Category Archives: Culture, Books, Arts

Friedman on the ropes

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This is the sort of literary criticism that makes me want to blog… kudos to you Mr. Ferguson:

Mr. Friedman can turn a phrase into cliché faster than any Madison Avenue jingle writer. He announces that “America declared war on math and physics.” Three paragraphs later, we learn that we’re “waging war on math and physics.” Three sentences later: “We went to war against math and physics.” And onto the next page: “We need a systemic response to both our math and physics challenges, not a war on both.” Three sentences later: We must “reverse the damage we have done by making war on both math and physics,” because, we learn two sentences later, soon the war on terror “won’t seem nearly as important as the wars we waged against physics and math.” He must think we’re idiots.

and then there’s also this:

If the authors’ frustration is unoriginal and ill-defined, their optimism is terrifying. America will rebound—we will become the us that we used to be again, you might say and Mr. Friedman does—when we regain our ability to do “big things” through “collective action.” Collective action is a phrase that means “the federal government.” Among the big things that we will do are rework American industry, through regulation and taxation, to drastically cut carbon emissions. Another one of our big things is a big increase in the gasoline tax. We will also impose on us a new big carbon tax. We will use revenues to create a “clean energy” industry with millions of “green jobs” like the ones that were eliminated earlier this month at Solyndra. Readers will wonder, like the early environmentalist Tonto, “What do you mean ‘we,’ kemo sabe?”

 

via Book Review: That Used to Be Us – WSJ.com.

God I love this woman…

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“This is why Conservatives don’t have humans as Gods… they are always going to disappoint you… we have a real savior”

[on the chapter on liberal's contradictory thinking] They will viciously attack Clarence Thomas for dubious (and obviously false) … allegations about engaging in verbal sexual harassment and then they are hysterical about sexual McCarthyism… Teddy Kennedy kills a woman at Chappaquiddick and then spend the rest of his life looking into other people’s past…

All the News That’s Fit to Scrub

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Whatever else you do today… don’t forget to read James Taranto’s piece on the latest New York Times editorial decisions:

“In my house growing up, The Times substituted for religion,” Jill Abramson told the New York Times yesterday upon being designated the paper’s new executive editor. “If The Times said it, it was the absolute truth.”

This quote prompted blogress Ann Althouse, who is a much nicer person than we are, to contemplation:

Let’s analyze the analogy. A newspaper is like religion, believed in, and taken, unquestioningly, as true. Then what happens when you are in charge of it?

1. You have a deep moral obligation to insure that it is absolutely true, to respect the faith that others put in it and to preserve and grow the community of believers because of your dedication to truth, or…

2. You are embedded in the faith, carrying on the commitment to the idea that it is the truth and impressing that faith that it is the truth on readers, so that they keep looking to you as the mouthpiece of truth and don’t go wandering off looking for some other viewpoints.

It could be #1 or #2 or both or neither.

So, which is it?

via All the News That’s Fit to Scrub – WSJ.com.

Middle-Earth Revisited

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It doesn’t get much better than this folks: Lord of the Rings as remembered by the orcs:

[T]here’s two sides to every story, or to quote a less banal maxim, history is written by the winners.[I don't know why I find this really funny but I do] That’s the philosophy behind “The Last Ringbearer,” a novel set during and after the end of the War of the Ring (the climactic battle at the end of “The Lord of the Rings”) and told from the point of view of the losers…

[T]he wizard Gandalf is a war-monger intent on crushing the scientific and technological initiative of Mordor and its southern allies…

Barad-dur, also known as the Dark Tower and Sauron’s citadel, is, by contrast, described as “that amazing city of alchemists and poets, mechanics and astronomers, philosophers and physicians, the heart of the only civilization in Middle-earth to bet on rational knowledge and bravely pitch its barely adolescent technology against ancient magic.”…

Sauron passes a “universal literacy law,” while the shield maiden Eowyn has been raised illiterate, “like most of Rohan’s elite” — good guys Tolkien based on his beloved Anglo-Saxons.

This should be a great read…

via Middle-earth according to Mordor – Laura Miller – Salon.com.

Sarkozy’s France…

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French President Nicolas Sarkozy isn’t in the diplomatic mood.  I must say, I liked Sarcozy when he spoke to Congress a few years back and this is all good stuff he’s saying now:

PARIS (AFP) – French President Nicolas Sarkozy declared Thursday that multiculturalism had failed, joining a growing number of world leaders or ex-leaders who have condemned it.

“My answer is clearly yes, it is a failure,” he said in a television interview…

“If you come to France, you accept to melt into a single community, which is the national community, and if you do not want to accept that, you cannot be welcome in France,”

“We have been too concerned about the identity of the person who was arriving and not enough about the identity of the country that was receiving him”

I think that last quote really sums up what Europe is realizing: pluralism can be a good thing… but not if it undermines ones own culture or creates distinct, incompatible social norms.

via Multiculturalism has failed, says French president – Yahoo! News.

‘Fake Authenticity’ for Sale

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Great quote from the WSJ:

“Whenever you find something described as authentic, you know that you are already in the realm of fake authenticity,” says Andrew Potter in his recent book “The Authenticity Hoax.” It’s not unlike the “right stuff” Tom Wolfe described: No fighter pilot who had that elusive quality would ever think to say so. “Authenticity is like authority or charisma,” Mr. Potter writes. “If you have to tell people you have it, then you probably don’t.”

via ‘Fake Authenticity’ for Sale | Postmodern Times by Eric Felten – WSJ.com.

The Joe McCarthy of Our Times…

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John Steele Gordon has a great article re-inforcing why I never read the New York Times.

[T]his may be a tipping point in Krugman’s disgraceful career as a columnist. For one thing, he is intellectually lazy and seems to operate on the principle that a Krugman assertion is, ipso facto, an established fact. He rarely buttresses his assertions with evidence. His one bit of evidence that ”eliminationist rhetoric” in American political life is overwhelmingly on the right was to quote Rep. Michelle Bachmann as saying that people who oppose the Obama agenda should be “armed and dangerous.”

Far worse, however, he is intellectually dishonest. Even the Times’s first public editor, Daniel Okrent, said that Krugman has a “disturbing habit of shaping, slicing and selectively citing numbers in a fashion that pleases his acolytes but leaves him open to substantive assaults.” He is no less cavalier with quotes. As John Hinderacker at Power Line shows, complete with a recording of the entire interview, Michelle Bachmann was merely using a metaphor.  She was holding a town hall meeting with constituents regarding the cap-and-trade bill and said, “I’m going to have materials for people when they leave. I want people armed and dangerous on this issue of the energy tax, because we need to fight back.” She was arming them with information, not bullets, so they could successfully oppose a terrible bill, not shoot politicians…

I hope that Krugman’s column on Monday, when he shamelessly used a tragedy to smear his political opponents, will be his have-you-no-decency-sir moment. He deserves one. He is the Joe McCarthy of our times.

Blue Like Jazz – A Review

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Vacations are one of the few opportunities I have to get serious reading done… and this Christmas break is no exception.  After a number of recommendations by friends, I decided to make Donald Miller’s “Blue Like Jazz” my number one priority, and I must admit, I walk away from the book with mixed reactions.

Blue Like Jazz is self-described as a collection of “Nonreligious Thoughts on Chrisian Spirituality”. I’m not entirely sure this is an accurate title; Donald does talk quite a bit about faith and religion… and its often hard to discuss those topics without taking a religious ‘angle’… but I suppose its not really worth nitpicking the description, I’m reviewing the book as a whole after all.
To be clear, this book undoubtedly contains some gems…. pieces and ideas that spoke to me quite clearly… but just as with the real thing, it took a lot of digging to get there.  Perhaps it is the writing style that distracted me:  the loose collection of unconnected experiences from the author’s past… the silo’d chapters with no clear cohesion from one to the next.  Maybe it was the author’s almost obnoxious fascination with how great hippies are… or maybe it was just the re-telling of the author’s lifelong confusion about God and spirituality that made finding resolution and answers rather difficult.

Whatever it was, I’d hesitate to recommend the book, but would like to share the few portions that moved me in new directions:

First, some dating advice for the guys:  It turns out women love seeing romantic plays.  But be careful; don’t finish the night like this guy:

later in the play they accidentally kill themselves.  It was not very believable but that is what happened.  My date was crying.  I was thinking they got what they deserved… When we were walking out my date clasped my hand, and even though I wasn’t feeling very mushy, I smiled at her and ascended the aisle and made our way out through the crowded lobby onto the steps of the playhouse… Two girls in front of us were talking to each other.  One of them threw her arms  in the air and cried out loud:  I wish I could know live like Romeo and Juliet”

- I couldn’t take it anymore.  I whispered under my breath : “They’re Dead”.

You can imagine how the rest of the date went…

The second concept that rang true with me was one I had heard before:  That one of the most powerful things a Christian can do is apologize for the sins of the Church… for the sins of other Christians.  Miller shared an interesting story about how such an apology for the hurt experienced by an acquaintance by the hands of a fellow Christian made a huge impact in that persons’s life.  I think it bears repeating that in terms of the overall impact, the Church and Christianity has had an overwhelmingly positive impact on the world.  But while true, that fact itself does not absolve the church of its sins and mistakes – of which there are many.  The Church is far from perfect because it is made up of imperfect people… and we should never hesitate to apologize for when we are hypocrites… or worse… even if we did not participate in the wrong.

Perhaps part of the reason the Church does hurt people is because it is caught in a paradox:  We are called to love the world… but we are not called to endorse the sin in the world… or support its participation.  We are called to take on the often confusing task of rejecting sin but loving sinners.  And I’m not sure there is a solution to this paradox that all would find acceptable.   Donald expresses this paradox thusly:

The problem in the Christian community was that we had ethics, we had rules and laws and principles to judge each other against.  There was love in Christian community, but it was conditional love.  Sure, we called it unconditional, but it wasn’t… I wanted to love everybody… I wanted people to love each other…

On the other hand… I felt by loving people… I mean really endorcing their existence, I was betraying the truth of God because I was encouraging them in their lives apart from God…

This was, at the time, my primary problem with Christian faith.  With all its talk about pure love, in the end it shook down to conditional love.

If I remember Donald’s point,  I think he would say that it is not our responsibility to change a person’s heart; Which is true.  But at the same time, I feel there is still a fine line between non-endorcement and endorsement… a problem to which I still do not know the answer. (this would be a great topic to discuss in the comments if you feel so inclined).  I never felt like Donald reached a satisfactory conclusion on this point, but perhaps his greater goal was to stimulate the reader’s thoughts… a goal he has certainly achieved with me.

Lastly, Donald tells the story of a guy named Bill, who ran a bed-in-breakfast for people who were doing ministry in San Fransisco.  Donald was astonished at the level of service Bill offered to each person… the extent to which Donald sacrificed his time and energy for his guests.  When Donald asked Bill about this, bill replied: “If we are not willing to wake up in the morning and die to ourselves, perhaps we should ask ourselves whether or not we are really following Jesus”.

The more I think about that line… the more convicted I feel.

But perhaps I’ll open this up to my readers… did I miss something great about this book?  Was there some theme that spoke to you?  I’m happy to get another take on it.