The New Beginning

Wednesday, July 09, 2008

‘Anglo-Catholics must now decide’
By the Rt Rev Andrew Burnham, Bishop of Ebbsfleet

via Rorate Caeli

A discussion of American independence at Ross Douthat's blog.

Jackie Chan photos

Hong Kong movie star Jackie Chan (R) smiles with Japanese actress Misako Yasuda at a promotional event for his movie "The Forbidden Kingdom" in Tokyo July 9, 2008.
REUTERS/Toru Hanai (JAPAN)

Hong Kong movie star Jackie Chan waves to fans at a promotional event for his movie "The Forbidden Kingdom" in Tokyo July 9, 2008.
REUTERS/Toru Hanai (JAPAN)
[I don't know what is attached to the jacket, but I think they do not enhance its appearance.]

Hong Kong actor Jackie Chan poses for photographs after a press conference about his Jackie Chan Charitable Foundation's work in Taipei, Taiwan, Wednesday, June 18, 2008.

Hong Kong movie star Jackie Chan poses for photographers during a news conference for a charity project in Taipei June 18, 2008. Chan arrived on Wednesday to be the spokesperson for the TVBS charity initiative to raise money for children in Taiwan who are in need of funds for education.
REUTERS/Nicky Loh (TAIWAN)
[The little opening below the button is a bit fey--it's something you usually see only with Chinese-inspired blouses for women. I don't know what he is thinking; I hope he didn't have a hand in its creation.]

Hong Kong actor Jackie Chan, left, speaks to local television station TVBS's manager Yi Tao and two underprivileged boys during a press conference about his Jackie Chan Charitable Foundation's work in Taipei, Taiwan, Wednesday, June 18, 2008.
(AP Photo/Wally Santana)

Hong Kong movie star Jackie Chan poses on the red carpet prior to the opening ceremony of the 11th Shanghai International Film Festival at Shanghai Grand Theatre Saturday June 14, 2008 in Shanghai. China. The festival will run until June 22 in China's financial capital.
(AP Photo/Eugene Hoshiko)

If one were to were a guayabera during the day here in NoCal, what should one wear at night if the temperature became much cooler? Seems like a coat with lapels would not match--how about a coat or jacket with a mandarin collar? Or no collar at all? (The coat or jacket would have to extend below as far the shirt, or farther.) I don't think a vest would work, since its length is usually rather short. (Unless it is one of the fleece vests, but even those go down to just the waist, unless one deliberately buys a larger size. Besides, a fleece vest doesn't go with a shirt that is worn in warm or hot climates.)

Maybe a coat with lapels would be ok...

Olive - You're Not Alone

Olive - Your Not Alone

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LYA interview on Iranian TV

w/English subs - part 1

part 2

no subs: parts 1, 2 and 3.

neangnee's channel

Apparently Dae Jang Geum has been broadcast in Iran?

Return of the Queen, Lee Young-ae 李英愛 2008 Shanghai

How did I miss this when it was first uploaded? I haven't been checking for videos with Lee Young Ae on youtube because it appears she hasn't been doing much lately. Is she taking an extended break from show business?

Zenit: To Radical Feminism and Back

Confessions of an Ex-Feminist (Amazon)
Insight Scoop; Ignatius Insight interview
Confessions of an Ex-Feminist - Catholic Online
CS#57: Lorraine Murray Confessions of an Ex-Feminist (mp3)

Kevin R. C. Gutzman, Some Timeless Verities (Cato) (from Modern Age 49:1, Winter 2007)

A review of Cato: A Tragedy, and Selected Essays, edited by Christine Dunn Henderson and Mark E. Yellin, Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 2004. xxviii + 282 pp.

I found out that a friend had bought a house from the bank and was renting it out, and he was complaining about having a landlord's problems. Apparently neither he nor the renters were fully aware of the condition the house was in. I remarked that he had become, like many other Chinese living in the United States, a landlord. It does disturb me that land [and housing] has been so concentrated in the hands of the few, when the right to housing (if there is such a thing as a right) must be reckoned one of the foundamental rights. The freedom to acquire land and to build a house, not the opportunity to participate in the real estate market and secure housing thereby.

If only things were different, and people did not put their excess (if it really is excess) wealth into acquiring houses.

I came across this tidbit from Kirkpatrick Sale this morning:

The simple fact is that most people in this nation are not needed in their work, are not performing any particularly useful social functions, and the sooner they found re-employment the better for them and all of us. Keynes long ago pointed out that hiring half the unemployed to dig holes and the other half to fill them up would solve the unemployment problem, and that was dismissed as a clever donnish remark, but he was righter than he knew. For that is really how much of our current economy operates right now: many millions of citizens are doing nothing of value for society, only performing the necessary function of getting a paycheck and redistributing it to the manufacturers, banks, and governments of their choice. The defense worker is almost certainly not necessary, considering that the U.S. has already stockpiled enough weaponry to blow the earth apart several hundred times over; the designers creating biannual fashion changes in clothes and the workers who make and model and sell them are clearly not necessary, their talents wasted in an enterprise remarkable for being without any socially redeeming features whatsoever, nor are advertising executives, casino dealers, pornographers, fast-food purveyors, people who make sleeping pills or Barbie dolls or annual reports or underarm deodorants or celebrity books or plastic flowers . . . but need I go on.

Figure it this way. Only 40 percent of the population is in the labor force. Of that, according to such calculators as Herman Kahn, only 2 percent is necessary for the 'primary' industries that basically keep us going, agriculture and mining. Add to that the workers tha twould be necessary for the manufacture and production of essential goods--approximately 5 percent more of the labor force, according to the calculations of Scott Burns--and we'd arrive at approximately 7 percent of all American workers, or 3 percent of the total population, that is in any sense truly necessary to keep the nation going. I should think it would behoove the other 97 percent of us to find something else to do, and the sooner the better.

(Human Scale, 326-7)

This was written in 1980, but I don't think the percentages have really changed that much. Now, this assumes that this sort of arrangement is sustainable, and I think that Mr. Sale would be among the first to agree that it is not, so that the percentage of people involved in agriculture, mining, and necessary manufacturing would need to increase. But these are questions that must be asked and resolved at the local level.

Via Carolyn Baker: Wendell Berry's "Faustian Economics"

The Founding Father of Constitutional Subversion
Tom DiLorenzo on Alexander Hamilton, and the Hamiltonians today.

Professor DiLorenzo's Hamilton's Curse: How Jefferson's Arch Enemy Betrayed the American Revolution--and What It Means for Americans Today (Amazon)

Natalie MacMaster

Thanks to Morigue.

Natalie MacMaster - King George Medley

Natalie MacMaster - G Medley

Live in Cape Breton, 2007
Natalie MacMaster - Volcanic Jig

Natalie MacMaster - Tullochgorum

Natalie MacMaster - The Silver Spear

Natalie MacMaster - Step Dance Extravaganza

Natalie MacMaster - Traditional Medley

Natalie MacMaster - Anniversary Waltz

Morigue has more.

Tuesday, July 08, 2008

Announcing a peak oil media guide
Chris Nelder, ASPO-USA
A new online document addresses the important questions that regularly come up about peak oil. We encourage those who engage with the media to distribute the guide. Input from knowledgeable experts is welcome.
archived Jul 7 2008

download the pdf

A good introduction for those who want to know what 'peak oil' is.

Dressing 'down' when it gets hot

Seems like a sensible idea, doesn't it, especially to save electricity and air conditioning costs.

via the Western Confucian: Should you dress down to beat the heat?

The article has a link to an article about Japan's Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda dressing in 'laid-back' Okinawan kariyushi shirts.

Note how the articles describe such wear as 'dressing down' and 'laid-back'--how, then, do we distingish 'casual' from 'formal'? Partly by convention, but what does convention say is the difference? The number of layers? Perhaps the stuffy would emphasize wearing business formal even in hot weather, but how many of them would be so enthusiastic about upholding tradition if A/C weren't available?

The poor police officer above still has to wear a tie, while the prime minister's personal security (?) does not.

It is true that with more layers, one can have more ornamentation, designs, variety, and so on, but that doesn't necessarily make such an arrangement or ensemble more 'formal' than one with less layers or simpler. Is this evidence of the influence or power of the elites occupying colder climates over peoples living in warmer climates? [And the accompanying prejudice against other forms of clothing and fashion standards?] Gasp! Cultural imperialism!

I've raised the questions of adapting fashion standards to climate change (or dressing more sensibly when the weather changes) here and here.

More on Karisyushi:
Kariyushi Wear
Mango House
Japan Ministers to Wear "Kariyushi" Okinawan Summer Shirts
Japan Today - News - Abe begins Cool Biz campaign with Okinawan wear
Internet-Okinawa.com Gallery :: Okinawa, October 2005
OkinawaJET.com - Re:Kariyushi Wear - OkiJET Forums
Okinawa busy producing cool Kariyushi wear.
Okinawan-style.com * About Kariyushi
JIN-462 -- Uniforms and Uniformity

So is the Karisyushi original to Okinawa? Or was it adapted from the Hawaiian Aloha shirt? I've seen contradicting claims made in the links above. I'd probably prefer the Okinawan prints over the Hawaiian prints, as there should be more restrained ones available, but I think I still favor the guayabera above all. (A lot of Hawaiian shirts use flowers in the patterns, which can be a bit much--it's not using like using a single flower as a symbol of a clan.)

Aloha shirt - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The Aloha Shirt
Aloha Shirts of Hawaii
Shaka Time
Hawaii Clothing Company
Avanti Shirts
Hawaiian Shirts, Polynesian Aloha Shirts at Hawaiian Shirt Shoppe
The Hana Shirt Company
Hot Shirts
Rainbow Hawaii

Some interesting links here regarding Anglican liturgy (including these photos of the revival of Sarum practices).

Zenit: Miraculous Medal Marks 100 Years

Fr. Z: Church of England bishop will lead Anglicans to Rome

Let us pray for the establishment of full communion!

For Pete Takeshi--AICN: Bruce Campbell on what it would take for him to do another EVIL DEAD + more

Macross TV - Opening by Nekki Basara

alt

Crunchy Con: The miseducation of American elites

Clyde Wilson, Honestly, Abe!

How many people know that Lincoln approved a proposed Thirteenth Amendment which would have guaranteed non-interference with slavery in the South, as long as no black people could be brought to unsettled territories which Northern capitalists were eager to exploit—and those capitalists could continue their tariff “protection”?

Zenit: "Summorum Pontificum" One Year Later (Part 2)

On the BSG mid-season cliff-hanger

"Revelations"

*spoiler warning*

So 4 of the final 5 don't actually know the way to Earth--what actually was instrumental to their finding earth was the 'special' Viper in which Starbuck returned to the fleet. The Vipert picked up a colonial emergency locator signal that no other ship was able to detect. Of course the signal was pointing the way to Earth. All the cylons did was walk over to the Viper when prompted to do so by the music they heard in their heads, figuring that there was something special about it, since they were brought to it, and then calling Starbuck to figure out what exactly that was.

Lee talked about them receiving "messages from the beyond," while Starbuck responded that things happened "just the way the hybrid said it would happen." So there is some Higher Power orchestrating this, who wants the colonials to find Earth with the cylcons. When will the final cylon model be revealed? I would like it for a special guest star to be cast as the final cylon model, rather than it turning out to be a character that has already shown up in the series [recurring or not]. Though I suppose there might be something fitting if Richard Hatch's reformed terrorist-politician character Tom Zarek were to be it. On that note, an appearance by Dirk Benedict on the show would be nice.

StarBuck vs. StarDoe

While 3's re-appearance did threaten the alliance between the cylons and humans, eventually with the discovery of the 4 of the 5 remaining cylons, the two parties were able to re-establish some sort of peace and jump to Earth. What do they find when they take the shuttles down? A desolate Earth, a frozen wasteland... is there radiation on the surface as well, indicative of a nuclear war?

YouTube: Battlestar Galactica "Revelations" Arrival at Earth Scene

"This has all happened before, and it will happen again."

All that was missing was a the statue of liberty and some apes.

Will it turn out that the Earth is not really the 13th colony, but the 1st colony, rather the original homeworld? With the humans being the first cylons/artificial lifeforms created by the original human beings living on Earth? (I read that speculation on AICN I believe.) And will the humans and cylons return to the 12 colonies to repopulate them, as these photos might suggest? And what role did the "Higher Power" have to play in all of this? Will "God" remain as hidden as ever by the end of the Series Finale? (That is what I'm betting. Whether the relationship between God and the humans and cylons will be clarified at least... that remains to be unseen.)

Perhaps by the finale, the series will show that all the time people have spent watching has been worth it--but I think drama for its own sake has been the order of the day, everything else has been made subordinate to it. Did Ron Moore have a coherent vision of the story and how would it end when the original miniseries aired three years ago?

Adama's breakdown on learning of what Saul Tigh's was was somewhat refreshing; we've seen how 'human' Bill Adam can be--first admitting of his love for Laura Roselin, and then realizing that his closest friend of the last 30 years was not human, but a skinjob.

TV Yahoo