Tuesday, January 06, 2009
Korea Times: Idol Stars Gearing Up for Various Activities
Wonder Girls Wonderland
Fans of Wonder Girls will be thrilled to know that the hit pop group will hold its first concert in February. After the concert, however, the group will move to the United States and carry out their U.S. promotions for the time being.Where will they be living? SoCal or NYC?
Wonder Girls Wonderland
Amy Welborn attends Divine Liturgy at a Melkite church.
Also of note: Bishop Vigneron has been appointed archbishop of Detroit.
SF Chronicle: Oakland bishop to head Detroit Archdiocese; California Catholic Daily
Eh... who will be replacing him? I don't like the cathedral, but according to what others tell me, the bishop has done a lot of good things for the diocese. (I thought he inherited the design for the cathedral; I didn't know he "oversaw the design.") I hope his replacement is just as good, if not better. The Bay Area is sorely lacking in good bishops.
Links:
A homily he gave at TAC in 2004: The Gift of Wisdom: The Intellect as the "Disciple of Love"
A video of the bishop discussing marriage @ Marriage Matters to Kids.
The Catholic Voice (newsletter for the diocese of Oakland)
Also of note: Bishop Vigneron has been appointed archbishop of Detroit.
SF Chronicle: Oakland bishop to head Detroit Archdiocese; California Catholic Daily
Eh... who will be replacing him? I don't like the cathedral, but according to what others tell me, the bishop has done a lot of good things for the diocese. (I thought he inherited the design for the cathedral; I didn't know he "oversaw the design.") I hope his replacement is just as good, if not better. The Bay Area is sorely lacking in good bishops.
Links:
A homily he gave at TAC in 2004: The Gift of Wisdom: The Intellect as the "Disciple of Love"
A video of the bishop discussing marriage @ Marriage Matters to Kids.
The Catholic Voice (newsletter for the diocese of Oakland)
4 clips of the April Verch Band at the Great Aunt Stella Center:
This Flower
Tennessee Wagoner
Related links:
Charlotte Folk Society
This Flower
Tennessee Wagoner
Related links:
Charlotte Folk Society
APRIL VERCH BAND AT THE COOK SHACK, NOVEMBER 2008
Just discovered her yesterday, and she's already one of my new favorites... I think her latest album is with Rounder Records. Can Rounder ever go wrong?
Just discovered her yesterday, and she's already one of my new favorites... I think her latest album is with Rounder Records. Can Rounder ever go wrong?
Thomas Fleming, The Politics of Dante
To understand Dante’s argument, we have to get rid of fixed notions like republican virtue or the merits of non-centralized societies or our horror of monarchy.
Monday, January 05, 2009
April Verch
Official. Promo Video. MySpace.
APRIL VERCH BAND AT THE COOK SHACK
April Verch Band - Long Way Home - Rose Garden Coffeehouse
April Verch dances up a storm
YouTube: April Verch interview
The Bluegrass Blog » April Verch interview on The Nashville Nobody
Some photos at flickr.
Bowfire | April Verch
April Verch - Canadian Celtic Music Artist Spotlight - April 2001
$38.50 to hear Rhonda Vincent live... hmmm...
source of photo (photo by Albert Sanchez)
Freight and Salvage Coffee House sounds like an interesting venue--"Home of Traditional Music Since 1968." There are cheaper performances (like April Verch on January 16), ranging from $18.50 to $20.50 (for tickets purchased in advance). There are a few good things about Berkeley...
source of photo (photo by Albert Sanchez)
Freight and Salvage Coffee House sounds like an interesting venue--"Home of Traditional Music Since 1968." There are cheaper performances (like April Verch on January 16), ranging from $18.50 to $20.50 (for tickets purchased in advance). There are a few good things about Berkeley...
FPJ: Culture? What Culture?, by Anthony Esolen
Conservatives who attempt to win what have been called the “Culture Wars” have made a category mistake. There have been no Culture Wars, because there has been no Culture. Conservatives, no less than Americans as a whole, need to learn what a real culture consists of.
This post has the link to the audio.
We have just endured the great quadrennial national exam. Neither one of the major candidates referred to the wisdom of the Constitution. Neither one reminded us of what our revered statesmen once said and did. The so-called conservative did not broach the shrewd pessimism of John Adams; the leftist did not turn one page of the pamphlets of Tom Paine. Just as we have lost a sense of the holy, so have we lost our national and cultural memories, for without reverence the past is but a burden of irrelevant particularities, which historians may study if they so choose, but which most of us will cheerfully ignore. And that amnesia is one of the conditions of enslavement. For just as our apparent freedom from worship helps to enslave us to the State and its tentacles in mass entertainment, mass education, and mass technology—since there will be no Sunday against which to judge the everlasting Mondays of modern life—so our apparent freedom from memory only enslaves us to manipulation by what I call the Anticulture, the infantile fads we take in helplessly from our keepers in the media and the schools. A man worshiping God on a Sunday with his brothers in a tumbledown chapel is free, receiving the gift of the world, and giving praise freely in return. A man commemorating the birthday of Stonewall Jackson is free, receiving his heritage in gratitude, and passing it along in turn as a gift to his children.
But when I am in an airport, that most harried image of the eternal tarmac of Hell, crowded without community, noisy without celebration, technologically sophisticated without beauty, and see people engaged in loud conversations not with one another but with a business partner in Chicago or a spouse and children far away, I see not freedom but confinement. And above them all, as if to remind us of our unhappy state, blare the everlasting televisions, telling us what has just happened and what it means, and preventing us from ever experiencing a moment not of loneliness but of solitude, not of idleness but of peace. It too is a tool of the Anticulture. For culture by its nature is conservative. It remembers, it reveres, it gives thanks, and it cherishes. A farmer tilling the land his father tilled, whistling an air from of old, in the shadow of the church where his people heard the word of God and let it take root in their hearts—that is a man of culture. He might live only fifty years, but he lives them in an expanse of centuries; indeed, under the eye of eternity. How thin and paltry our four score and ten seem by comparison! For we are imprisoned in irreverence. Our preachers are neither the birds nor the old pastor peering over Holy Writ, but the nagging, needling, desire-pricking, noisome voice of the mass educator, or of the headline, or of the television, which could never have won our attention without encouraging in us amnesia, indifference, petulance, and scorn, all destroyers of culture.
In this sense the Left are like Jonson’s Puritan, without the faith. Make no mistake here: the natural conservatives in Bartholomew Fair are the people who want their roast pork, who don’t mind the carnival, and who will deal with pickpockets and charlatans as they come. It’s the ideologue who wants to establish the kingdom of perfection on earth, by decrying homely and earthy and generally innocent traditions as you’ll find on a saint’s day, at a fair. “Hinder me not!” cries our purveyor of the Puritanically correct, Mr. Busy. “I was moved in spirit, to be here this day, in this Fair, this wicked and foul Fair; and fitter may it be called a Foul than a Fair; to protest against the abuses of it, in regard of the afflicted saints”—he means, his afflicted fellow Puritans—“that are troubled, very much troubled, exceedingly troubled, with the opening of the merchandise of Babylon again, and the peeping of popery upon the stalls here, here, in the high places!” Does the Citadel admit only boys, to turn them into men? Oh the abuses of it, the foul abuses. Are the children of the local high school singing Christmas carols? Down with Dagon, down with Dagon! Is there a teacher somewhere speaking about the forgotten virtue of purity? Tear down that superstitious shrine. For our new Puritans have improved on the old, in this regard. They manage to be lewd and prudish at the same time.
If I am right about this then conservatives who attempt to win what have been called the “Culture Wars” have made a category mistake. There have been no Culture Wars, because there has been no Culture. There have been Mass Entertainment Wars, and Mass Education Wars, and maybe some of us ought to fight them; but I have the word of a certain wise carpenter from Galilee that one does not cast out devils in the name of Beelzebub. Because I am a conservative, or rather because I am a man, with a natural longing to praise, and to give thanks, I cannot be content with Mass Entertainment, even if it should be clean, or with Mass Education, even if it should refrain from turning its patients into idiots. I cannot be content with them, as I cannot be content with living in prison, even if the prison were a nice hospital with decent food. I want the genuine article, culture.
Chris Myers Asch, A Civilian West Point
Advocacy for the public service academy at a reputedly conservative blog. The author cites as support the American Founding Fathers:
Advocacy for the public service academy at a reputedly conservative blog. The author cites as support the American Founding Fathers:
The idea for a national university devoted to developing civilian leadership traces its roots back to the earliest years of the Republic. The Founders understood that a stable and prosperous republic would only be possible if the people and their leaders were endowed with the character, intellect, and experience necessary to serve the fledgling nation honorably and effectively. From George Washington to James Madison, our first six presidents all advocated the creation of a national institution that could develop civilian leadership, set a standard for academic excellence and civic virtue, and help bind the nation together. Congress, beset by petty parochialism, never agreed.Who else opposed the creation of such an institution? What did those who were aware of regional differences and the sovereignty of the states think of it?
Fr. Z responds to a question about how to shore up one's spiritual life--QUAERITUR: “flee to orthodoxy”.
Cardinal Biffi versus ‘A Mysterious Cabal of Maniacs’
Unfortunately I don't think his books will be translated into English--publishers probably do not think the book would make money, even publishers like Ignatius Press.
via Stephen Hand (see Mr. Hand's post for some excerpts from the cardinal's memoirs)
Unfortunately I don't think his books will be translated into English--publishers probably do not think the book would make money, even publishers like Ignatius Press.
via Stephen Hand (see Mr. Hand's post for some excerpts from the cardinal's memoirs)
Sandro Magister, In Gaza, the Vatican Raises the White Flag
Hamas denies Israel's right to exist. But for pontifical diplomacy, the Jewish state is wrong to defend itself with force. The custodian of the Holy Land reveals the thinking behind the Church's policy in the Middle East
Twitch: 2009: Year of the Chick Fight! First Proper Trailer For Xiong Xin Xin’s COWEB!
Looks like the genre is making a small comeback. Did Kill Bill 1 & 2 mark the peak of the girl power trend in the U.S.? (Movie fans would probably complain if it turned out to be Charlie's Angels.) Recently, there haven't been many American films with women fighters. Million Dollar Baby was released 4 years ago. (The same year as Kill Bill 2.) There have been a couple of movies with female protagonists shooting guns... women are participating in 'reality-based fighting' contests? But is it even more degrading than women's boxing?
Modern fantasy and wuxia novels are not short on women characters who are the equal of men in their fighting abilities. At least some are written by feminists. (What sort of views about women do wuxia novelists like Jin Yong hold?) In wuxia novels at least, recourse must be made to a mostly imaginary entity (qi) to explain the parity. (Even if training in qi and martial arts is required, qi is the ultimate material cause which makes the parity possible in the first place, and it enables adepts to overcome the limits of their muscles and bodies.) Some distinctions can be made in fantasy novels, I suppose--not all authors create heroines who are primarily
sword-fighters; some still make distinctions through the weapons they use.
I do recall that some teenage girls have sued for the right to be on wrestling teams. What do their stories reveal about the ability of women to grapple successfully with men their same weight?
As for the movie-watching audience... there are those males (especially nerds) who prize a strong female who can kick butt, while for others such movies are just entertainment that has no bearing on the real world. Movies with women fighters have been popular in Hong Kong for a while--going back not only to the action of the movies of the 80s (Michelle Yeoh, Cynthia Rothrock, and a bunch of others) but to the wuxia adaptations and kung fu movies of the late 60s and 70s. Some fans may be weak males who need a woman to take charge of their lives. For others it is a real turn-on, and one wonders if there is not some misogyny behind it. Or at least a failure to appreciate and accept limits in nature--I think most of them would not want a woman who is exactly the same as a man in all respects except for her body. A woman who is an equal in her physical abilities, but at the same time still feminine in many respects, especially in how she relates to men, is likely the ideal for them.
One would think that in Hong Kong the rise in feminist ideals is due more to influences other than action movies (and there are plenty of other movies and dramas which put forth some modified version of modern feminism), but did girl power movies have an influence on the young and impressionable in Hong Kong as well? Here in the United States such movies did not precede the feminist movement, but followed and capitalized upon its success in shaping the attitudes of succeeding generations.
It is one thing to prepare women defend the home as a last resort (as in samurai culture) and thereby react to agression--it's another to teach them how to be aggressive and to wage war. (Is it possible to expect them to take 'the lead' in such matters and yet still be willing to be led in others?)
Would the New Scot like this? Twitch: First Images From Albert Pyun’s SWORD AND THE SORCERER Sequel TALES OF AN ANCIENT EMPIRE!
Looks like the genre is making a small comeback. Did Kill Bill 1 & 2 mark the peak of the girl power trend in the U.S.? (Movie fans would probably complain if it turned out to be Charlie's Angels.) Recently, there haven't been many American films with women fighters. Million Dollar Baby was released 4 years ago. (The same year as Kill Bill 2.) There have been a couple of movies with female protagonists shooting guns... women are participating in 'reality-based fighting' contests? But is it even more degrading than women's boxing?
Modern fantasy and wuxia novels are not short on women characters who are the equal of men in their fighting abilities. At least some are written by feminists. (What sort of views about women do wuxia novelists like Jin Yong hold?) In wuxia novels at least, recourse must be made to a mostly imaginary entity (qi) to explain the parity. (Even if training in qi and martial arts is required, qi is the ultimate material cause which makes the parity possible in the first place, and it enables adepts to overcome the limits of their muscles and bodies.) Some distinctions can be made in fantasy novels, I suppose--not all authors create heroines who are primarily
sword-fighters; some still make distinctions through the weapons they use.
I do recall that some teenage girls have sued for the right to be on wrestling teams. What do their stories reveal about the ability of women to grapple successfully with men their same weight?
As for the movie-watching audience... there are those males (especially nerds) who prize a strong female who can kick butt, while for others such movies are just entertainment that has no bearing on the real world. Movies with women fighters have been popular in Hong Kong for a while--going back not only to the action of the movies of the 80s (Michelle Yeoh, Cynthia Rothrock, and a bunch of others) but to the wuxia adaptations and kung fu movies of the late 60s and 70s. Some fans may be weak males who need a woman to take charge of their lives. For others it is a real turn-on, and one wonders if there is not some misogyny behind it. Or at least a failure to appreciate and accept limits in nature--I think most of them would not want a woman who is exactly the same as a man in all respects except for her body. A woman who is an equal in her physical abilities, but at the same time still feminine in many respects, especially in how she relates to men, is likely the ideal for them.
One would think that in Hong Kong the rise in feminist ideals is due more to influences other than action movies (and there are plenty of other movies and dramas which put forth some modified version of modern feminism), but did girl power movies have an influence on the young and impressionable in Hong Kong as well? Here in the United States such movies did not precede the feminist movement, but followed and capitalized upon its success in shaping the attitudes of succeeding generations.
It is one thing to prepare women defend the home as a last resort (as in samurai culture) and thereby react to agression--it's another to teach them how to be aggressive and to wage war. (Is it possible to expect them to take 'the lead' in such matters and yet still be willing to be led in others?)
Would the New Scot like this? Twitch: First Images From Albert Pyun’s SWORD AND THE SORCERER Sequel TALES OF AN ANCIENT EMPIRE!
Sunday, January 04, 2009
I don't have much to say about the current situation in Gaza. Will it turn out to be another debacle like Lebanon 2006? Does Israel still remember 3GW? (This provocation by Hamas seems to be another instance of 4GW at work.) How much of an advantage does the environment give to the defenders?
I was able to see and hold my nephew today. He is very quiet, and hardly cries...
I was able to see and hold my nephew today. He is very quiet, and hardly cries...
Does the novel end in the same way that the TV adaptation does? Nope!
Seems like a kiss has to be added to the end of every adaptation, even if it isn't faithful to the times and customs. (At least the kiss at the end of P&P 95 was done after the wedding and not before.)
North and South: Project Gutenberg
Seems like a kiss has to be added to the end of every adaptation, even if it isn't faithful to the times and customs. (At least the kiss at the end of P&P 95 was done after the wedding and not before.)
North and South: Project Gutenberg
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