Saturday, November 10, 2012
Friday, November 09, 2012
Thursday, November 08, 2012
"It was the best of times, it was the worst of times..."
Or maybe somewhere in the middle...
The night we waved goodbye to America... our last best hope on Earth
Or maybe somewhere in the middle...
The night we waved goodbye to America... our last best hope on Earth
Wednesday, November 07, 2012
Not in the mood to put anything up today, check out the links to the side, especially Post Mortem and True Politics in the Wake of Obama.
Tuesday, November 06, 2012
Proving Stereotypes True
1. The breakdown of voters in the presidential election among groups tonight.
2. After some wannabe academic posted on a "friend's" wall about the Founding Fathers, I made a point about constitutional interpretation. Her response? Trumpeting her credentials. Or the fact that she is on the way to getting one. When pressed on whether she agreed with a point, she bowed out saying FB wasn't the place for discussion about politics, though she repeated her claim about there being no consensus among American historians regarding the beliefs of the Founding Fathers. I then wrote that much of American academia is subversive (implying it is not to be trusted) and that the opinion of historians didn't matter much to those who following a living tradition. Of course she would take this as a personal insult.
So why do womyn and everyone else have to prove the bigots (whether real or those who are tarred as such by their enemies, like the "androsphere") correct?
2. After some wannabe academic posted on a "friend's" wall about the Founding Fathers, I made a point about constitutional interpretation. Her response? Trumpeting her credentials. Or the fact that she is on the way to getting one. When pressed on whether she agreed with a point, she bowed out saying FB wasn't the place for discussion about politics, though she repeated her claim about there being no consensus among American historians regarding the beliefs of the Founding Fathers. I then wrote that much of American academia is subversive (implying it is not to be trusted) and that the opinion of historians didn't matter much to those who following a living tradition. Of course she would take this as a personal insult.
So why do womyn and everyone else have to prove the bigots (whether real or those who are tarred as such by their enemies, like the "androsphere") correct?
Te Deum
Omnia gloria tibi, Domine. Miserere nobis, qui merēmus duces quos ligimus.
Clyde Wilson, Did You Ever Think You Would See … ?
The Future of Books
The New Criterion: The digital challenge, I: Loss & gain, or the fate of the book
by Anthony Daniels
In a post-carbon world... is anything certain? I was reminded of this post by Damien Perrotin: The importance of handwriting.
by Anthony Daniels
In a post-carbon world... is anything certain? I was reminded of this post by Damien Perrotin: The importance of handwriting.
William Lind on the Anti-War Right
William Lind, Why Conservatives Hate War
Conflict erodes a nation’s cultural continuity as well as its finances.
Conflict erodes a nation’s cultural continuity as well as its finances.
One gain that comes out of war is as disturbing to conservatives as any of the losses: an aggrandizement of state power. The argument of “wartime necessity” runs roughshod over all checks and balances, civil liberties, and traditional constraints on government. In the 20th century, American progressives knew they could only create the powerful, centralizing federal government they sought by going to war. It was they, the left, who engineered America’s entry into World War I. Nearly a century later, 9/11 gave centralizers in the neocon Bush administration the cover they needed for the “Patriot Act,” legislation that would have left most of America’s original patriots rethinking the merits of King George. Just as nothing adds more to a state’s debt than war, so nothing more increases its power. Conservatives rue both.
Battlestar Galactica: Blood and Chrome Trailer
Caprica was cancelled by Sy-Fy after only two seasons; this prequel movie is being shown on Machinima's Prime channel this Friday. Looks better than the series that inspired; too bad this wasn't made into a series. I think there will be enough people interested in the BSG label to watch it. I think the delay is due less to concerns about the quality of the movie and more with SyFy's being a lousy entertainment company. But, I haven't seen it yet.
'Battlestar Galactica' Spinoff 'Blood & Chrome' Finally Arrives: Too Little, Too Late?
'Battlestar Galactica' Spinoff 'Blood & Chrome' Finally Arrives: Too Little, Too Late?
Monday, November 05, 2012
Peter Hitchens on Our National Politics
A Louse versus a Flea. Who really cares about the US Presidential Election?
For a proper conservative, American national politics is a desert. You can choose between declared liberals and neo-conservatives who are liberal on all important issues. And that’s it. Or there’s dear old Ron Paul, who is another sort of liberal, really. But he’s not important anyway. There’s nobody who is really socially conservative, above all nobody who will act( it’s decades too late anyway) to end the lax immigration politics which have revolutionised the country and will render it unrecognisable within 30 years. There’s nobody who will rescue the married family, or protect and recreate manufacturing industry so that ordinary people have proper honest work to do again, or reform the schools, or devise a foreign policy that actually makes the country safer.
What absolutely amazes me about this election is the way that leftish commentators try to build up Mitt Romney as some kind of conservative monster. If only he were. But his own record shows otherwise (and I might add, his running mate, whose name I can never remember, is a keen student of Miss Ayn Rand, another liberal) .
Metropolitan Hierotheos Interview
Mystagogy: Metropolitan Hierotheos: Church and Politics in Greece Today
He has some things to say about Golden Dawn and the issue of immigration. It was of interest since it is the perspective of an Orthodox bishop on these questions. Sufficiently "conservative"?
Links:
Ecclesia.gr
He has some things to say about Golden Dawn and the issue of immigration. It was of interest since it is the perspective of an Orthodox bishop on these questions. Sufficiently "conservative"?
Links:
Ecclesia.gr
Bill Kauffman on the Federal Executive
Who Needs a President?
Many Anti-Federalists proposed, as an alternative to what they called the “president-general,” either a plural executive—two or more men sharing the office, a recipe for what a sage once called a wise and masterly inactivity—or they wanted no executive at all. Federal affairs would be so limited in scope that they could be performed competently and without aggrandizement by a unicameral legislature—that is, one house of Congress—as well as various administrative departments and perhaps a federal judiciary.
More from Richard Heinberg's Tour in Australia
Sydney Opera House: The End of Growth
Related:
Who will get this economy going? No one by Dave Gardner
Related:
Who will get this economy going? No one by Dave Gardner
Finally, A Full Trailer for WKW's Yip Man Movie
Twitch: Spectacular Full Trailer for Wong Kar Wai's THE GRANDMASTERS
If the vid there isn't working, you can see it here.
Who did the choreography for the movie? Many of the moves by LCW do not look like authentic Wing Chun.
If the vid there isn't working, you can see it here.
Who did the choreography for the movie? Many of the moves by LCW do not look like authentic Wing Chun.
Diet and Mental Health
From AHS12: Emily Deans, M.D. — What Not To Eat for Good Mental Health
From earlier this year: Depression: Your Brain on Sugar
Emily Deans, M.D. — What Not To Eat for Good Mental Health from Ancestral Health Society on Vimeo.
From earlier this year: Depression: Your Brain on Sugar
Punch Brothers on ACL
PBS
Available for a limited period of time.
Watch The Civil Wars / Punch Brothers on PBS. See more from Austin City Limits.
Available for a limited period of time.
Doug McGuff, Fitness, Health, and Liberty
Free the Animal: Dr. Doug McGuff on Fitness, Health and Liberty
He was shut out of AHS 2012 (which took place earlier this year)?!? Some think the academic sponsorship of the event had something to do with it.
Related:
The 21 Convention
Body by Science - presentation
Avoid This Popular Exercise - As It Shrinks Your Muscle and Accelerates Aging
Podcast #26: Body By Science with Dr. Doug McGuff, MD
Stefan Adamache
Byzantine, TX: Years of writing icons in an Australian parish
The church: Svet Nikola.
Perth's Places of Worship
Perth Arts
Another video:
A wedding held at the church.
The church: Svet Nikola.
Perth's Places of Worship
Perth Arts
Another video:
A wedding held at the church.
Sunday, November 04, 2012
A Failure to Respect Men and the Male Ethos
Badger comments on this post at Alpha Game Plan: When the pedestal collapses. (Read the post for background information.)
It's not just that there are a differences in psychology for men and women, but a lack of respect for (and not just the lack of adherence to) traditional ethical codes. Are there significant differences in moral or practical reasoning between men and women? At first thought we might be inclined to say no, but if male and female psychology is different and their functions and virtues are different, might it be that the moral psychologies are also different, and hence so are the demands or what is to be expected? Thus the acquisition and development of individual prudence is more incumbent upon men than on women?
He adds later:
I am reminded that Jason and Crystalina Evert (FB) have a new new website and are no longer with Catholic Answers. Here is the announcement, posted several weeks ago:
Is it the case that differences in male and female psychology can result in different spiritualities?
This is a stark but clear example of the mental process of commitment for a man...when a woman gets onto Ladder 1 (http://badgerhut.wordpress.com/2011/06/03/ladder-theory-for-men/) the "marriage goggles" go into place. Being a man, he takes seriously his commitment to the woman and that said commitment has benefits and costs to it. Given the relative differences in SMP over time for men and women, the commitment goggles provide a tremendous benefit to the woman in terms of long-term resources and security from a man who could, in all likelihood, choose any number of other women, or all/none of them.Is the picture this bleak? And is the state of women a consequence of poor moral training, or is it more tied to their weaknesses resulting from original sin? Even if Badger is blaming nature too much for what is the result of malformed character, the resulting reality is still the same and must be confronted.
However, once a woman does something that shatters the commitment goggles - be it nagging, cheating, denying sex or revealing that she lied to him on a material matter when he was deciding to invest in her - his sense of duty and obligation to her is over. It's done, she's no longer the special lady, just another chick who wants something from him.
It's a male-centric turnaround of Roissy's maxim that once the love dies, a woman can be as cold as if she had never met you. When the loved is _killed_ because a man feels deceived or betrayed, the man can and will lose all sympathy, magnanimity and compassion.
Raised on the soft feminism of my generation, when I was young I never conceived women had such shifting principles. I thought all of their rhetoric about how they wanted men with courage and honor and everything else meant they were committed to such things and expected the same of the men they consorted with. My how things have changed for me. Today, I really don't think women realize how much men, especially the "men of character" that are the endless discussion of articles like these, hold ideals and principles and fairness as a core value of their mindset. Probably another element of the Apex Fallacy, women see bad boys getting away with everything (especially with them, they love to complain about how some dastardly sexy man fooled them) and think deceptions are part of the male experience.
In fact, it's why more men in situations like this DON'T divorce their fibbing, cheating or harpy wives. They've been lulled into internalizing a sort of perverted "ideal" of marriage as "unconditional love" that itself entails a perverted concept of "unconditional forgiveness." (As Athol Kay says, the people who ask for unconditional love are those who don't meet the conditions.)
The hubbub over this letter is yet another incident that gives me great disappointment to realize that truth and honesty and idealism is just not really part of a woman's psychological calculus, not when her perceived self-interest is on the line, and that women will back each other on this abdication of accountability in herdlike fashion.
And this is why men are turning away from the deafening obligation-masculinity, "man up" shtick. Men are constantly told what they "ought" to do by virtue of having a dick, while woman ignore and destroy any pretense of consistency or accountability. Finally a sizeable corpus of men is saying, "so what? Why bother?"
It's not just that there are a differences in psychology for men and women, but a lack of respect for (and not just the lack of adherence to) traditional ethical codes. Are there significant differences in moral or practical reasoning between men and women? At first thought we might be inclined to say no, but if male and female psychology is different and their functions and virtues are different, might it be that the moral psychologies are also different, and hence so are the demands or what is to be expected? Thus the acquisition and development of individual prudence is more incumbent upon men than on women?
He adds later:
On a more personal note, I've steered away from talking numbers with some partners simply because I knew it would be an uncomfortable conversation, probably one that would disappoint me and would almost beg her to lie to me. At the time I lied to myself and said it was an instance of magnanimity or just something that wasn't important, but now I know that was bullshit and I was just avoiding hard situations.No more Mr. Nice Guy or pedestalizing. Women should be held accountable for their actions and if they do not repent of their past, the consequences (e.g. avoidance) need to be real.
Since these relationships didn't work out for other reasons it's a moot point, but when you're talking about making a lifelong commitment you better have the guts to ask the tough questions, to follow up and to independently verify. Your money and your life are on the line.
Moreover, and this obviously doesn't apply to this case, I think a lot of women reflexively believe that the men they are scouting as husbands have equal or more sexual experience than they do, so the exact numbers aren't a big deal and thus can be fudged.
Remember, it's part of the apex fallacy, thinking men have it better than you do, when most women have NO idea at all how hard it is for a man to be sexually successful to the same degree even a plain woman can easily be.
I am reminded that Jason and Crystalina Evert (FB) have a new new website and are no longer with Catholic Answers. Here is the announcement, posted several weeks ago:
Exciting news! After 14 years of working at Catholic Answers, Crystalina and I have decided after much prayer to step out to begin a new apostolate, dedicated solely to promoting chastity and the Theology of the Body. We’re no longer affiliated with Catholic Answers, but rather will be teaming up with Chris Stefanick, Sarah Swafford, and several others. If you’re interested in booking a presentation from any of us, call 877-770-1414. Please keep our new team in your prayers! More details (and a brand new website) to come soon!Sexual morality and relationship advice for the Nice Christian Guy? A caricature of theology of the body, or of its popular presentation here in America. I've linked to other people touching upon the problems in how popularized TOB presents sex and recommendations for sexual morality. The other component of popularized TOB that may be problematic is its understanding of the relationship between men and women. It may ignore sex differences and the results of these differences on relationship dynamics, maintaining a romantic ideal that is not only unattainable but also unsatisfying. If so, is this due in part to the fact that TOB is generally geared towards mixed audiences, and so tends to lean towards egalitarianism in order to be non-offensive?
Is it the case that differences in male and female psychology can result in different spiritualities?
Interviews with Mark Bowden
His book on the killing of OBL was just released.
NPR: Technology Helps Track A Terrorist In 'The Finish'
Daily Caller
Guardian review
official publisher page
Related:
Will this account of Bin Laden’s murder sway the election?
NPR: Technology Helps Track A Terrorist In 'The Finish'
Daily Caller
Guardian review
official publisher page
Related:
Will this account of Bin Laden’s murder sway the election?
National Geographic Channel Showing the Other OBL Movie
The one mentioned in this post.
National Geographic Channel - trailer
Sandy scrambles 'SEAL Team 6' premiere
National Geographic SEAL Team 6 Movie Allegedly Tweaked To Make Obama Look Good
GOP outrage after Harvey Weinstein movie on Bin Laden raid is 're-cut to add MORE footage of Obama'... and will be shown TWO days before election
Military.com review
Trailer:
National Geographic Channel - trailer
Sandy scrambles 'SEAL Team 6' premiere
National Geographic SEAL Team 6 Movie Allegedly Tweaked To Make Obama Look Good
GOP outrage after Harvey Weinstein movie on Bin Laden raid is 're-cut to add MORE footage of Obama'... and will be shown TWO days before election
Military.com review
Trailer:
Kings and Pretenders
Managed to get some time to see Gwanghae [Masquerade] (광해, 왕이 된 남자) three Saturdays ago; it's good entertainment but it may be a bit incredible that someone of a rather "modest" background could be a better king than the real king. (I suppose it depends on what one thinks of the king - being an improvement may not take much.) Lee Byung Hun (이병헌) plays both King Gwanghae and the [gisang house] comedian/jester/entertainer who resembles the king. The comedian is recruited by the Royal Secretary ( Ryoo Seung-Ryong 류승룡) to pretend to be the king at night because the king fears for his life.
I was pulled in by the movie's visuals to think over the plot and issues. Such a pretty movie. But of course they had certain scenes to make it a tearjerker! Did it deserve to win Best Picture for this year's Daejong Awards, though? I don't deny that it is a sentimental crowd-pleaser, as evidenced by its box office pull. (Is Pietà the better movie?) One might think that the jester's awkward infatuation with the queen is a misstep in the story, but it seemed plausible to me that this would happen, since the jester is both a man and also rather attached to the royal institution, despite the failures of the king to secure justice. He might be tempted to take his playacting too far, falling in love with the queen having seen how beautiful she is. And it is understandable that this infatuation could never be resolved to his satisfaction; the queen recognizes the goodness in him but is faithful to the king. It is a good movie for LBH fans and those who are interested in Korean cinema, but the story is a bit shallow and simplistic even if it provides material for reflecting on the Korean monarchy and political theory in general.
*spoiler warning*
Step to the Skies
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