village trumps the hard fact that Iraqis have more freedom than ever before in their history.

That’s investment-fund man Eric Singer on how TV’s “images without consequences” — one-night stands without pregnancy, gang-bangers made to look attractive, divorce without harm to children — have taken over the second-oldest profession, politics. McLuhan’s after Marshall M. in his Gutenberg Galaxy, consideration of which leads Singer to see us as “higher apes at a watering hole,” the hold being TV.

That being so and mainstreamers being mostly Democrats, conservatives should be more in the game, countering this “image driven, magical world” inhabited by “post-literate Democrats” with “a positive patriotic story to be told in images that the public understands,” if offered only on the Internet. Government should be in this game:

[T]here is no excuse for having an empty propaganda war chest. . . . the failure to use images effectively to promote the War on Islamo-Fascism undermines support for, and ultimate success in, the War.

Otherwise, it won’t happen, since

most of our leading media outlets suffer from Stockholm syndrome. Unlike World War II, we do not know why we fight, and we do not know our enemy. Because we are in a preventive war, and not a reactive war with millions already dead, the government finds it does not have the same panoply of tools available to FDR, such as internment, widespread censorship and propaganda. Worst of all, the genuine heroism of our troops is buried under a bushel.

Citing the recently released movie “United 93,” which “captured the consequences of letting terrorists get control,” he calls on individual, especially bloggers, “to join the image wars on the side of America,” urging, “Let a thousand videos bloom.”

Half an orange

2006-07-03T09:08:00.000-05:00

Druin Burch MD, a working physician and teacher, does two U of Chi books up fine — DR GOLEM. How to think about medicine, by Harry Collins and Trevor Pinch, and CATHARSIS. On the art of medicine, by Andrzej Szczeklik — in the 6/9/06 Times Lit Supplement (subscription only). He’s a winner for literacy and precision, as in this:

Dr Golem, say the authors, "knows neither his own strength nor the extent of his ignorance". It is a theme that seems little more than dust-jacket propaganda, and as soon as their authorial confidence grows -as soon as they feel they're addressing an actual reader instead of a wavering bookshop browser -Collins and Pinch drop the forced analogy and get on with their real business.

Yes, that wavering browser, there to be hooked. Have we not been that person? Burch notes the authors’ “urge to popularize [that] leads to occasional melodrama.” Have we been there too? Also, there are “errors of fact” which Burch explicates neatly and with assurance.

Burch explains how scientific medicine works, as in deciding about steroids:

It was perfectly reasonable to expect steroids to reduce inflammation in traumatic head injury and save lives. Doctors gave them for years before a proper trial was done. Getting it underway wasn't easy, since everyone could see for themselves that steroids worked -at least until the study proved that they actually killed.

Folk knowledge, even among experienced Emergency Department doctors, is treacherous. The human body is too complicated to fathom out treatments based on common sense and first principles.

As for the other book, the less said the better. Dr Golem has its faults, but it’s also a “steady, generally clear-sighted explanation of some of the ordinary within medicine.”

None of these good qualities make their way into Andrzej Szczeklik's Catharsis.

Instead, his interest in mysticism -by which he means a mental system that prefers vagueness to meaning, coincidence to causation and pomposity to criticism -permeates his book like a bad smell.

This author also has facts wrong, as in his “defective accounts of the benefits of prostaglandin.”

[T]rue or false, [however,] the facts are buried beneath mountains of fatuousness. "I'll stand by you", says Szczeklik at one point, "I won't desert you. Together we shall look mortal danger in the face."

Then he dissolves into page after page of references to snakes in medical history and etymology that are supposed, somehow, to coalesce into profundity.

He is “grandiloquent where he means to be lyrical, condescendingly expecting the reader to mistake random cultural allusions for meaningful connections,” living as he is

in the world inhabited by senior hospital consultants unable to distinguish between the daily importance of their job and the ordinary nature of their wandering thoughts.

This is bad enough for the writer, but worse for us who take U. of Chicago Press seriously:

It is distressing that a publisher could have mistaken this rambling monologue for a "life-affirming work (that) gives spiritual resonance to mundane medical moments and disenchanted science by embedding them in a rich blend of myth and art". I wonder if they actually did.

He’s not alone.

Literature for the God-free

2006-06-16T21:24:00.000-05:00

The art of poetry resides in “lay[ing] verbal pattern over the void of a god-less universe,” something Mallarme could do with as much conviction musing on a box of glaced fruit as he could contemplating the “drame solaire” of death and rebirth.

That’s Patrick McGuinness reviewing Roger Pearson, Mallarme and Circumstance (Oxford) in Times Lit Supplement, 6/9/06, speaking of the poet Stéphane Mallarmé (1842-1898) —

leader of the Symbolist movement in poetry with Paul Verlaine . . . a provincial school teacher who came to Paris to live a bourgeois life on the rue de Rome, but published allusive, compressed poems, which suggested rather than denoted. He saw that his purified language gives "a purer meaning to the words of the tribe."

Purified? Maybe denuded. For him the world “has no intrinsic pattern,” says Pearson. “Poetry offered on these terms never just ‘gives’ meaning or value, it always ‘confers’ or ‘bestows’ it,” says McGuiness, quoting him.

It’s this way with some people: they decide. As songstress-philosopher P. Lee put it, that’s all there is. It’s an illusion. But Mallarme believed in the illusion, calling it “the truth, these glorious lies.”

The poet Thom Gunn has him using language “to burn the humanity out of poetry,” says McGuiness, who quotes Gunn: Mallarme “destroyed/ Flesh, passion, and their consequent confusions.” The reader of Chesterton, especially as explained by Hugh Kenner in his 1948 book, Paradox in Chesterton, will recognize this effort as a triumph of the disembodied rational.

Mallarme would make things right, however, “translating” the world, seeking not to abolish it, said Pearson, “but to perfect it.” Which was good of him.

Image problem

2006-06-13T20:20:00.000-05:00

See Phila. Inquirer story about the restaurateur who won’t take down the sign saying it’s English-only if you want your order filled. City’s human relations commission is complaining. Could be big hearing on the matter. Councilman Kenney says it’s bad for the city’s image. He means what the restaurateur is doing, but I think what the commission is doing is bad for Phila. image.

Whole-hearted

2006-06-13T09:47:00.000-05:00

The Whole Foods founder-CEO, John Mackey, is a born again free-marketer:

His philosophy [when he started as a former commune-dweller in 1978], he explains, wasn't exactly pro-profit or pro-capitalist: "Politically, I drifted to the Left and embraced the ideology that business and corporations were essentially 'evil' because they sought profits. I believed that government was 'good' (if the 'right' people had control of it) because it altruistically worked for the public interest."

(Hoo-hah with him to governmental altruism.)

"I believed that 'profit' was a necessary evil at best and certainly not a desirable goal for society as a whole," he writes. "However, becoming an entrepreneur completely changed my life. Everything I believed about business was proven to be wrong."

This was not exploitation, as he’d been taught:

"No one is forced to trade with a business; customers have competitive alternatives in the marketplace; employees have competitive alternatives for their labor; investors have different alternatives and places to invest their capital. Investors, labor, management, suppliers — they all need to cooperate to create value for their customers."

Business, he concluded, is “a win, win, win, win game." Lots of people don’t think so, however. They don’t buy into what he calls “the freedom movement,” which

"remains a small, relatively unimportant movement in the United States today," he writes [in Liberty Magazine]. "As a businessman who knows something about marketing and branding, I can tell you the freedom movement is branding itself very poorly."

Its proponents spend too much time on “side issues, such as the legalization of drugs, and not enough on the big picture.” Instead, they should address “the direct correlation between economic freedom and societal progress.

The message should be that business, working through free markets, has arguably been the world's greatest force for human progress and our collective well-being, delivering increased prosperity, less poverty, extended longevity and democratic freedoms.

Can he say that?

Fighting words

2006-06-12T13:59:00.000-05:00

Chew on this:

"That the only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilized community, against his will, is to prevent harm to others. His own good, either physical or moral, is not a sufficient warrant. He cannot rightfully be compelled to do or forbear because it will be better for him to do so, because it will make him happier, because, in the opinions of others, to do so would be wise, or even right. These are good reasons for remonstrating with him, or reasoning with him, or persuading him, or entreating him, but not for compelling him, or visiting him with any evil, in case he do otherwise." —John Stuart Mill

So much for good-doers in government, with all their good ideas for us.

Tense game

2006-06-11T07:17:00.000-05:00

“When he hit it, Broussard is pretty good over there so at first I thought he had a chance," Pierzynski said. "Once we saw it go through, we knew we had the game. It was big because we were down a couple of times and kept finding a way to come back. ... That's the way we won a lot of games last year."

That was White Sox catcher Pierzynski discussing game-ending hit by Iguchi last night in 4–3 win over Indians. He means, “When he hit it, we thought Broussard had a chance because he’s pretty good. . . . we had been down . . .”

No intent here to hold the catcher to logical talk. We know what he meant. But there is intent to discuss sports announcers’ mangling of tense. Italics will get a lot of use in this discussion. Stay tuned.

Tacos with hard-boiled eggs and yellow rice!

2006-06-08T09:27:00.000-05:00

For a candid, no-holds-barred expose of immigrant culture in New York with emphasis on Brooklyn, see Complex Tacos, whose soft lede sets the pace:

So, this morning I started to write a big long post on immigration patterns in New York, all very nicely contextualized by a super-pleasant bicycle trip to Red Hook for tacos on the beisból field last weekend. But the more I wrote the later it got, my plans to go to the gym got pushed aside, my plans to be early to work so I could go to the gym at lunch were foiled, and my pithy little idea became an unfocused rambling with no really good points or thoughts, which made way too much out of one little steak and cactus taco. Sometimes things happen this way.

Not sure I approve of “pithy” as used here, but otherwise,

Eat your heart out, Chicago Tribune feature writers!

So Economics Isn't Enough, Huh?

2006-06-06T08:37:00.000-05:00

This from Robert Murphy, as Mises Institute emailing, deals neatly with unwarranted cross-fertilizers, and I do mean fertilizer, who turn up periodically in Groves of Academe:

The latest trend for making economics more "scientific" is to incorporate results from other disciplines, such as psychology and neuroscience. Now as an Austrian economist, I welcome just about any criticism of the neoclassical mainstream. However, some of the proponents of the newfangled ways often overstep when they criticize "flaws" with basic economic principles.

For example, consider a recent CNN article that deals with "dread" and procrastination, and why we supposedly need something more than orthodox economics to appreciate the issues. Here's an excerpt:

Standard economic theory says that people should postpone bad outcomes for as long as possible, because something might happen in the interim to improve the outlook.
In real life the "just get it over with" reaction is more likely, said Berns, a professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences. He offers a personal example: He usually pays credit card bills as soon as they arrive instead of waiting until they're due, even though "it doesn't make any sense economically."

Now this outcome isn't counterintuitive, irrational, or anything else, and I don't need to use neuroscience to make the point. There is a positive probability that I might miss the due date — due to a car accident, postal worker strike, extended illness, abduction by aliens, or just plain forgetfulness. Every day I postpone payment, the probability that I will be assessed a ridiculously high late fee increases. On the other hand, what is the benefit? Buying a 15-day bond?

For most people, the money used to pay a monthly credit card bill is sitting in a fractional reserve checking account, and that's why paying your credit card bills right away makes perfect sense. On the other hand, "standard economic theory" would suggest that huge financial institutions don't pay their bills early "just to get it over with," and it would also suggest that people wouldn't rush to bring in their library books (because of low or no fines). Guess what? Standard economic theory is perfectly correct in these "predictions."

Economic understanding: $17

Another excerpt:

In other words, the mere information that you're about to feel pain "seems to be a source of misery," George Lowenstein, a specialist in economics and psychology at Carnegie Mellon University, wrote in an accompanying review of the work.

Did we need MRIs to tell us this? While you're explaining the mysteries of the universe, Dr. Lowenstein, perhaps you can help me out with this one: There's this kid in my neighborhood who mows lawns in exchange for green pieces of paper. Now why the heck would he do that? It's almost as if the expectation of future spending seems to be a source of present happiness. Isn't that amazing? Perhaps I'll apply for a federal grant to get to the bottom of this ubiquitous phenomenon that stumps mainstream economists.

My sarcasm aside, the point should be clear: Economists have known for a long time that expected future pleasures and pains yield currently experienced pleasures and pains. Indeed, without such phenomena, human action wouldn't occur at all — i.e., the actor is always acting now in order to remove future uneasiness. Bohm-Bawerk devoted some space to this very fact in his treatise on capital and interest, which he wrote way back in the 19th century.

Mainstream economic models certainly do make ridiculous assumptions concerning "rational" behavior, and much of the experimental and behavioral economics literature is useful in pointing out these flaws. However, mainstream economic models are not synonymous with orthodox economic principles. We should avoid the temptation to think today's professors in the white lab coats know far more about economics than the "old school" thinkers. Especially when it comes to basic economics, there is rarely anything new under the sun.

Robert Murphy is the author of The Study Guide to Man, Economy, and State . Send him mail. See his articles. Comment on the blog.

The man and the hour

2006-06-05T14:34:00.000-05:00

How's this for national purpose?

Upon his very first entrance into the House of Commons as Britain's new Prime Minister on May 13, 1940, Winston Churchill only received a lukewarm reception from the assembly, while at his side, outgoing Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain was heartily cheered. Churchill then made this brief statement, which became one of the greatest calls-to-arms ever uttered. It came at the beginning of World War II when the armies of Adolf Hitler were roaring across Europe, seemingly unstoppable, conquering country after country for Nazi Germany, and when the survival of Britain itself seemed quite uncertain.

It amazed the Germans, by the way, that Churchill could be photographed in his open car surrounded by everyday people on an English, maybe London street.

What he said, in part:

============================

In this crisis I think I may be pardoned if I do not address the House at any length today, and I hope that any of my friends and colleagues or former colleagues who are affected by the political reconstruction will make all allowances for any lack of ceremony with which it has been necessary to act.

I say to the House as I said to ministers who have joined this government, I have nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears, and sweat. We have before us an ordeal of the most grievous kind. We have before us many, many months of struggle and suffering.

You ask, what is our policy? I say it is to wage war by land, sea, and air. War with all our might and with all the strength God has given us, and to wage war against a monstrous tyranny never surpassed in the dark and lamentable catalogue of human crime. That is our policy.

You ask, what is our aim? I can answer in one word. It is victory. Victory at all costs - Victory in spite of all terrors - Victory, however long and hard the road may be, for without victory there is no survival.

Let that be realized. No survival for the British Empire, no survival for all that the British Empire has stood for, no survival for the urge, the impulse of the ages, that mankind shall move forward toward his goal.

I take up my task in buoyancy and hope. I feel sure that our cause will not be suffered to fail among men. I feel entitled at this juncture, at this time, to claim the aid of all and to say, "Come then, let us go forward together with our united strength."

Saving Islam

2006-06-05T14:15:00.000-05:00

Reviewing Islamic Imperialism: A History, by Efraim Karsh (Yale University Press, 288 pp., $30), in City Journal, Theodore Dalrymple gives individual Muslims credit for trying to rescue Islam from infidel-beheaders with their claim "that Islam really [means] peace and tolerance," because it doesn't:

While their implicit recognition that peace and tolerance are preferable to strife and bigotry did these Muslims personal honor, the claim regarding Islam was both historically and intellectually preposterous. Only someone ignorant of the most elementary facts could believe such a thing. From the first, Islam was a religion of pillage, violence, and compulsion, which it justified and glorified.

Not the evident truth of the doctrine itself,

to quote Gibbon with regard for what, with characteristic irony, he called the primary reason for the rapid spread of Christianity throughout the civilized world . . . explains the exponential growth of the Dar-al-Islam in its early history.

But, says Karsh, Islam was

from the very beginning, a pretext for personal and dynastic political ambition, from the razzias against the Meccan caravans and the expulsion of Jewish tribes from Medina, to the siege of Vienna a millennium later in 1529, and Hamas today.

Religion was not the issue:

Islamic imperialism, in Karshs view, illustrates three transcendent political truths: the Nietzschean drive to power, Michels iron law of oligarchy, and Marxs economic motor of history. Religious feeling, on this reading, is but an epiphenomenon, a mask for what is really going on.

On the other hand, says Dalrymple,

The urge to domination is nearly a constant of human history [including among Christians]. The specific (and baleful) contribution of Islam is that . . . by allowing nothing to human as against divine natureit tries to abolish politics. All compromises become mere truces; there is no virtue in compromise in itself. Thus Islam is inherently an unsettling and dangerous factor in world politics, independently of the actual conduct of many Muslims.

The answer, says Karsh, is for Islam to become a "private faith rather than a tool of political ambition," which would spell "doom" for Islam, says Dalrymple.

In this sense, I am an Islamic fundamentalist. The choice is between all and nothing.

Hmmmm.

Bored by propaganda

2006-05-22T11:20:00.000-05:00

[D]rawing the extreme left and right into a fair and balanced cock fight is a great way to have a meaningful public exchange of ideas,

says daughter Maggie Bowman ironically, in an extended critique of “Agitprop-palooza.”

I've done my fair share of hollering about lefty causes. But as I've grown older, and my father's growing conservatism has forced me sharpen my debating skills, I've grown less tolerant of one-sided-leftist-landslide-here-it-comes-oh-yes-THE-MAN-is-wrong-ONCE-again-wouldn't-you-know-it media. And as I've developed my own tastes and styles as a documentary filmmaker, I am simply bored by agitprop films.

Breathes there a father with soul so dead, that never to himself hath said: I LOVE TO HEAR THAT SORT OF THING?

Good sample:

I DO care about Mexican women organizing for power in their sweatshops just south of the border. But I do NOT care to see another film about it, especially if the final message from the film is the same that it's been for the last 10 films: these women are being screwed by Sony. There is a more complicated and nuanced message that this topic deserves other than: Sí Se Puede.
Giving poor people cameras with which to film their own lives was "revolutionary" the first couple of times it was done. But let's face it: Born Into Brothels set the bar pretty high. Now, unless footage captured by the poor people gives unique access to their lives that the filmmakers could not provide and does it in a pretty beautiful way, then making the audience sit through hours of low-res footage from a 1-chip camera is not worth the gimick.

There’s more, more, more.

They can't all be railroaded

2006-05-19T08:58:00.000-05:00

Editorial: Women in Prison
Although the number of women prisoners is far smaller than the number of men, the rate of incarceration for women is rising at a much faster rate than for men. Over 200,000 women are now behind bars throughout the country, most of them African American and Hispanic. And according to the nonprofit Sentencing Project, Hispanic women are incarcerated at nearly twice the rate of white females and black ... ( full text)

This from America (Jesuit) Magazine, whose leftist bent leads me to suspect the story is about unfair racial and ethnic discrimination, rather than about increased lawlessness among African American and Hispanic women. I could be wrong but doubt it and anyhow I can't access full text because not a subscriber.

However, not to pick on the poor Jesuits, this is the regular slant: increased incarceration means blame the incarcerators. Why is that? Apart from the drumbeat of mainstream media story selection in these matters, that is.

Ask your friend who's big on unlawful imprisonment and unfair prosecution why he is not also big on increased criminality. Rather, ask your friend who edits and reports why he's big on unlawful imprisonment and unfair prosecution. It's a fair question.

Woe is us

2006-05-15T16:32:00.000-05:00

Talk about a pox on both your houses! Here’s the inimitable GK Chesterton on progressives and conservatives:

"The whole modern world has divided itself into Conservatives and Progressives. The business of Progressives is to go on making mistakes. The business of Conservatives is to prevent mistakes from being corrected. Even when the revolutionist might himself repent of his revolution, the traditionalist is already defending it as part of his tradition. Thus we have two great types—the advanced person who rushes us into ruin, and the retrospective person who admires the ruins."

It’s from the ever interesting and varied “Patriot Post” from the Federalist Society.

This coarse course we have taken

2006-05-01T16:41:00.000-05:00

Columnist Mona Charen has something for us all about taste, which you can argue, no matter what Horace said:

CULTURE

"[I]n our jaded era, decency is a snigger word. And that's too bad because decency is such an unassuming virtue. Here's the American Heritage Dictionary's second definition of decent: 'Free from indelicacy, modest.' Indelicacy. Now there's an antique concept... It may be impossible to rescue the word decency in this vulgar age. But perhaps we can campaign for the same thing under a different name. Taste will do. I'm assuming that millions of Americans feel as I do about this endless barrage of tastelessness, but how will the sellers know if we don't complain loudly and often?... This stew of smuttiness coarsens our sensibilities. It appeals to our lowest selves. It makes a mockery of words like delicacy, refinement and modesty." Mona Charen

It's from the ever rich and rewarding offerings of the Federalist Society's "Patriot Post," to which you can subscribe free of charge at http://patriotpost.us/

To deafening applause

2006-05-01T12:15:00.000-05:00

John Leo gives his Sheldon Award, named after Sheldon Hackney, of U. of Pennsylvania "and a modern legend in looking the other way," to two college presidents this year, one of them Holtschneider of Chicago's own DePaul. The award is for violators of free speech on campus:

Another heavyweight Sheldon contender is the Rev. Dennis H. Holtschneider, president of DePaul, a Catholic university in Chicago. Though in office only 22 months, Holtschneider has already presided over three Sheldon-attracting controversies:

* A veteran, part-time teacher with a good record, Thomas Klocek, was suspended without a hearing after a verbal run-in with pro-Palestinian students at a school fair. He refused an order to apologize, and balked at the university's plan to put a monitor in his classes. Then he sued.

* The college Republicans were found guilty of violating a campus prohibition against "propaganda" after handing out fliers criticizing an upcoming lecture by radical professor Ward Churchill.

* Sponsors of a mock bake sale satirizing affirmative action were hauled on the carpet. The were found not guilty of harassment, but then censured because the university said their application for table space was faulty. Holtschneider denounced the sale as "an affront to DePaul's values of respect and dignity."

Judges agreed they had never seen two candidates as eminently qualified as Rawlins [of Wash. State U.] and Holtschneider. Calling the pair "the Ruth and Gehrig of modern Sheldonism," the judges awarded the golden no-spine statuette to both. Congratulations, Sheldon laureates 2006.

But Father H. had precedent at DPU, in the reverend dean who took a picture of St. Peter Claver SJ off a wall a few years ago because he had been tolerant of slavery a few hundred years ago. A black student demanded it, though Claver spent his life helping slaves and the Knights of Peter Claver have been an important black Catholic fraternal group for a long time. The dean said take it down, "it's only a picture." Go, Demons!

You ain't heard nothin' yet

2006-04-29T14:25:00.000-05:00

In the immortal words of Porky the Pig, th-th-that's [not] all, folks, as Peggy Lee suspected. Read all about her in an excellent essay by my friend Nicholas Stix at The Critical Critic. You'll be glad you did.

Lotts of stuff

2006-04-11T11:35:00.000-05:00

John Lott Jr., the anti-gun movement’s enemy #1, has gone after Freakonomics author Steven Levitt for defamation. In F., Levitt said no one using Lott’s research plan had replicated his results showing “More Guns, Less Crime,” which is title of Lott’s book that got gun-banners’ shorts in a bunch a few years back. Not so, says Lott: it was a fight over how you find such results, not whether they were found using Lott’s methods. All who “replicated” his research backed him up, says the suit, filed in U.S. Court in Chicago.

Time to drag up stuff I wrote about Lott and his offending book in 1999. Here ‘tis:

BLITHE SPIRIT

Commentary & Home for Unpremeditated Art

Jim Bowman, Editor & Publisher

www.blithe-spirit.com

No. 156, 5/8/99

Two Cents and worth it.

It's unspeakable, but so what? . . .

Gun control is next to godliness, I know. But can't we talk about it? John R. Lott, Jr., writes about it. He's an economist at the U. of Chicago Law School, where he teaches and crunches numbers. It's what those guys do. He's the kind who asks what the evidence is. Drives you nuts. Always looking for evidence.

As when people say gun ownership leads to accidental shootings, as in picking off a neighbor mistaken for an intruder. We all know that's a good reason for not allowing guns in the home. 30 people a year are snuffed that way, by the way -- in the U.S. -- vs. over 300 done away by cops accidentally. (Disarm the pigs?)

More numbers: The U.S. had 200 accidental handgun deaths in 1988, the most recent year for which national stats are available (from Dept. of HHS, morality detail records), all but 22 of them in states that did not [repeat, not] allow concealed handguns.

Contrary views . . .

Lott's shocking thesis is that we are better off letting people carry guns, as you may judge from his book title, More Guns, Less Crime: Understanding Crime and Gun Control Laws (U. of Chicago Press, 1998). As book titles go, it's a grabber, and I favor memorable titles; so he has a leg up on my approval right there.

As a thoughtful contrarian, he also gains my early, if conditioned, nod. Even before J. Kenneth Galbraith critiqued conventional wisdom in his Affluent Society in the '60s, I was alert to people who do not buy it, know it might be a pig in a poke. Right now, in this day and age, the extremely conventional wisdom is that guns are bad, pure and simple. Gun-carrying people kill people, as most newspaper readers will tell you.

Gun carriers also persuade bad guys to cool it. This is the guts of Lott's book, that widespread (well-advertised) gun ownership deters crime. He argues that even nuts look for openings, and your everyday hardboiled rats even more so. If they know or think you're armed, they'd rather try some other way to acquire filthy lucre and might think twice about trying to rape you.

Giving permits . . .

Fact is, says Lott, crime rates drop when there are "nondiscretionary concealed-handgun laws." This astounding statement is based on evidence that is: national county-by-county -- not statewide, which mixes big-city and small-town results, and not city-by-city, because "time-series" data is not available for this cross-sectional, covering many areas in one year time-series, dealing with an area (city, county, or state) over many years.

Thirty-one states had such laws when Lott wrote in 1998, up from only eight in 1985. They were nondiscretionary laws, requiring officials to issue concealed-weapons permits to qualified applicants without "subjective discretion" (Lott's phrase) -- "shall-issue" or "do-issue" laws. The most common requirements are lack of significant criminal record, age (18 or 21), and fee-payment.

Murder will drop . . .

Lott writes with the scientific community looking over his shoulder, which presumably adds to his credibility. But it also makes his book complicated. Indeed, he spends so much time explaining how he does his study that one has to search hard for a punch line.

If there is a punch line, it would be the table on pages 51 & 52, which gives the results of his national, county-level, etc. survey -- the first of its kind, he says. The table shows violent crime down 4.9% overall under shall-issue legislation.

Murder dropped 7.7%, rape 5.3%, aggravated assault 7%, robbery 2.2%. (Property crime rose 2.7%: burglary .05%, larceny 3.3%, auto theft 7.1%. The bad guys were apparently less inclined to risk confrontation.)

What if? . . .

The crime rate decreases are contrasted with crime-rate decreases accompanying a doubling of the arrest rate (twice as vigorous law enforcement). In violent crime categories, this decline is sharply less -- only 0.48% overall: murder 1.39%, rape 0.81%, aggravated assault 0.896%.

So shall-issue legislation was roughly 10 times as effective in curbing violent crime as doubly vigorous law enforcement -- 4.9% vs. 0.48%. When was the last time you read that in a daily newspaper?

Moreover, if non-shall-issue states had had shall-issue laws in 1992, and had thus been "forced to issue handgun permits," as he put it, there would have been 1,400 fewer murders in the U.S. When was the last time you read that in a daily newspaper?

Ah, shoot! . . .

Instead, we read about crime with gun and have our indignation ratcheted up with every paragraph. A Dallas man with a shall-issue permit kills another. "This law is . . . causing senseless death," says a gun-control advocate in the first wave of publicity. In 2nd or 3rd wave, it was told the shooter had been badly beaten and feared for his life.
Defending the self . . .

Another story was about the Japanese student who knocked on the wrong door on his way to a Halloween party in 1992. Bad, bad karma in that one, to be sure, and we heard a lot about it.

Not so with defensive gun use that does not go awry, however. When was the last time we (you and I) read of good guy stopping bad guy with gun? Why, even cops who shoot are under suspicion, and bad guys who shoot are no more than fodder for gun-control arguments -- you know, sue the gun companies and all that. To which I say, What about the liquor companies? Oops, sorry, we tried that, didn't we?

Speaking of which, liquor companies, that is, you know there are still people around who point with satisfaction to data showing there was less alcoholism during Prohibition, as if to justify what we decided was a wrongheaded social experiment. They speak in the midst of drug-prohibition arguments.

And by the way, you know where that old conservative intellectual-journalist Wm. F. Buckley Jr. lands on the drug-prohibition issue, don't you? On the libertarian side, yes. He wants to legalize and has wanted it for some time now.

The lady of the shot . . .

As for guns used successfully in self-defense, our author Lott refers to unspecified surveys showing that 98% of gun use in these cases is without firing a bullet. Showing your weapon is enough to send the malefactor skedaddling. He does give lots of newspaper stories that tell of defensive shooting, however, like the Atlanta woman who plugged an armed man seeking to take her vehicle with her and her small daughter in it. She shot and killed the guy (after pleading that he take the van and let them go) without removing her .44 from the canvas bag in which she kept it concealed next to the seat.

She needn't have done that, some would say. "Active compliance" with a robber is the best bet. "The best defense is no defense," says Pete Shields, of Handgun Control. "Give them what they want and run. . . It can keep you alive."

She probably did the right thing, counters Lott. The Dept. of Justice's National Crime Victimization Survey, using 1979-87 data, concluded that women stood a 2.5-times greater chance of serious injury by not resisting rather than resisting with a gun. Resisting without a gun was another story; risk was 4 times that of resisting with one. So for women, if you're armed, resist; if not, don't.

Why read it when you know you won't like it? . . .

Let us desist from detailed account of Lott's book. He's for concealed handguns as "the most cost-effective method" for reducing crime and says it has no effect on accident and suicide rates. He's in the market place of ideas with his research and is quick to defend himself in op-eds and the like. This makes him a "public scholar" and even a public intellectual, I'd say.

One more thing: the public response to his work. He presented his findings in August, 1996, at the Cato Institute. Beforehand he solicited comments from 22 "pro-control people," without success. He finally got an asst. prof. at Georgetown U. to comment. The rest were waiting in the bushes, apparently, for him to go public.

One of these, one Susan Glick, of the Violence Policy Center, said she didn't want to "help give any publicity" to his paper by appearing when he read the paper and by commenting on it. Her presence would gain media attention, she said. C-SPAN would probably be there, Lott told her. "We can get good media whenever we want," she said, unimpressed (such is the media bias in this matter). Would she look at the paper? He would appreciate her private comments. "Forget it," she said. "Don't send it."

That was in June. On August 2 USA Today ran a story on his paper, and Glick was on the phone to Lott immediately, one of many who wanted copies of his paper immediately. The media were calling her, and she needed it, so she could criticize it.

Lott was very busy at that point and couldn't get her the study right away. Meanwhile, ABC News was on the story. Its reporter called Lott at 3 p.m. saying objections had been raised to his paper and mentioning Glick as one of the objectors. The study was "flawed," said Glick. Lott called Glick, who asked him to fax her the paper. A strange request, said Lott, since you have already criticized it for ABC. Glick hung up.

In this corner, for Olin, John Lott? . . .

Other pro-controllers said he had published the paper in a student-edited journal, not peer-reviewed (false and they knew it, says Lott). This was the U. of Chicago Law School-sponsored Journal of Legal Studies, begun in 1972, billed as "an interdisciplinary journal of theoretical and empirical research on law and legal institutions" to which "economists, political scientists, sociologists, and other social scientists, as well as legal scholars," contribute.

They also said his research was funded by the gun industry, because he is an Olin Fellow at the U. of C. Law School, as in Olin Corp., an ammo manufacturer. Chicago's own Dan Kotowski, of the Ill. Council Against Handgun Violence, had the relevant Olin subsidiary, Winchester, making guns (not so) and called it "more than a coincidence" that Lott's study said what it did.

So in effect did then-Congr. Charles Schumer of NY (now Sen.) in the Wall St. Journal, though he did say it might be a coincidence that "one of the nation's largest gun manufacturers" (not) was funding the Olin Foundation and thus the Olin Fellowship (also not).

(Kotowski spoke at a press conference organized by the Violence Policy Center, whose president three days earlier had spent an hour listening to the U. of Chi press office explain how university funding works.)

What about that law school? . . .

To the breach came William Simon, Olin Found. President and Secretary of the Treasury under Reagan. The Olin Foundation, said Simon, in an impassioned defense in the Journal, is "as independent of the Olin Corp. as the Ford Foundation is of the Ford Motor Co." It funds programs at Harvard, Yale, Stanford, Columbia, etc. but does not instruct scholars in what to write or say. The money is from the late John M. Olin. Olin Corp. has no say in its use.

A U. of Chi Law School committee decides who gets the fellowship. It's a U. of Chicago program. Neither did this law school committee ask Lott what he'd be researching. They knew his past research, none of it on guns, and judged it up to snuff. Only Lott knew he had guns in mind. Besides, he notes, if Olin Corp. was buying pro-gun research, it was getting "a very poor return on its money," since he was the only one of "hundreds" who had gotten such funding to use it on gun control.

But one Wall St. Journal correction doth not a changed climate make. Or AP correction. AP skinned back, saying the Olin Foundation is not Olin Corp., and Olin Corp. does not make guns; but only one newspaper in the country printed it. At least doctors bury their mistakes.

All the above was from people who'd had plenty of time and chances to get in on the act earlier but didn't. Nor would they take him on in public debate after he'd delivered the offending paper. A Honolulu Police Dept. spokesman, for instance, would not appear on public radio with Lott: it would only lend credibility to Lott's position.

Lott's ideas were "fringe" ones and "dangerous." He and other Hawaii pro-controllers had discussed the matter and decided not to appear with him. Finally a state representative was persuaded to appear.

We just don't like you, Mr. Lott . . .

The sum of it all is that no matter how good Lott's research, he was doomed to be waylaid by gun-control gangsters. He'd been OK before this, at least in view of the U. of Chicago law school. He's probably still OK with them. But it doesn't matter.

Science doesn't matter, nor research nor cross-sectional and time-series etc. when no one else ever did it that thoroughly before. All that matters is prejudice and upward mobility in a bureaucracy or movement of whatever it is and manipulation of media who think that way anyhow.

Doesn't everyone?

Some odds and evens . . .

Gun owners are shot more, though almost none with their own guns. Is this because they own guns? Or do they own guns because they are in more danger?

As to his choosing county information over city information (because "time-series" or year-to-year data is not available for cities), it's to be noted that crime literature in general is about states and cities, not counties. This unfortunately "fails to recognize differences between rural and urban counties."

Black vs. white gun ownership: There are far more murders and murder defendants among blacks, with far less gun ownership. Same with big cities: far more murders, far less gun ownership.

The more populous the county, the more shall-issue laws lower the murder rate. In Fairfax County, Virginia, and the two counties containing New Orleans and St. Paul, the decrease was by 8.5%, which is 12 times the decrease in the average-size county.

Faced with "extremely high" murder rates, black people overwhelmingly oppose looser gun laws (83%, say national polls). But blacks benefit most from concealed-handgun laws; people in the most crime-prone neighborhoods require self-defense more than others. Witness the West Side woman (black) with the derringer in her muff. Police are stretched thinnest in such neighborhoods. Citizens are thrown most often on their own resources.

The same goes for women, who polls say also strongly support gun control. They too benefit disproportionately from concealed-handgun laws. It's the equalizer effect: the armed woman's ability to defend herself is considerably more heightened than the armed man's.
--
Posted by Blithe Spirit to Blithely, Blithely at 4/11/2006 11:35:10 AM

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/nearwest/chi-0604110214apr11,1,5117533.story?coll=chi-newslocalnearwest-hed

http://blithe-spirit.blogspot.com/2006/04/lotts-of-stuff.html

Remember the Trade Center

2006-04-09T21:12:00.000-05:00

Try this on for size, from Power Line:

This is Iraqi Liberation Day, the third anniversary of the liberation of Iraq. Casualties are declining [thus Brookings Institution, Iraq Index], and, if Iraq's politicians don't fumble the ball completely, that country should be on the brink of becoming the world's first Arab democracy. Pretty much all the credit goes to our superb armed forces. Check out Families United for Our Troops and Their Mission for more information, and consider lending your support.

Quite a different point of view than that with which we are bombarded (inundated?) on a daily basis in Chi Trib and other legacy outlets.

As for lending support to Families United, etc., it rings a bell for me. Walking down Grove Avenue in OP this afternoon, I saw a service flag in the window of a big Victorian, a blue star happily, and was (a) reminded of the one in our window on Lombard Avenue, 1943–46, with three (happily blue) stars and (b) led to wonder how that family reacts to the pacifist climate that rules Oak Park, how it handles it.

I know my parish, St. Catherine & St. Lucy, no longer runs names of service men and women in the weekly bulletin, as another parish, St. Edmund, does faithfully. I wonder why.

It’s doubly puzzling in light of St. Catherine etc. making a big push these days for knowing a lot about each other so that we as a parish mimic family life to the Nth degree. Doesn’t our parish staff and council include service people in that effort?

Tell it

2006-04-07T07:01:00.000-05:00

Maggie Bowman tells tales of the Park Slope (Brooklyn) food co-op, featuring the mother of the three-year-old who dutifully consulted the tyke about whether to buy frozen berries, so as to appear "the facilitator of a democracy in which 3-year olds cast a vote equal in value to that of the 40-year olds" in her household, thus bestowing on the child her "kiss of condescension."

Try this in Mexico

2006-04-06T11:00:00.000-05:00

This is making the rounds. I post it slightly edited and with reservations. Actually, I have a friend, a former student of mine, who moved to just the right place in Mexico with wife and adopted Guatemalan orphans. Haven't heard from him in a while. Anyhow, he would never act this way. Read on:

================================================

If you are ready for the adventure of a lifetime, TRY THIS.

Enter Mexico illegally. Never mind immigration quotas, visas, international law, or any of that nonsense.

Once there, demand that the local Mexican government provide free medical care for you and your entire family.

Demand bilingual nurses and doctors.

Demand free bilingual local government forms, bulletins, etc.

Procreate abundantly. Deflect any criticism of this allegedly irresponsible reproductive behavior with, "It is a cultural thing. You would not understand.

Keep your American identity strong. Fly Old Glory from your rooftop, or proudly display it in your front window or on your car bumper.

Speak only English at home and in public and insist that your children do likewise.

Demand classes on American culture in the Mexican school system.

Demand a local Mexican driver's license. This will afford other legal rights and will go far to legitimize your unauthorized, illegal, presence in Mexico

Drive around with no liability insurance and ignore local traffic laws.

Insist that local Mexican law enforcement teach English to all its officers.

Good luck. It won't happen in Mexico or any other country [not France or Netherlands?] except the United States, land of the naive.

How long, Dick, how long?

2006-03-20T10:33:00.000-06:00

Sen. Dick Durbin (Dick Turban, says Rush L.) says it's too soon to decide if GW is to be censured for intercepting terrorists' calls to the U.S. to protect us from another 9/11. I say give him a few more months, say, until Nov. 8, when the mid-term results are in. THEN Dick will decide. Don't rush him.

As for the terrorist intercepts, how do Dick and friends such as Russ Feingold of Wis. think we are going to head off the bad guys if not by listening to their phone calls and why does this bother them, assuming it does and is not a pretext for bashing B.?

For a saner view or views, consider this -- a page of (libertarian) Instapundit/Glenn Reynolds items about "domestic spying."

For instance:

* While the statutory privacy laws have an exception for this type of monitoring, see 18 U.S.C. 2511(f), and the constitutional limits on e-mail surveillance are uncertain even in traditional criminal cases, the constitutionality of warrantless interception of telephone calls in situations like this is really murky stuff.

* DOMESTIC SPYING BY THE NSA? . . . it really is a major shift in U.S. surveillance policy -- though I'm not sure whether snooping on international calls that originate or end in the U.S. is such a big departure. Orin Kerr [of Volokh Conspiracy] has more. "While the statutory privacy laws have an exception for this type of monitoring, see 18 U.S.C. 2511(f), and the constitutional limits on e-mail surveillance are uncertain even in traditional criminal cases, the constitutionality of warrantless interception of telephone calls in situations like this is really murky stuff. "

I can't see any very compelling reason to bypass the courts here, especially given that warrants in these cases are almost always granted. Which makes me wonder what's up.

* To which Instapundit reader James Somers emailed:

If you'd asked me (and you didn't) three months ago, I would have said '06 is looking like '94. But it is indeed heading towards the '02 paradigm now instead. The "domestic spying" issue reinforces this. I expect CNN, CBS, etc, will be too frightened to actually commission a poll on the NSA wiretap issue. They know what they'll find - a solid majority of Americans is going to have no problem with what the Administration has done here. In fact, they probably already assumed it was doing exactly this sort of thing.

But for some people, it's always 1972 - you know, back when George McGovern won in a landslide because Americans were anti-Vietnam war.

Yes, said Reynolds, ditto I. Dick Turban may have to wait even longer for the censure moment.

Drunker than usual?

2006-03-02T10:56:00.000-06:00

David Gregory of NBC calling in drunk to Don Imus from India can be heard here.

Arabs run it?

2006-02-22T19:54:00.000-06:00

This rundown on the Arabs running the ports business is worth reading, as gathered by the indispensable Instapundit: http://instapundit.com/archives/028731.php.

Up the Danish!

2006-02-22T19:28:00.000-06:00

Anybody free to join Chris Hitchen at the Danish embassy Friday in a show of solidarity, go for it. I can't make it but want to send my best. Says H:

Quietness and calm are the necessities, plus cheerful conversation. Danish flags are good, or posters reading "Stand By Denmark" and any variation on this theme (such as "Buy Carlsberg/ Havarti/ Lego") The response has been astonishing and I know that the Danes are appreciative. But they are an embassy and thus do not of course endorse or comment on any demonstration. Let us hope, however, to set a precedent for other cities and countries. Please pass on this message to friends and colleagues.

Gladly.

Attached

2006-02-20T13:22:00.000-06:00

Reader Bonnie sends attachment about cartoon cowardice, or we-don't-want-our-offices-firebombed-by-Islamo-fascists motive for not running them.

In any case, attachments I hate, I told her; in-text-pasted I like. What I do with attachment is save it to my desktop, where my faithful Icelandic F-Prot Aunty-Vi program vets it; then I open it and open it and open it -- only twice for this much-forwarded item, thank you -- until I see the gem itself, contained in box within box, etc. Better to highlight the text, losing the pretty pictures, copy and paste it.

Responding to another item, not attached and with pretty picture intact because rich mode is in effect, about Cheney getting his gun, I responded thus -- not thusly, please!

The best so far on Cheney getting his gun is former Bush press secy. Ari Fleischer: Wash lemming press was right to be dissed but did not have to make fedl case of it:

White House correspondents "are justified in being upset," but have gone "bonkers" in pummeling McClellan.

But lemmings do that, like WaPo's Dana (Milbank, not Carvey) in the orange suit on TV. Too cute by half, he adds fuel to fire of RAMPANT MISTRUST of those guys and gals, who preen for each other. This is my problem (theirs: I'm not alone): I believe almost nothing they say. Honestly. The cuter they get, the worse it is.

-- Disbelieving in Oak Park

Award time

2006-02-17T14:54:00.000-06:00

My Tell It, Sister award goes this week to Sun-Times's Debra Pickett, whose Sorry Institute announced its awards today to an award-hungry metropolitan area. Nominations, I mean, for the 2006 award. Sorry.

Cardinal George did well but faxed his apology to hundreds of parishes -- "what is this, 1992?" asked Pickett.

Michael Chertoff of Homeland Security said he "was astonished to see we didn't have the capability," etc., which Pickett rightly considered being big about it at his staff's expense.

Condoleezza Rice pulled off "a kind of mea culpa jujitsu" by staring down Congressional interrogators. (Go, Condi.)

Dick Cheney apologized but not to the guy he shot, "And if you can't say you're sorry to someone for accidentally shooting them, you've really got issues," noted Pickett.

Now. That's what I got out of it. You read it. You decide. Is she a Tell It, Sister winner or not?

Whatever: Writing Tips for Non-Writers Who Don't Want to Work at Writing

2006-02-17T08:34:00.000-06:00

I who work at writing thought this helpful: http://www.scalzi.com/whatever/004023.html

Dumb son

2006-02-11T22:15:00.000-06:00

Here's a thought: Mayordaley II could shut up about things that have nothing to do with running the city administration. He's not the daddy of us, nor the oldest son of one who was our daddy. He's a politician who made the most of the cards that were dealt him. And he's also presiding over a situation akin to Cardinal George's, where very bad things have happened on his watch and he's not scot free of it, if only for failing in oversight responsibility.

Which means that when reporters ask him what he thinks of a baseball manager not accompanying his team to see the president, he should shut up. It also means that when scandals erupt in his administration, he should stand up and have the common sense to do something like what his father did at the time of Summerdale. The father bit a dum-dum bullet and hired a WASP academic with no sense of politics who worked by the book and then he (the father) stood by while things changed.

He (the father) was no hero for that. He was smart, at least on that occasion. The son is being dumb about it, mainly because he can't or won't find an O.W. Wilson or reasonable facsimile but also because he spouts off with dumb ideas about baseball managers, wealthy athletes who don't adopt one of the city's bad schools, and other stuff he's peculiarly ill-suited to comment on.

P. Noonan again

2006-02-11T20:12:00.000-06:00

See here for reaction to Peggy Noonan on the King funeral, where she waxes ecstatic about the former First Couple.

"God I love them" about the Clintons? Perhaps this is some hormonal thing I don't understand, but that girl aint right,

says JB on "Fraters Libertas" (which is the lamest effort at Latin I have encountered in a long time).

Noonan revisited

2006-02-10T20:57:00.000-06:00

Comment on Peggy Noonan on King funeral with which I agree totally, as they say in la-la land:

I find Peggy Noonan's style of reporting and presentation quite unsettling. She gushes when she talks in a flowery, New York upper-west-side-way. The only person who upsets me more in the way she sounds when she speaks is Hillary Clinton. She is one woman who definitely needs some speech coaching.

Peggy's analysis of Loretta King's funeral is definitely out in la-la land from the way I heard and observed the goings on in Atlanta. -- NJT

Gushing along

2006-02-10T05:04:00.000-06:00

We all should live in the happy world of Peggy Noonan, who argues today that politics at this week's King funeral was just fine because it shows the world how we do it here in the Free World. An interesting observation, I may even say insight, worth a good 200 words in any newspaper in the land. Her piece is 1,488 words, however, the product of six hours viewing of TV plus the writing, for which I hope she was paid a pretty penny. We report, you decide.

Thomas Sowell on wiretapping

2006-02-08T21:40:00.000-06:00

In his

Point of No Return http://www.CapMag.com/article.asp?ID=4563

Thomas Sowell has us fiddling while Washington burns:

When some honcho in the international terrorist network is captured in Afghanistan or Iraq, and the phone numbers in his computer are found by his American captors, it is only a matter of time before his capture becomes news broadcast around the world.

In the hour or two before that happens, his contacts within the United States may continue to use the phones they have been using. Listening in on their conversations during that brief window of opportunity can provide valuable information on enemies within our midst who are dedicated to our destruction.

Precious time can be wasted filing legalistic documents to get some judge's permission to tap the domestic terrorists' phones before CBS or CNN broadcasts the news of the captured terrorist leader overseas and the domestic terrorists stop using the phones that they had used before to talk with him.

They want our heads on their shelves. What on earth are we doing?

Go Post!

2006-02-05T17:24:00.000-06:00

Power Line has this:

The Washington Post must have been feeling left out; today it joined the New York Times in violating the Espionage Act by revealing secrets about the United States' intelligence-gathering means and methods. Like the Times, the Post relies on anti-administration leakers, who themselves are committing felonies, to publish previously-unreported details of the NSA's efforts to identify terrorists both abroad and inside the United States.

More in the liberalism = suicide pact arena. Or disloyal opposition.

Slim rode bomb

2006-02-05T14:17:00.000-06:00

Was it Chill Wills who rode the a-bomb to death and destruction in “Strangelove,” as I said, or Slim Pickens? Slim Pickens, but the mistake is, ah, not uncommon, as is implied here:

[Peter] Sellers comic wit is also in evidence in Stanley Kubrick's masterful "Dr. Strangelove," a cerebral comedy about the cold war that could have been far too sophisticated and intellectual for mainstream audiences if Sellers (with a little help from Slim Pickens - or was it Chill Wills?) hadn't had such delightful fun playing three characters in the film.

Slim it was, and thanks to Reader Chuck for spotting that.

Important reminder

2006-02-04T10:10:00.000-06:00

Yes, there are benighted households to whom “Katrina” signifies nothing but death and destruction and political infighting. But in our household, where “Monarch of the Glen” reigns supreme on Saturdays at 9 p.m. on Channel 20–PBS, it means far more.

Therefore, to read that Katrina is back tonight — as Lexie prepares for her big day with Archie and an admirer arrives to win Molly's hand — is to feel more than words can express. Tune in, all ye illuminati, and see what’s what. (Wednesday at 8 if you miss)

Saying you're sorry

2006-02-02T19:59:00.000-06:00

Author James Frey writes in a note to appear in future editions of his A Million [lying] Little Pieces, about things he said happened to him but didn’t, that he “deeply” regrets his “mistake” in the matter — at least since Oprah disowned him on her show.

It’s common enough lately to say one erred when one did a bad thing. But what if people said what penitents said in the pre-Vatican 2 RC church?

"I firmly resolve . . . to confess my sins, to do penance and to amend my life. Amen"

Wouldn’t that get the talk shows humming!

New rule

2006-01-31T16:19:00.000-06:00

What with near-party-line vote on Alito, the senate has a new way to advise and consent on Supreme Court justices, says Power Line, its first in 200 years:

Under the Alito rule, Senators will vote against a highly qualified nominee for no reason other than that they expect the nominee to rule contrary to their preference on major issues.

That’s how the cookie crumbled!

Self-serve groceries

2006-01-21T19:44:00.000-06:00

Self-serve groceries in the Jewel may be a bum deal for the customer, as T. Lili Grazulis says in a Chi Trib letter 1/21 — “an employee, trying to be helpful, asked if I would like to use the self-checkout. My response was to ask whether that would result in a discount, since I was going to be doing his job. I bet you know the answer” — or it may be a way to do a unionized employee out of his (protected) job, as Philip E. McAndrew said the same day — “I refuse to use self-checkout lanes in Jewel because by using them, I'm taking away the job of a unionized employee with a good income and benefits — but at the store on Lake Street in River Forest, a different story unfolded recently.

The unionized employee on hand to help people use the self-checkout ended up doing it all for me — I fell apart over the fruits and veggies I’d bought. She did so without complaint, efficiently. I muttered that the thing didn’t work so well after all. She muttered agreement. We made a nice meeting out of it. But the damn thing did me no inconvenience to speak of and did her out of no employment that I could see.

Movie watchers alert

2006-01-18T22:11:00.000-06:00

In the run-do-not–walk category as regards movies to see on VHS or DVD (or any other way you can manage), count “Shall We Dance” in the Japanese original version with subtitles (DVD), 119 minutes, PG! about ballroom dancing in the lives of ordinary people. It’s touching. Lots of film-makers try to get you to look long at faces and miss; this one scores. Marvelous film, not to be confused with the Richard Gere version, inspired by it, said Evelyn at the OP library, and she was right to praise this one. Japanese people will never look the same either. Get it, watch it.

Count also “For Roseanna” (VHS), a half-nutty love-affair movie (man and wife, can you imagine?) with Mercedes Ruehl as the wife, of “Married to the Mob” fame, and Jean Reno as husband, whom you may remember from “The Professional.” It’s Italian, in Italy, with characters speaking accented Italian-immigrant-style English but some Italian now and then. Sounds messy, true, but all in all you have here a relaxing movie with enough surprises and very attractive leads.

“Riverdance: The Show” (VHS) needs no introduction. It’s Michael Flatley’s gang performing in a huge Dublin theatre, song and dance at its best. Busby Berkeley has nothing on this. Run, see it.

To which Reader Cynthia:

I love the Japanese version of “Shall We Dance,” and I really appreciate your making it more widely known. Not only is it a better film than the American version, it really only makes sense in a Japanese setting — a culture where men would never touch a woman in public and just a generation ago, women walked a few steps behind their husbands. Dance was seen as being almost perversion. So the shame and secrecy of the lead character made sense.

If you’re looking for recommendations, a few other worthwhile movies are Diva (French), a stylish murder mystery with great music, The Rickshaw Man (Japanese, B&W), a classic with Toshiro Mefune — you will need Kleenex by the end, and Shower (Chinese), a charming look at a family caught in the midst of current change, with the old ways of life (like the public bath run by the old man and one son) dying out and young people trying to move into the new world, but with ties to the old (the older son) -- simply charming.

And of course there’s The Man from Snowy River, if you’re looking for a fun, romantic movie with beautiful scenery and lots of horses (plus a pretty amazing chase through the mountains on horseback). It’s based on one of the most famous poems in Australia’s history, written by A.B. “Banjo” Patterson, who also wrote “Waltzing Matilda” (strains of which you hear in the music during the closing titles). It’s such a huge part of Australian culture that Patterson and the Man from Snowy River are pictured on the Australian $10 bill. The poem only covers the events from the escape of the colt of Old Regret through to the bringing in of the horses, but the movie invents a back story to get you to that, and the amazing ride that inspired Patterson’s poem.

Happy movie watching.

Cynthia

P.S. Have you seen Narnia?

Bach etc.

2005-12-26T15:50:00.000-06:00

NAMELY . . . Johann Sebastian Bach was his family’s 15^th Johann, including four of his five brothers, and he had a sister named Johanna. Thus Martin J. Smith in Times [of London] Literary Supplement (TLS), reviewing James Gaines, Evening in the Palace of Reason: Bach Meets Frederick the Great in the Age of Enlightenment.

WITHOUT HONOR . . . Writer John Broderick’s 12 novels and much journalism went ignored by his relatives. No one "belonging to" him ever spoke of them. You can make more money baking, they said.

No wonder. His father did quite well at baking, and B’s novels "depict Irish sexuality and Catholicism in a series of pungent tableaux and portraits drawn from vivid but entrapped lives," says a short review of a biography in Ireland Book Review Issue 294.

Moreover, "his own bourgeois roots . . . solitary childhood . . . enveloping mother, homosexuality and alcoholism fuelled his fictions . . . [He] became an embittered if astringent commentator on rapidly shifting Irish mores . . . Neglected but powerful . . . his work . . . held up a mirror to an Ireland of the mid-twentieth century like no other novelist of his day."

Now if all that is not a prescription for being ignored by the people he grew up with, what is?

TIME WELL SPENT . . . What I did on a recent vacation included watching "Popeye" and "Superman" with Madeline and Johnny, 4 1/2 and almost 2 respectively; watching but not chasing ducks in the Lititz PA park; and walking the Brooklyn Bridge in steady wind and rain on the way to a radio station on Centre Street in downtown Manhattan.

A GROWTH INDUSTRY . . . When you read of "cultural studies" including "dominant discourses about penises in Western culture," do you wonder sometimes whether academics have run out of things the rest of us are interested in or whether they have tastes once regarded as kinky? And you do read of them: Google "penises in Western culture" and you get 96,900 references, so take your time. However, there’s only one if you put the whole phrase in quotes, but still 910 if you put only "Western Culture" in quotes.

On the other hand, if this is something you do not care about, skip it.

WAY TO GO, PRINCE . . . Gambling accounted for 45% of Monaco income when Prince Rainier, who died last April at 81, took over in 1949. At his death it was less than 4%, what with pharmaceuticals, plastics, banking, and tourism.

THEY’RE NOT THE ONLY ONES! . . . Historian Paul Johnson – Claremont Review, Winter ‘04 – says new generation of art history teachers, knowing little, substitute "varieties of polysyllabic waffling . . . for hard detailed knowledge."

NOT OFTEN MET . . . "This is philosophy. I have heard of it, but never saw it before," says the worldly-wise George Staunton of Rev. Reuben Butler, who was passing up emolument for sake of principle, in Scott’s Heart of Midlothian.

JEWS ALLOWED . . . Movie director John Ford and his drinking buddies belonged to a club of their own making, with "Jews but not dues" that neatly sent up anti-semitic exclusivity. Groucho Marx, of course, set too high a mark to match with his claim of unwillingness to belong to any club that would have him as a member.

A WAY WITH WORDS . . . "Love is the fart/ Of every heart," wrote Sir John Suckling in 1646. "It pains a man when ‘tis kept close/ And others doth offend [it doth offend others] when ‘tis let loose."

SEEN, HEARD, EXPERIENCED IN REAL LIFE

2005-12-06T20:11:00.000-06:00

HOPE-FILLED . . . Friday 8:30 a.m., woman chains bike to light pole outside library, so sure the pole will be there when she returns!

STEADY . . . Barber Joe shaved customers closely and cleanly with a straight razor late in his long life, when he had an unsteady hand in other matters, as in his wobbly handwriting, his daughter-in-law told me at a wake.

MISUNDERSTOOD . . . Scoville Park passerby on way to work, seeing a man reading on a bench, asks in friendly fashion, "How's the paper today?" She thinks it's the daily paper with news of a hit man whose price was a city job or of something else of note.

But it was a learned literate journal, and he was reading about the philosopher Michel Foucault and how psychiatry declares all crime the result of illness: Look to the perp's childhood, say psychiatrists, and see how he failed to grow up or at least reverted temporarily to childhood.

IT SUITED ME . . . I got a suit at Field’s on State Street for under $250, with a 15% discount for getting a Field’s card on the spot. Tisha the saleswoman had spotted me, said hello, guided me around suits once I gave an idea what I wanted. We zeroed in on possibilities, I chose, tried on pants, got them and sleeves measured, and she gave me a pickup date 10 days away.

It was painless for one who has got into the Internet shopping habit because it’s so much trouble (a) getting to a store and (b) dealing with dumb personnel or being unable to find any personnel, dumb or not. Field’s on State is very good, especially in early afternoon of a week day. (This announcement is brought you by a satisfied customer.)

GOLDEN AGE . . . The time comes, if you live long enough, when a night's sleep becomes a work of art, no longer an act of nature.

IT FIGURES . . . "Flavor fanatic" is seen on the back of a T-shirt worn by a young woman of beaucoups d’avoir du pois.

CONFUSING . . . A woman has "bad hair," defined as "fine and straight." But we want to be and feel fine, do we not? And go straight and be a straight shooter? And we want to get things straight, right?

Yes, but it’s not easy.

Tina feels bad

2005-12-02T16:50:00.000-06:00

Editor and all-around New York maven Tina Brown finds it “not just tragic” but “embarrassing” that Bush led us to war in Iraq but never found weapons of mass destruction.

Why embarrassing? She didn’t do it, and never in her wildest public comments has she identified with Bush. In addition, she’s British, which means she has no share in some sort of group U.S. embarrassment, which would be misplaced in any case.

I think she’s blowing smoke. That’s what.

(Thanks to the very good American Spectator blog for citing her for at least mild contempt.)

Goody two shoes

2005-12-02T16:24:00.000-06:00

Mayor Daley asks where “our priorities” are in paying athletes so much money and wants them to be “socially conscious,” doing things such as to “adopt a school.” It’s bad on campus too, where coaches are paid more than teachers. “You see the priorities,” he said.

He’s a scold. Why not just say, “Good for him” when he hears of Paul Konerko’s rich contract? The guy works hard and succeeds in the world’s toughest baseball competition, and Daley can’t celebrate the fact but has to go all moralistic about it. What’s his problem?

Thou shalt not buy

2005-11-26T14:33:00.000-06:00

Chi Trib headline today, “Congress seeks limits on sales of cold drugs,” leads my friend Jake (not his real name) to wonder if they mean hot ones, the kind sold by email all the time.

Another thing, on apparently (but maybe not) entirely different topic, he reads in F.A. Hayek, Law, Legislation, and Liberty, Vol. 1 (Chicago, 1973), p. 160, n. 3, what A.V. Dicey wrote long ago:

The beneficial effect of State intervention [seeking of limits on drug sales?], especially in the form of legislation, is direct, immediate, and so to speak visible, whilst its evil effects are gradual and indirect, and lie outside our sight. . . . . Hence the majority of mankind must almost of necessity look with undue favour upon government intervention.
This natural bias can be counteracted only by the existence, in a given society, . . . of a presumption or prejudice in favour of individual liberty [even when buy cold (or hot) drugs?], that is of laissez faire.

In other words, a law seems like a good thing at the time, but watch out.

As for Dicey,

[a]n 'Old Liberal' in the 1850s, [he] was disenchanted with [John S.] Mill by the 1880s. Dicey divided the nineteenth century into 3 phases - 'old Toryism' up to 1830, 'Individualism' or 'Benthamism' up to 1870, succeeded by 'Collectivism'. His analysis was highly influential in shaping subsequent perceptions of the century's political development, and his work marked English political language before 1914. Other works include Conflict of Laws (1896) and Law and Public Opinion in England (1905) [cited above].

Hmmm.

Delicate confrontation

2005-11-17T09:10:00.000-06:00

Too clever by half, brandishing my twenty at the teller’s counter in anticipation of many happy hours washing and drying, I asked the nice lady, “How are your quarters today?”

She might have said, “Fresh,” with a dash of double entendre, but simply smiled tolerantly and asked, “Two?”

Dear Reader, she had that right, and in seconds I was back on the street, two rolls in my pocket and the sun in my face as I headed homeward.

Cynthia rebuts

2005-11-16T17:46:00.000-06:00

More on the flu business, replying to Marta:

While it’s true that antibiotics do not treat viruses, it is still true that the reason more people live older today is because of antibiotics. (And there are plenty of antivirals now available, both natural and chemical, but that’s another discussion.) A vastly higher percentage of the population is now growing old than has ever been experienced in the history of the world. This is not just an opinion, but the results of research at the University of Chicago, where they are studying the aging process both for individuals and population groups.
Everyone I know who gets flu shots gets the flu. Only the people I know who don’t get flu shots but boost their immune systems stay well. This is the choice I’ve made.
The thing that concerns me is that it is beginning to look like flu shots will be mandated. They should still be a choice. They do contain mercury, they do have a well-established track record of causing flu in a lot of those who get the shots. They also are very often not for the type of flu that strikes in a given year. They do, however, boost the immune systems of some older patients, and of those some don’t develop flu after getting the shot, and therefore shots may have value for some. They should still be a choice, and more information should be published about other options.
And there should be lots less hysteria. The avian flu virus is predicted to mutate so that it will afflict humans, but it hasn’t done it yet. We are now at the point where everything is a crisis, and the media try to cause panic at every event. Of course, as the President tries to react to the panic, he has now come under attack for making the drug companies rich. That’s the other thing the media like to do — make everything a political football.
So whichever way you fall on the shot/no shot debate, at least don’t panic, and don’t blame the President.

Pandemic flu advice trashed . . .

2005-11-16T12:50:00.000-06:00

. . . by Cynthia Clampitt, who says of the experts cited in “Plans to fight pandemic flu must focus on senior citizens, of whom I said I was suspicious:

And they get their info wrong right off the bat. Seniors are NOT healthier and they are NOT living longer. The reason the expected life span has gone up in the last hundred years is because we’re not losing everyone at age 10 to polio, scarlet fever, etc. The seniors who would have lived, despite those diseases, are just as healthy and living just as long as before, but all those people who would have been picked off by childhood diseases have given us a much weaker older population. That’s the reason we’re seeing so much more disease in the aging population — we don’t see more dementia because of McDonald’s, we see more dementia because a vastly higher percentage of the population is living older. And the reason fewer people die from flu today is not because we have more seniors, it’s because we have antibiotics. Penicillin wasn’t discovered until 1928, so of course more people died of the flu (and other diseases) in 1918.

So, if they’ve got that wrong, what else do they not know? And since the flu shot contains mercury, what are we going to be battling in the future because people got the shots?

Best bet is just to keep your immune system pumped during the coming months (good vitamins and supplements, eat your veggies, and avoid sugar — because sugar trashes your immune system). You may never catch it. If you do, go to the doctor.

Why don’t they ever suggest the simple, inexpensive route to avoiding problems?

More, from Reader Marta, picking up on the above:

Interesting thoughts, Jim, but a bit off-base. The flu is a virus and does not respond to antibiotics. Penicillin would have no impact on the flu, avian or otherwise. I did my Master's capstone project on the effectiveness of flu shots in preventing absenteeism in a healthy working population. Although the study revealed no significant difference in rates of absenteeism between those getting the shots and those who did not, I still line up every year for my shot. Back in the 60s, I was the only person in my dorm who did not get the Hong Kong flu - because I had gotten the shot at St. Francis Hospital where I worked.

I'm suspicious

2005-11-15T19:57:00.000-06:00

“Plans to fight pandemic flu must focus on senior citizens” — Sun-Times headline 11/5/05. What are they going to do to us? Send us outside in the cold and not let us talk to anyone?

The story's the thing

2005-11-15T10:09:00.000-06:00

Novelist Anne Rice is something else for our days of sturm, drang, and sex, to judge by Frank Wilson’s review of her Christ the Lord: Out of Egypt in Phila. Inquirer, “With Jesus himself telling his story, Anne Rice scores a hit.”

This telling a story on its own terms is or has not been where it's at. It’s been agenda, agenda, agenda; make your point, etc. in too many circles. As I gather from this review , Rice has told the story with her accustomed literacy, looking at Jesus of the gospels and not blinking. That's childlike in the sense Himself used in his "suffer the little children," etc.

While we’re at this, note Wilson’s literary blog “Books, Inq. A behind-the-scenes look at a book-review editor's world,” he being the Inquirer’s book editor.

Site for sore minds

2005-11-12T09:05:00.001-06:00

Let us hear it for Lowell Anderson’s Braveneworld, which is funny, funny, funny. He’s a onetime Lutheran minister now in Florida, allowing his mind to run riot, which in his case is a good thing.

Important message

2005-11-09T22:20:00.000-06:00

The only person getting his work done by Friday was Robinson Crusoe.

– Much quoted joke, can be found at Profession Jokes

– Used by Indira Gandhi and who knows whom else?

PENNSYLVANIA CARRIES ON

2005-11-08T22:33:00.000-06:00

A "pooper scooper" violation was reported by the Manheim (Pa.) Borough Police in the Lititz Record Express for 11/3/05. The incident on Oct. 8 at 9:05 a.m. was corroborated by a witness. The violator was a 36-year-old woman.

Another offender, male, 51, was nabbed for excessive volume on his stereo. It was a second offense.

Elsewhere in the borough, a male high school student, 16, was cited for harrassment after elbowing a fellow student in the face. The defense will be that his face got in the way of his elbow. This is the classic definition of freedom to move around the country: put your face anywhere you want but not in the trajectory of someone else’s elbow.

The same goes for the case of the female complainant who answered the door of her residence on Sunhill Road and encountered a male, 43, who screamed at her and grabbed her hair and began pulling her around. What was her hair doing in his fist?

In the Lititz Borough, on the other hand, where drunk driving was on the upswing, there were also possession, harrassment, and "disorderly teen" charges. The latter was filed against a middle school student, 13, who started his day (9:19 a.m.) by screaming and throwing things in the classroom. It was not a first offense for this student.

All the above was learned while waiting for flight to Chicago, which was finally announced for "Chicago O’Hara." The mistake is natural in a Philadelphia where Cardinal O’Hara once cut a large swath and the high school named after him is a household word. No such excuse was available for Mayordaley I, who always called it O’Hara Field.

SOME ODDS, SOME ENDS . . .

2005-11-08T17:12:00.000-06:00

The name escapes me now, but F. Scott Fitzgerald had a Minnesota contemporary who, wealthy, did not have to write for money and (therefore?) never realized his full promise.

Anthony Hecht’s poetry was very violent. He described the torture death of a Roman emperor captured by a Persian king in excruciating detail, for instance. He had his own brush with (virtual immersion in) evil in 1945, when as an Army officer in Germany he interviewed concentration camp survivors. For years afterward he would wake up gasping at the recollection.

Norman Mailer called longtime New Yorker writer Ved Mehta "the imposter" because though blind he saw so much. At the 80^th-birthday party for Fr. Martin d’Arcy SJ, Mehta told Edmund Wilson, who was wondering what they were doing there, that he had been invited because d’Arcy wanted to convert him — as he had converted Evelyn Waugh. Wilson abruptly turned to the diner on his other side. Mehta turned to his other side, where sat the wealthy Annette, who invited him to her island and became his patron. Mehta had great love and respect for his father, by the way, and when he married, he stayed married and loved his wife deeply.

A TASTE FOR THE GRITTY . . .

2005-11-08T16:27:00.000-06:00

Times Literary Supplement 2/18/05 reviews three novels that appeal for their detail, plot, and telling us something we don’t know – Clare Clark’s The Great Stink (Viking), St. Aubin de Teran’s Otto (Virago), and Philippa Stockley’s A Factory of Cunning (Little, Brown) — as opposed to a mulling of our discontents in a fourth book reviewed, Alice Munro’s story collection, Runaway (Knopf), which "dramatizes . . . an impulse of avoidance," etc.

The other three offer "dogs slavering over dead rats" (Stink), the misdeeds and exculpation of a professional revolutionary (Otto), and tales of "the villainous rake Lord Much" and "assassins in Amsterdam" (Factory). Lord Much?!

Another novel reviewed here, Human Capital (Viking), is unoriginal but engaging, like TV melodrama, says reviewer Sean O’Brien: author Stephen Amidon looked unsentimentalism in the eye and blinked, leaving us in a Hollywood-dictated lurch. This novel is no "Ice Storm," a Hollywood product that O’Brien, a poet and translator (of Aristophanes), called "markedly unsentimental."

Can’t say I agree or disagree with any of it, but what reviewers choose to say and emphasize is a clue to their reliability. Same with newspapers and books. What people consider important is surely a clue. The great man (also God) said it nicely: Where your treasure is (what you consider important), there your heart is also."

French revolution

2005-11-08T13:02:00.000-06:00

Among reasons for Euro-alarm at riots and in France and elsewhere, all dealing with heavy Muslim-immigrant presence, Daniel Pipes cites “a cradle-to-grave welfare system that lures immigrants even as it saps long-term economic viability.” This would do it. You lure people to paradise that never quite works out that way.

[A]fter a ninth consecutive night in which rioters boasted they had made parts of France "like Baghdad", more than 750 cars had been set ablaze, the highest tally on a single night so far.

reported UK Telegraph Nov. 6. So. France opposed taking the war to Islamic jihadists, who now have taken it to them.

Above one desolate street on the outskirts of Paris, a helicopter clattered but firefighters were forced to watch helplessly as a car burnt itself out. Any attempt to approach it resulted in a terrifying hail of stones, Molotov cocktails and other missiles.
Elsewhere in France, fire officers were pelted with metal petanque balls [bocce, or small lawn bowling balls], car batteries and even cooking pots.

Another comparison is with Northern Ireland.

Across France some 751 neighbourhoods, housing around five million people, are classified as severely disadvantaged. In Clichy, less than 10 miles from the chic Champs Elysï¿½es, half the 28,000 population is under 25 and unemployment is more than double the national average of 10 per cent.

Immigrants have not been integrated:

[P]oliticians, social commentators and journalists have been picking over France's failure to integrate its burgeoning immigrant population.

“Cultural identities are not sufficiently recognised and there is no longer any mediation between the inhabitants of these areas and the politicians,” says a respected sociologist.

But the interior minister, Sarkozy has this to say:

"This minority of hooligans and assassins must not be confused with the immense majority of youngsters in the banlieues," he said. "I refuse to let these organised gangs make the law. The Republican state will not give in."

But at the heart of it are Muslim issues, says Daniel Pipes:

As in other European countries (notably Denmark and Spain), a bundle of related issues, all touching on the Muslim presence, has now moved to the top of the policy agenda in France, where it likely will remain for decades.

And it’s not a first —

it was preceded days earlier by one riot in Birmingham, England and was accompanied by another in ï¿½rhus, Denmark. France itself has a history of Muslim violence going back to 1979. What is different in the current round is its duration, magnitude, planning, and ferocity.

Pipes calls his essay, which appears in today’s New York Sun, “Reflections on the Revolution in France.” He took the title from Edmund Burke, who in 1790 wrote a famous letter.

============================

More on same topic from the estimable Thomas Sowell:

Riots in France: The Barbarians at the Gates of Paris by Thomas Sowell (November 8, 2005)

Read about Sowell here, by the way. His life forever deep-sixes the obloquy attached to being a high school dropout.

Harriet unobserved

2005-10-14T09:36:00.000-05:00

All heroes have clay feet, it’s how they get around. It’s oddly consoling to find ours (Bush-supporters) demonstrating his in matters other than what affect national security directly. Grim consolation that. Forget it.

Instead read John Fund’s feet-discovering piece in Online Journal on the non-vetting of a nominee — “How She Slipped Through: Harriet Miers's nomination resulted from a failed vetting process.”

GW, we hardly knew ye.

Let us hope he's good at ducking

2005-10-12T09:57:00.000-05:00

[P]olicies based on premises that conflict with scientific truths about human beings tend not to work. Often they do harm.
One such premise is that the distribution of innate abilities and propensities is the same across different groups. The statistical tests for uncovering job discrimination assume that men are not innately different from women, blacks from whites, older people from younger people, homosexuals from heterosexuals, Latinos from Anglos, in ways that can legitimately affect employment decisions. Title IX of the Educational Amendments of 1972 assumes that women are no different from men in their attraction to sports. Affirmative action in all its forms assumes there are no innate differences between any of the groups it seeks to help and everyone else. The assumption of no innate differences among groups suffuses American social policy. That assumption is wrong. [Italics added]

This is Charles Murray in Commentary for September, 2005, reprinted on Wall St. [Opinion] Journal online. He’s the Bell Curve author who is breaking self-imposed silence on innate abilities because of the response to Harvard U. President Lawrence Summers’s “mild, speculative, off-the-record remarks [last January] about innate differences between men and women in their aptitude for high-level science and mathematics.” Summers was “treated by Harvard’s faculty as if he were a crank. The typical news story portrayed the idea of innate sex differences as a renegade position that reputable scholars rejected.” Murray found this “depressingly familiar” and reminiscent of the response he got from Bell Curve. It’s time to talk about innate group differences, says Murray.

2005-10-12T08:46:00.000-05:00

The It’s All about Me Group, as in Lede (Opening) ‘Graphs:

"When you are old, another will gird you and lead you where you do not wish to go" (Jn 21:18). So Jesus prophesied St. Peter’s death in old age. The saying, however, has always had a gnomic quality for me, as if it applied in some sense to us all.

– Drew Christiansen in Jesuit weekly America

In October 2003 I was part of a scholarly meeting that honored the memory and accomplishments of Raymond E. Brown, S.S. . . .

– Daniel J. Harrington in Jesuit weekly America

It was nearly 4 p.m. Tuesday when I pulled the Marshall Field's credit card from my wallet, borrowed a pair of scissors and walked over to State and Randolph with a vague notion of carrying out some sort of protest.

– Mark Brown in Sun-Times

I spent many late nights at the Billy Goat tavern -- the airless, grimy basement under Michigan Avenue beloved by Chicago's newspaper crowd, who made it a hangout years before "Saturday Night Live" brought it fame.

My special order is a hamburger with mounds of the Goat's extra-burned chopped onions, Diet Coke and chips.

– Lynn Sweet in Sun-Times

Patty smart, Patty not smart

2005-10-10T08:06:00.000-05:00

Patty Hearst says we are the most frightened, but how is she so in touch with us? I do not feel her hand on my pulse.

So I said on seeing the Drudge head, which was legitimate but partial. In her interview, with the NY Daily News, on the other hand, she did have something to say apart from claiming to know how we feel, such as:

"I was kidnapped by terrorists. It's not like I'm numb to this and think it can't happen. But . . . there's so much weeping and wailing and memorializing, my feeling is it'd be a lot healthier if people didn't externalize so much and kind of bucked up a little bit."

That said, she looked, unfortunately, to that which is to be the sole source of our sense of well-being:

"What good is our government if they can't keep our level of fear at a point where we can think about what's really going on?"

Which, apart from its politics is to whine about the shortcomings of Holy Mother the State.

Po-poor-what?

2005-10-05T15:54:00.000-05:00

Wednesday Journal column is up — “Irony, sexiness, bibbing and gesheft, all in one column” — a veritable potpourri.

Another form of TV?

2005-10-05T07:30:00.000-05:00

Our electronic age has risen up to bite us in more ways than to have us wired for sound on “L” and subway, oblivious to all about us but our own “sound,” to judge by this from Orion Magazine, winner of the Independent Press award for general excellence for 2004 and a new one on me, I must confess:

[R]ecent research, including a University of Munich study of 174,000 students in thirty-one countries, indicates that students who frequently use computers perform worse academically than those who use them rarely or not at all.

The article is “Charlotte’s Webpage: Why Children Shouldn’t Have the World at Their Fingertips.”

Now you see it, now you don't

2005-10-04T11:18:00.000-05:00

David O’Brien of the College of the Holy Cross, Worcester, Mass., a truly venerable Jesuit institution, writing in another truly venerable institution, the Catholic Democrat lay-edited Commonweal Democrat about “The Politics We Need: BALANCING PUBLIC GOODS & PRIVATE INTERESTS,” calls for “stronger government.” Not bigger but stronger, so there’s hope in Catholic left-ville yet.

Not quite. He opposes it to Republicans’ “smaller government”; so what are we to think?

That it’s change-the-terminology time for Democrats again, the folks who are no longer liberal but progressive, for instance, and committed to choice not abortion.

"Plus le change . . ." *

======================================

*Ask your Francophone friends about this.

Uncle Sam and some little nephews EMPLOY people!

2005-10-03T11:24:00.000-05:00

Hey, welcome to Chicago, the city of big government shoulders, as seen in this list of biggest employers at Crain’s Chi Business in which four of the top five are governmental bodies.

DeLay defends

2005-09-30T18:02:00.000-05:00

While we’re giving beleaguered conservatives a platform, consider what Tom DeLay told The Hill Newspaper, as in a Breaking News email today:

Asked if he was surprised by Wednesday's indictment, DeLay said he was not; he said Earle [the Texas prosecutor] had been pressured by national Democrats to indict the majority leader in order to oust him from power and make him a focus during next fall's campaign.
"Democrats have been blatant enough to announce this strategy," DeLay said of the minority party's plan to paint Republicans as ethically challenged politicians who populate Washington with friends and cronies who rake in the spoils.
DeLay said Democrats could not beat him at the polls so they turned to the courts instead.

Not fair.

Bennett explains

2005-09-30T15:34:00.000-05:00

A little catch-up on the Bennett commentary, from his web site, where he explains: The idea about abortion reducing crime is from Freakonomics, a currently well-selling book. Bennett’s explanation, not an apology, is about “extrapolations,” use of the Socratic method, and “thought experiment” on radio.

No wonder people get excited. The brouhaha is not as bad as the museum pro being fired for using “niggardly,” but it’s close. His being pilloried is gotcha stuff playing on ignorance.

Bill Bennett & White House

2005-09-30T10:53:00.000-05:00

Bill Bennett touched the #1 third rail of public discourse with his on-air comment that aborting all black babies would reduce the crime rate, even though the black crime rate is much higher than white crime rate. You just can’t say that, and White House rejected the statement, distancing itself.

You can’t if you’re political, that is. If you are intellectual and cultural and social-commentarial, you can but better know your base, that is, the people who usually like what you say. And the base should be big enough to quell the firestorm of indignation that is sure to follow. No problem for Bennett, whose people appreciate his intellect and trust his good will in the matter.

He said in part:

“ . . . if you wanted to reduce crime, you could, if that were your sole purpose . . . abort every black baby in this country, and your crime rate would go down,”

But it’s

"an impossible, ridiculous and morally reprehensible thing to do, but your crime rate would go down. So these far-out, these far-reaching, extensive extrapolations are, I think, tricky."

What’s more, irrelevant. The caller had asked him to comment on the thesis that crime rate is dropping because of abortions. Bennett was taking off on a wild idea, I’d say, intending to show it up as crude and harsh.

Yes, I defend him. I’m part of his base and recommend him for morning-in-America listening, 560 AM Chicago, 7–10 am. Or go to his web site.

Riding the cycle

2005-09-28T21:33:00.000-05:00

Powerline had this yesterday in its “Brownie Kicks Butt” report, which praises Brown for giving it to his interrogators, one of whom, Rep. Wm. Jefferson (D.-La.), “didn't dare stop talking for fear that Brown would have an opportunity to answer his questions,” so ill-informed he was. This final ‘graph notes Bush-admin’s passivity:

No doubt FEMA's performance was imperfect. What else is new? But Michael Brown didn't flood New Orleans. Nor did he fail to order a mandatory evacuation. Nor, when the order was finally given by the appropriate authorities, was he the one who failed to carry it out competently. I thought it was a mistake when President Bush cashiered Brown, and his performance tonight validates that judgment. FEMA's position is eminently defensible. But the Bush administration, historically, has failed to defend itself aggressively, and instead has passively yielded to the news cycle.

Voltaire, atomic squelch, Repplier

2005-09-22T19:32:00.000-05:00

MEDIA-SAVVY . . . Voltaire had no use for the press, per Times Lit Supplement, but cultivated reporters, planting stories "shipping up . . . opposition to his detractors," for whom he had no use either. His 1741 play, "Le Fanatisme," however, could not make it past societal censors in our day. A "thinly disguised attack on Christian intolerance," it unfortunately portrayed the prophet Mohammed as a bloodthirsty tyrant, and a performance of it was closed down in Geneva in 1994, lest Muslims take offense.

WHEN A SCOOP LOSES ITS APPEAL, AT LEAST FOR THE TIME BEING . . . U of Chi PR man Morgenstern to Chi Trib science writer Ray Gibbons, early 40s, when G. asked him his reaction to running a story on the atomic bomb work then in progress:

You’d have the scoop of your life, but never another; you would disappear, Morgenstern told him. G. got interested in something else very quickly, saving his scoop for after Hiroshima and Nagasaki, not to mention his own life as he knew it. (from Len O’Connor’s memoirs, A Reporter in Sweet Chicago)

CLERGY PRIVILEGE . . . At 26 Rev. Whalley was given a living by a bishop who stipulated that he should not live there, because the climate was bad for his health. Curates lived there and did the work at less compensation. So for 50 years, curates who could not afford good health did the work at that place, while Whalley as rector spent winters in Europe, summers at Mendip Lodge, in beautiful Somerset county, where Coleridge lived 1797-1800, writing "The Ancient Mariner" and the first part of "Christabel."

Thus the English Reformation in the 19^th century: Some of what was bad before it survived it. (Agnes Repplier, "The Correspondent," in A Happy Half Century and Other Essays, 1908)

FLOWERS TO SPARE . . . In the same volume, Repplier notes the "wealth of hyperbole" in letters by women of the late 18^th and early 19^th centuries. "Nothing is told in plain terms. Tropes, metaphors, and similes adorn every page; and the . . . elegance of the language is rivalled by the elusiveness of the idea, which is lost in an eddy of words."

2005-09-21T12:44:00.000-05:00

Newspaper layoffs designed to make Wall Street dance

New York Times
Newspaper industry analyst John Morton on cuts at the New York Times and Philadelphia's dailies: "Wall Street appreciates cost-cutting and improving margins and increased profitability. Those are the things that make them dance a jig at night. They put that kind of pressure on publicly owned companies, and newspapers are no more immune to that than anybody else. These cuts and layoffs are known as dancing to Wall Street's tune."

Wall Street, yes. That would be the investors whose hard-earned money pays bills. Who do they think they are? (Link sent by Romenesko of Poynter Inst.)

Free speech screwed

2005-09-15T11:35:00.000-05:00

See free speech on the Internet in a (gasp!) campus newspaper. It’s Jill Bandes in The Daily Tar Heel, where she calls for strip-searching of Arabs at (or near!) airports and quotes several UNC Arab-Americans as agreeing with her. And guess what? She got fired for the column, which you can read about here. Ain’t it grand?

Help for the largely helpless

2005-09-14T08:59:00.000-05:00

For your college student friends and/or children, grandchildren, other descendants including collateral, there’s a web site to help them obtain the other side of the story from what they usually hear from their leftist professors: http://www.amexp.org/Publications/Archives/PressReleases/pressrelease091305.html. Go for it, friends of education.

Home, James

2005-09-14T07:35:00.000-05:00

Where there’s a will, there’s a way for this Dem congressman from New O, Jake Tapper reports for ABC:

Amid the chaos and confusion that engulfed New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina struck, a congressman used National Guard troops to check on his property and rescue his personal belongings — even while New Orleans residents were trying to get rescued from rooftops, ABC News has learned.

Wuxtry, wuxtry

2005-09-13T16:23:00.000-05:00

Chappaquiddick Ted loses marbles.

Kennedy: But don't you really hate women and minorities? I mean, come on, tell the truth. You're under oath, Judge Roberts!

Homeland security revisited

2005-09-11T13:24:00.000-05:00

This from Instapundit is worth passing on en masse, as it were, with his links embedded:

MICHAEL BARONE says there's "blame aplenty" and points out people who are at fault, but also cautions:

But we should resist the notion that we can come up with some organizational solution that can prevent every mistake. Today, as we look back on World War II, we tend to think that everything worked smoothly. But that wasn't the case. Rick Atkinson's An Army at Dawn shows that U.S. commanders made many blunders in the 1942-43 North Africa campaign. There were constant complaints about bottlenecks and snafus in defense production, and President Roosevelt changed the organizational chart several times. In 2002, everyone agreed FEMA should be put under Homeland Security; now people say it should be taken out. Fortunately, we don't depend just on government. Millions of citizens have contributed $500 million, thousands are taking Katrina evacuees into their homes and schools and churches, and private companies are hurrying free supplies to those in need. Government will never be perfect, but fortunately America is more than just government.

Not all of us were fans of Homeland Security, but it did pass rather handily.
posted at 12:04 PM by Glenn Reynolds

I pass it on the day after a fevered conversation with an old Jesuit acquaintance who made the comment that none of the items I had just mentioned about New Orleans etc. had he heard of. I tried to tell him how he could learn from blogs, but he remained impervious to the suggestion.

Reynolds opposed formation of the Dept. of Homeland Security as unhelpful magnification. That's in the "all of us" link. It's magnification passed in the Senate 90-9, with one not voting. That's in the "pass rather handily" link. No-votes included Byrd (WV) and Kennedy (MA), both Dems -- they can say they told us so. Yes-votes included Clinton (NY), Daschle (SD), Durbin (IL), Leahy (VT), Reid (NV), and Schumer (NY), all Dems -- they can't but will.

The bodies of the text

2005-09-10T11:08:00.000-05:00

This from Scrappleface — News Fairly Unbalanced. We report. You decipher — is certainly worthy of consideration by all fairly intelligent human beings:

CNN Petitions to Dig Up Hastily-Buried Flood Victims
by Scott Ott
(2005-09-10) -- The Cable News Network (CNN), fresh from a legal triumph allowing it to televise the recovery of dead flood victims, today asked a federal judge to allow it to dig up and videotape any bodies buried in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.
"While we were petitioning the court to cover the recovery of corpses, some victims were hastily buried," said an unnamed CNN spokesman. "Our viewers have a right to see the decaying flesh of each and every citizen who perished from lack of federal government assistance. That's why the First Amendment exists."
The network source said news anchors will issue the following warning before each 'CNN Cadaver Closeup' segment:
"Caution: the following report includes disgustingly graphic depictions of rotting human flesh. If you can possibly look away from your TV set, do so now...especially if you have any relatives in the South that you haven't heard from since Hurricane Katrina hit."
Donate | TrackBack (0) | Comments (28) | More Satire

To market, to market

2005-09-09T18:03:00.000-05:00

TIA Daily has the right idea, drawing on two National Review Online piecesa:

While Congress plans to throw billions . . . at the rebuilding of Louisiana and Mississippi, the most effective thing . . . would be much cheaper: cut taxes and suspend regulations--allowing greater freedom to the private initiative of the businesses and entrepreneurs who will actually rebuild the area's economy.

National Review “dares to suggest that self-interest might be a legitimate motive and that rebuilding requires the production of wealth, not its sacrifice.”

It adds the suspending of federal regulations.

How much more quickly would businesses rebuild, if they had to worry about a hundred thousand fewer pages of environment regulations, for example? This is an opportunity to show that the unfettered action of producers is the real "safety net" that helps us recover from disaster.

As they said in the (mostly imagined) 60s barricades, “Right on!”

Shaw, Trevelyan, Hawthorne and friends

2005-09-08T16:39:00.000-05:00

LITERARY DIFFERENCES . . . George Bernard Shaw’s contemporary John Drinkwater wrote verse plays about Lincoln, Cromwell, and others that S. considered unworthy of their subjects. He wrote his own about Joan of Arc "to save her from Drinkwater," per John Gross in his "literary tour" through The Oxford dictionary of National Biography in Times Literary Supplement (TLS) 12/17/04.

Lewis Namier, owing fellow historian GM Trevelyan for an early review that launched his career, repaid him by refusing ever to review any of his books.

Namier emphasized "microscopic analysis of events and institutions, particularly Parliament, so as to reveal the entire motivation of the individuals involved in them," says the web site "Blupete."

Trevelyan, for his part, "believed that history should be written as literature, that is, to be read."

A REAL YANKEE DOODLE . . . George M. Cohan falsely claimed a July 4 birth date, but Nathaniel Hawthorne did so honestly, and without building a career on it. He did add the "w" to his name, however.

Oak Park’s Hawthorne School was unfortunately renamed – to honor a black scientist, emphasis on black. The man deserved to be honored, but not at Hawthorne’s expense. He is Percy Julian, of whom a splendid bigger-than-life bust rests in Scoville Park.

Hawthorne’s father, a sea captain, died of yellow fever in Surinam when Nathaniel was 4.

Nathaniel wrote a campaign bio of and for his friend Franklin Pierce, U.S. president, 18??-??, and edited or ghost-wrote a book on the naval adventures of another friend, like Pierce from his happy Bowdoin College days, Horatio Bridge.

Asked by Commodore Matthew Perry to write up his opening of Japan to the world in 18??, he excused himself and suggested Herman Melville, disreputable author of a novel about the South Seas, Typee. Hawthorne, consul in Liverpool at the time, thanks to a Pierce-administration appointment, was not disreputable. Melville, as we surely recall, later wrote Moby Dick.

Hawthorne advised writing of an experience right away, before the "impression of novelty has worn off," lest you decide "the peculiarities that attracted you are not worth recording." Rather, they are what make "the most vivid impression on the reader." Consider "nothing too trifling . . . so it be in the smallest degree characteristic." You will be surprised, he said, to find how important they become.

Hear, hear.

Oak Park Board Bores

2005-08-23T13:55:00.000-05:00

Tuesday, August 02, 2005 NLP splashes, bad ideas spill By JIM BOWMAN

BOARD BORES IN: Like Will Rogers, all I know is what I read in the newspapers-"and that’s an alibi for my ignorance," he added. But from what I read, new leadership is making a splash at Oak Park Village Hall.

For instance, the new president, David Pope, discussing a request for free money by a business owner willing to move to the 6200 block of North Avenue, where business is sparse and parking plentiful, had the gall to say he believes "in the market," adding self-deprecatingly that it’s an "odd peculiarity" of his.

For sheer inexactitude, however, one must chide New Leadership Trustee Martha Brock, who complained at a recent meeting that she "couldn’t go to [a seminar] on African American economic development," when she meant to say the village would not pay her way. Boo-hoo.

Another brickbat goes to Brock for urging less executive-session time for the sake of increased openness in government without addressing legal mandates in the matter-whether the board has a choice when to go executive and when not to-and whether a cut-off on discussion would improve decision-making. Indeed, it’s a serious accusation if she wants to make it, that the board uses executive session as cover-up. But no one took her up on the idea, so not to worry.

Brock also urged calling a "community meeting" whenever incidents occur such as the D’Agostino slaying, so that citizens would know that trustees care-apparently to calm widespread fears that they do not care. Again, however, complexities: Such a meeting would presumably be called by the board president, maybe in a conference call (executive session!), based on severity of incident or crisis of community confidence in trustees as parent figures.

This could take some debate, and if the debate went too long would (a) collide with Brock’s goal of fewer, shorter executive sessions and (b) perhaps violate her requirement that the community meeting happen "immediately [in] emergency mode." It would be a case of emergency mode clashing with openness of government, alas and alack! But who said it’s easy to govern a village?

CLERK NO SPEAK: Meanwhile, New Leadership Trustee Geoff Baker said the (non-New Leadership) village clerk should participate in board deliberation, providing "her input at every step." The clerk has not done this historically, however, keeping her mouth mostly shut at meetings, her job description being that of staff though elected. This is one reason voters have not turned a clerk out of office in at least 35 years. As mostly behind-scenes administrators, clerks have been judged on ability with no points for public speaking and no demerits either, which is crucial. A talkative clerk would get quoted too much and maybe end up in defensive, if not emergency mode.

PROFILING SHOPPERS: Continuing along, in debate about the proposed tenancy of Corinthian College, a trainer of newcomers to the job market, Trustee Brock cited "classism" in Oak Park, characterizing the issue as "all about us" trying to "reach out." Trustee Ray Johnson agreed, calling the Corinthian tenancy-in the Marshall Field’s building at Harlem and Lake-a means of "fostering diversity downtown." Apparently it would do that. Ninety percent of Corinthian students would be earning less than the minimum wage, testified the president of the Taxman Corporation, a developer, opposing the college. But that’s no selling point, he said. "This is not the shopper profile we’d like to bring to downtown Oak Park."

SOLVING A PROBLEM: Meanwhile, owners of the Maple Tree restaurant building are declining to sell to developer Alex Troyanovsky, thus blocking westward expansion of the Lake Theatre-DesPlaines River, here we come! This is a setback for uber-development, but again not to worry. Thanks to the U.S. Supreme Court in its recent eminent domain decision-what’s good for the tax base is good for property owners, even those forced to become property sellers-the village board can condemn this property.

Down would come Maple Tree-sign, al fresco dining permit, and all. Up would go melodramatic movie posters. Where there’s a will, there’s a way, but not if a spineless, gutless village board is unwilling to snatch a parcel in broad daylight!

Walter Scott

2005-08-15T08:28:00.000-05:00

Sir Walter Scott’s birthday! Who now reads him? I do! Currently Kenilworth, with a cast including QE1, Leicester, Sussex, Sir Walter Raleigh, and dozens of others named, thousands unnamed, presuming pitched battle yet to come. Reading Scott, start with Waverly, the first of the Waverly novels, all about 18th-century Scotland. Here’s what Today in Literature says about him in its (free) email for this day:

Sir Walter Scott, perhaps the most famous and prolific spinner of Scottish tales, was born on this day in 1771. Apart from the historical novels, Scott wrote poetry - such as the Macbethian "O what a tangled web we weave / When first we practise to deceive!" - and even a Life of Napoleon, who was born on this day in 1769.

He also worked like hell to pay his debts when investments went bad. An honorable man.

She passed

2005-07-30T10:51:00.000-05:00

I can recommend I Passed for White, by Reba Lee as told to the late, insufficiently lamented Mary Roberts Rinehart (Longmans Green, 1955), whose title tells the plot. It’s a memoiristic account of an adventurous young Chicago woman, not yet 18, who takes the plunge into the white world. She looks the part and when necessary extemporizes and in general creates a barely credible white past for herself. She marries a suburban NYC WASP socialite and loves it but loses her charade when coming out of childbirth she asks, panic-stricken, if the baby is black.

Mary RR tells the story perfectly, eschewing sensationalism and changing names etc. where necessary to protect the innocent, including the family she marries into, which is decent in all respects except for its and its set’s overwhelming racial prejudice. The Chicago references are adequate for the story. The prejudice is probably a shocker for those who don’t remember how it was in those not-good old days. It’s a book that touches all bases, from white prejudice to black (“colored”) anger without beating the reader over the head. OP library has it; where else you get it I don’t know, though surely www.alibris.com is a good place to start.

Is there a God?

2005-07-25T22:07:00.000-05:00

God may or not be in his heaven, but all’s not right with the world, said Eric Zorn, resident professed agnostic at Chi Trib, last January. He’s indifferent to the first question but not to God-isms he hears so often from "civic and religious leaders" and others, including his old friend who thanked God for post-tsunami safety of two other friends.

What about parents of dead children, victims of same tsunami, whose prayers were not answered? asks Eric. What indeed? Their children stand as proof positive of the foolishness of praying, he says. But what of trillions [? Reader Neil guesses billions] of other children who died before their time since the beginning of time? For that matter, what of the trillions of full grown adults or senior citizens who died violently or for that matter of natural causes, asleep in their beds? And the trillions yet to go, including Eric Zorn and me?

Zorn is a piker. He seems to let God off easy or to let the God concept alone until a big catastrophe which sets loose the sort of thanksgiving of which he does not approve. But if this God of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, & Jesus were worth his salt, there would be no trouble whatever. The vale of tears would be a garden of bliss. Right away, without the folderol of suffering and death or even a protruding hang nail that upsets the busy man in the morning as he reaches for keys, catching on pocket’s edge.

You don’t start with God anyway. You start with the world as seen in a finger and its nail, that works so well 95% of the time for 95% of its owners. What, in the spirit of GK Chesterton, are we to make of that? GK’s idea was that we properly begin with amazement. The very idea that we have a finger with a useful attachment, useful for actions from prying lids (until nails decay with age) to self-defense! That would be GK’s attitude.

But Zorn has no interest in the issue of creation by "a superhuman force." "I don’t know . . . and I don’t care," he says. He does care about other people’s caring, however. Hence the column. It bothers him a lot, and that’s a good sign. It’s good that he cannot blithely ignore it.

I say this because we haven’t had a good non-believer in a newspaper for a long time. Mencken was one, 75 years ago, though Z. is not in M’s league. But we should be thankful for what we have, a daily newspaper columnist who is willing to let his doubts and denials hang out.

Indeed, in a letter to the Trib, Rev. Gino Dal Piaz thanked Z. for bringing the whole matter up, which in all fairness so should I.

As for Chesterton, who saw God in a blade of grass, the world was full of surprises: "One elephant with a trunk was odd," he said in Orthodoxy, "but every elephant with a trunk looked like a plot." So seek out the Plotter.

"Wonder leads logically to gratitude and so to God," commented Hugh Kenner. The thing’s the thing. "The post is wonderful because it’s there," was GKC’s thinking. That’s not the same as being wonderful because it has this or that quality – nicely shaped, of brilliant hue, for instance. "Man is . . . more awful than men," said Chesterton. "Death is more tragic . . . than death by starvation."

The objector says, if anything goes wrong, God’s not there, be it rain on parade or picnic, even if it does not lead to car skidding into bunch of little kids, killing them all. Zorn demands this kind of God – unrealistically and unreasonably. As if to say, if he were God, it wouldn’t be this way.

This politics is local

2005-07-18T19:35:00.000-05:00

VMA VS. BLUE COLLARS, VMA VS. SELF: Twenty years ago, when Oak Park’s Village Manager Association lost its first election in its then thirty-some years, licensed sociologist and past and future school, township, and village government office holder Galen Gockel voiced a trenchant opinion in the matter.

"It was social class," he said in a guest essay in this very publication, adding, "Money. Occupation. Prestige. Status." The outs were saying, "We’ve been ignored. . . . The local elite is imposing its agenda on us," he wrote. "Oak Park’s dominant liberal group" was deciding things. Enough voters felt left out to swing an election, though not so sweepingly as last April’s, when no VMA candidate but the tried and true village clerk survived.

That was then. What does Gockel say now? Readers are warned: this is an exclusive.

The VMA slate, failing to grasp voters’ "hunger for change," never had a chance, in Gockel’s opinion. Too many disagreed with major decisions, from Whiteco subsidy to non-ban on smoking. There was extensive umbrage-taking at "arbitrary and unforgiving parking enforcement . . . chronic building permit delays," and other annoyances and indignities emanating from Village Hall. From unpopular decisions came a zest for "new leadership," a phrase shrewdly incorporated into the opposition’s name. From annoyances and indignities came a "coalition of the offended." New leaders and offended both gunned for the incumbent party.

It didn’t help that critics had been pegged as mere "nay-sayers" who would find out on election day how wrong they were. "Citizen unhappiness was wide and deep, and the local [VMA] elite [shades of Gockel ‘85 here] . . . didn't understand that." VMA candidates would have had to disown major board decisions of the previous four to eight years, when VMA people ran things. They didn’t, and voters themselves became nay-sayers. VMA had done the foul deeds, and VMA paid.

SANDWICH MAN: Man sits waiting in car in Osco parking lot, dinner time, while lady of the house buys greeting cards. Scruffy young man wants money "for a sandwich," asking around, pleading. You can buy it for him, he says, heading off the assumption that he will use the money for drugs or booze. Getting nowhere, he heads for Dunkin’ Donuts a few steps away, is turned away by another young man, its proprietor or of the proprietor’s family. This young man is triumphant: he got the panhandler out.

The panhandler returns to the parking lot. He’s in dirty shirt and pants, in his early 20s, not shaven but not bearded either, nor is his hair long and matted. But he smells of no-bath experience (not of booze). He pleads some more, of anyone in the lot. Aforementioned man waiting for wife resists as usual but finds himself vulnerable. The beggar is of his ethnicity, for one thing. He looks like people the man knows very well. He finds it less easy to ignore him.

He leaves his car, enters Osco, finds wife still looking for cards. He is deputed to buy one, does so, is told it does not pass muster. Distracted, he says buy it anyway, giving it to wife, who continues her search for the perfect card. Mind made up, he leaves the store, re-enters the lot, and strides toward the pitiful young man, not even looking at him, and slips two dollar bills into his hand. "Thank you, sir," the young man says. Both turn and walk away.

PRICKLY: Haughty shopper of the month award goes to woman 40 or so at Dominick’s speaking to man who indicates by body language that he wants out of line briefly and wants to get past her cart. She, failing or unwilling to pick up on the body language and not pulling her cart back, requires him to say he wants to get by: "You should articulate that," she admonishes. He agrees wholeheartedly and is let through.

If she had expostulated, "Why don’t you effing say so?" she would have sacrificed hauteur but would have gotten "A" for candor.HOW MAILMAN GETS ALONG WITH DOGS: He has a way with him, first, but second, he has goodies they go for. When they see him coming, he presents himself not as something to be eaten (chewed on, as soft flesh of calf, or at least barked at) but as someone who gives something (nice) to eat. Dog says not a word (barks not), liking this nice mailman.

Wed. Journal Column, 7/14/05