Dec
10
Links, 12/10/08
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- Oh, to be in England - h/t to Josh and aldaily.com for these: “Toxic Wives” apparently are a serious problem amongst seriously rich people (I personally doubt this article is real); also, once upon a time, apparently, the British showed remarkable restraint but now are a bunch of whiny babies. It seems to be conservative porn to rip on England, and I mainly recommend the latter article because there is an all-too-brief discussion of Herodotus and Xenophon by purported “gentlemen.”
- More from aldaily.com - this examination of what Judge Judy and her ilk are doing to our perception of the law is spot-on.
- Yet more from aldaily - many colleges are cutting costs. I should say this - I’ve been to two schools now, undergrad and graduate school, where I had nothing like what’s described here. I was very grateful for the cafeteria in graduate school, but I still lost weight on campus many times, and all the campuses I’ve been can be charitably described as “dumps.” My own thought is that college should pamper; the grounds should be beautiful, the buildings stately, the libraries well-stocked, food plentiful, recreation centers ready. It should resemble an idealized world for the reason that learning is seriously hard work when you get to it. The main issue now is that rank materialism has replaced the notion of learning being something higher. For more, you can see the comment I left on Rutgers1000’s website.
- Apologies to many of you for not updating, not being in touch better. I am working on something, it’s hard, I’m stressed.
Dec
4
Stressed. No reason.
- Ario has posted some amazing stuff recently, but his description of a recent snowfall and the attendant crows is most prominent in my mind: The city is snowed under. Crows perch on the glazed branches. Like inkblots on wrinkling paper they drip sideways and into the space ahead. Between the tenement blocks in South cars and cyclists inch forwards along the cobbled streets. Tram tracks have scarred the bends: the disuse of relayed destinations. Another blot trickles out of view.
- I’m reading Harry Jaffa’s lecture on Macbeth here and there. He covers some passages that I missed pretty well.
- Gracchi has been kind enough to link to me, and I’m very grateful - if you want to get into the “are we dumb?” issue, his blog is the place to have that discussion, and I think it can be a very lively and interesting one.
Nov
19
Links, 11/19/08
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Just a few links - still reading lots of Xenophon, still concerned about how this section is going to get written. I’m at a loss for words right now.
- Love in the Time of Darwinism - agree with most of this, but the author does say at one point that maybe dating isn’t hell. She’s got no clue just how hurt many of us are, despite her frequent mentions of the word “anger.” The article is at its best when it documents confusion, as opposed to trying to assign blame to males or females.
- Spreading this link can result in severe harassment - I’ve already been insulted in a threatening manner by a person on a site for sharing it. In case you’re curious about this issue, which I think is entirely independent of one’s views on Proposition 8 at this point, there’s an even more right-wing article - if you can stomach it - documenting the anti-8 crowd’s behavior incident-by-incident. Obviously, I am interested in balance, the issue for me is the climate of violence: if you find anything that smacks of discrimination against gays (besides 8 itself), let me know.
- George Will, against the automaker bailout: you may need to use bugmenot to access this. If you’re from the Washington Post and reading this, I can safely tell you I don’t read your crummy paper because it is behind that registration wall. This is a rare exception.
Oct
18
Links, 10/18/08
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- Deborah Miranda’s “The Zen of La Llorona” (h/t Ario) haunts elegantly, if such a thing is possible: Lovers, families, friends, possessions, egos — / we keep nothing of this world, not even our bodies.
- Coffee ice cream. Mmmmmmmm.
- Peggy Noonan on why she doesn’t like Sarah Palin: Most of this critique falls flat for me - the criticism against the Bush admin sounds like insider baseball (really? people rallied to the defense of the President? There’s news if it is true), as does the criticism of McCain. I’m not that thrilled with Palin’s performance, but she’s been a lot stronger and sharper on issues than I expected. I’ve posted the link because the larger idea behind the op-ed is spot on: Conservativsm in America uses infantile rhetoric while the Left is willing to at least sound like educated people should. That’s a big deal, especially when the Left controls the academy. More on this later.
- Ah, Her Majesty’s Most Royal Subjects.
Oct
9
Links, 10/9/2008
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- Tom Wolfe on the “Masters of the Universe” and where they are nowadays.
- Jay Cost waxes romantic about the American voter. From the article: “I know an undecided voter or two. They aren’t shallow. They understand they have a responsibility to make a good decision - not based on the “gotcha” moments or other trivialities that capture the imagination of media types.” I don’t agree with people who say “so-and-so won the debate,” but I think this is vastly overestimating the intelligence of America as a whole. I think Mr. Cost is playing with a definition of “substance” that, if true, would have resulted in these voters paying attention to the candidates and issues long ago, if they really cared. Also: what does it mean “issues” are prepackaged?
- Sarah Lyall: “Britons love to drink and love to boast about drinking. Like hungover students who wake up sick on sticky, beer-soaked floors with someone else’s underpants on their heads but then brag about their awesome night of partying, they have an amused tolerance for drunken high jinks.”
- Murray Feshbach: “According to U.N. figures, the average life expectancy for a Russian man is 59 years — putting the country at about 166th place in the world longevity sweepstakes, one notch above Gambia. For women, the picture is somewhat rosier: They can expect to live, on average, 73 years, barely beating out the Moldovans. But there are still some 126 countries where they could expect to live longer. And the gap between expected longevity for men and for women — 14 years — is the largest in the developed world.”