What would LK think?

The problem with bicycles by Nathan Lewis (original)

Once people get into their heads that maybe the personal automobile is not really such a good idea -- in other words, after they have moved beyond the biodiesel/electric car phase, as if the only problem with the personal automobile is the fuel it uses -- they usually fixate on bicycles.

I say "fixate" because this often becomes an eco-fetish like so many other such things, as if more bicycles were better, and if you could just get enough bicycles in one place, you could "save the world."

The focus on bicycles is typically because, in the mind of this person,they still assume that they would be living in Suburban Hell, or perhaps some earlier variant of Suburban Hell (the 19th Century Hypertrophic Small Town America). Of course, if you are stuck in Suburban Hell, with its endless expanses of NoPlace and absurdly long distances between Places, then you would want a bicycle at the very least.

I found out through EL that San Jose has its own version of Critical Mass: San José Bike Party (MySpace).

SFGate article on the San Jose Bike Party
San Francisco Bicycle Coalition
SF Critical Mass

Dies Sanctificatus

(via Fr. Finigan)

Do mainstream "conservative" pundits ask this question?

Why are US Troops Killing Themselves? by Martha Rosenberg

Since I don't listen to talk radio much these days, I don't know if Hannity, Limbaugh, Levin, and the others have asked the question or not. The issue has been raised at The Spearhead (along with the question of the number of men committing suicide in general). Are our soldiers receiving proper care from the VA?

Also from Counterpunch:
Operation Infinite Occupation By ANTHONY DiMAGGIO
Does Obama's New Iraq Plan Violate the Law?

John Grant, Murder Inc. in Afghanistan

Pete Peterson raises a question about the people of Bell, CA

The City of Bell and the Problem of Local Control

But with all the excusing, and condemning (rightfully so) of the public officials involved, little blame has been cast on the residents who let this happen. At the same time, the Bell story highlights in dramatic fashion the challenges to devolved local governance. While centralized bureaucracies lack the ability to customize policy to local circumstances, and are by nature unresponsive to regional concerns, the cries by many to “bring government closer to the people”, also demands a concomitant movement of “the people” closer to their government through habits as mundane as reading the local newspaper, attending the local Council Meeting, or running for office. Without these practices “home rule” can easily become rule from somebody’s home, as it appears to have occurred with the aforementioned Mr. Rizzo.

Who is correct in their evaluation of the people of Bell, California? Mr. Peterson? Or those who would defend the residents? Even if it is the case that many or most white Americans are disengaged from local politics, can we also say that there is a different culture at work here? Or would that be too politically incorrect? Learning to be a citizen of a republic requires more than passing a citizenship test and learning how to vote, and is a task that may take some time. (Especially if we give credence to Aristotle and apply the dictum that those who would rule must first be ruled to republics.) Should people not first demonstrate that they can obey laws and work (in a very broad sense) and live with other members of a community? But American republicanism has been replaced by fanatical democratism.

Nonetheless, is Bell really a political community in any meaningful sense? And how real is a community if its members do very little economic/productive activity within its borders?

The New American Militarism

As I was thinking of whether I should purchase a copy of the paperback edition of The New American Militarism so I could ask Dr. Bacevich to sign it, I recalled the thesis of the book and it reminded me of the article published online last week by Lt. Col. William Astore. (While doing a search of blog posts, I found this earlier piece by Astore) Astore seems to have similar concerns as Bacevich, though he is basing his claim on a rather minor piece of evidence, while Bacevich is looking at late American 20th century history.

I'll admit that I more disposed to favor the work of Professor Bacevich, since his is a conservative critique of American foreign policy and I figure his understanding of American republicanism is closer to what traditional conservatives believe than Astore's. I could be wrong, though. If I am right about Lt. Col. Astore's politics and if Professor Bacevich has a similar erroneous understanding of the nature of the Federal Union, then I would not hesitate to criticize what he has written accordingly. Indeed, it may be that Professor Bacevich does not look far enough into the National Government's past actions and policies (the War to Prevent Southern Independence)?




Links:
The New American Militarism: Conversation with Andrew Bacevich
Conversation with Andrew J. Bacevich, cover page
Tomdispatch
Mother Jones
Alternative Radio


Is the new militarism just a strengthening and development of earlier trends (especially the growth of the Military Industrial Complex)? I should read the book from cover to end. Time to check the local library.


MilitaryIndustrialComplex.com

How a community-based co-op economy might work (original)

Dave Pollard, how to save the world blog

Most people have been brought up to believe that the competitive, grow-or-die, absentee-shareholder-owned, "free"-trade "market" economy is the only one that works, the only alternative to a socialist, government-run economy. This myth is perpetrated in business and other schools, by the media, by accountants and lawyers and bankers and, of course, in the business world.

Dave Pollard is the author of Finding the Sweet Spot: The Natural Entrepreneur's Guide to Responsible, Sustainable, Joyful Work.

Insight Scoop: Fr. Joseph Fessio, S.J., on the air twice this Wednesday

Fr. Joseph Fessio, S.J., founder of Ignatius Press, will be a guest on two radio programs this Wednesday, August 4th.

He will be on the "Son Rise Morning Show" at 8:50 a.m. EST, to discuss the Ignatius-Angelicum Liberal Studies Program with host Brian Patrick. The show can be heard via Sacred Heart Radio, EWTN Affiliates, and Sirius/XM.

At 4:20 p.m. EST he will be on Kresta in the Afternoon on Ave Maria Radio to talk about the second "Jesus of Nazareth" book by Pope Benedict XVI, which will be published by Ignatius Press next spring.

Pauline Books & Media in Redwood City. One of the sisters and a Catholic laywoman were on "The Archbishop's Hour" tonight on 1260 AM talking about the store and the 3 book clubs (one for Catholic fiction, one on the Saints, and a women's book club).

Pauline Books and Media

Rizzoli and Isles

In this post I mentioned the new TNT show, Rizzoli & Isles. It turns out that TNT has made full episodes available online -- this is probably true for other TNT series? I hadn't bothered with TNT series up to this point, but I may watch an episode of Rizzoli and Isles or two because of Sasha Alexander. (The series has already been renewed.)

The pilot:

A comment about yoga

At this time I am skeptical about the reasons put forth by those who say that yoga should not be practiced by Christians--there may be some concern about the names of poses, meditations, and so on, but the poses/physical exercises themselves? Those who are scrupulous can do pilates, I suppose. Johnette Benkovic apparently has spoken against yoga and has had guests on her show to explain why -- Yoga: Health or Stealth. (This article does not, as far as I can tell, talk about yoga poses.)

The physical theory behind qi gung and taijiquan is incorrect (and thus the goals are wrong), but can these be practiced by Christians? Taijiquan is less problematic than qi gung. as it has the self-defense aspect, while the purpose of qi gung is the cultivation of Qi.

Links:
Yogic Logic
Yoga Wiz
more on postures: here and here

The Plank Pose

The Gokhale Method FB page linked to this: No More Crunches! Learn the Plank Pose to Tone Your Abs (written by Esther Gokhale, who is a practitioner of yoga).

There's a free class in Sunnyvale this month. I am thinking about registering for it, so I can have someone else tell me what I'm doing right and what I'm doing wrong with respect to modifying my posture.

CNA: Mexican bishops express solidarity with Arizona immigrants

I'd like to see the original Spanish, if that is available. (Just to check what word is being translated by "countrymen.")

Are there any documents on social justice issued by the Conference of Mexican bishops?

Conferencia del Episcopado Mexicano
Pontifical College Josephinum

Get Low OST

Listed here: Alison Krauss' “Burden” Is Easy to Bear | CMT Blog

Once an official video of "Lay My Burden" becomes available, I'll be sure to post it. I did find this...

Austin Bramwell, Gregory Clark Slips Down the Memory Hole Already

First came Gregory Clark’s blockbuster, A Farewell to Alms, which offered a novel theory why the Industrial Revolution happened in England. (Short answer: superior breeding, in the words of the Cato Institute’s Jason Kuznicki.) Then came Clark’s fellow economic historian, Joel Mokyr, with his own magisterial history of the Industrial Revolution, The Enlightened Economy. Trevor Butterworth reviews it for the Wall Street Journal today here. This stuff is hot hot hot!

For good reason. The Industrial Revolution may be the singular event in the history of our species – or any species for that matter. Until 200 years ago, you either struggled to get enough to survive or worried about getting killed for it if you succeeded. Now, thanks to the material abundance produced by the Industrial Revolution, humans are free to think on loftier things. (You know, Eat, Pray, Love.) How it happened is one of the most important riddles the social sciences can solve.

What of the availability of cheap high-energy resources being a necessary condition of the Industrial Revolution? (I believe that this is the position that John Michael Greer takes, that without such energy, the technical innovation that took place during the Industrial Revolution would not have happened and spread.)

If manufacturers could make their factories fully automated, would there be enough of a popular backlash to prevent them from doing so?

Who controls the capital? And for what do they use it?

"Skeptical Economist" e-mails Steve Sailer about The dogma of globalism.

Ralph Nader, Obama's Afghan Formula

Counterpunch

The war in Afghanistan is nearly nine years old—the longest in American history. After the U.S. quickly toppled the Taliban regime in October 2001, the Taliban, by all accounts, came back stronger and harsher enough to control now at least 30 percent of the country. During this time, U.S. casualties, armaments and expenditures are at record levels.

America’s overseas wars have different outcomes when they have no constitutional authority, no war tax, no draft, no regular on the ground press coverage, no Congressional oversight, no spending accountability and, importantly, no affirmative consent of the governed who are, apart from the military families, hardly noticing.

This is an asymmetrical, multi-matrix war. It is a war defined by complex intrigue, shifting alliances, mutating motivations, chronic bribery, remotely-generated civilian deaths, insuperable barriers of language and ethnic and subtribal conflicts. It is fought by warlords, militias, criminal gangs, and special forces discretionary death squads. Millions of civilians are impoverished, terrified and live with violent disruptions. There is no central government to speak of. The White House uses illusions of strategies and tactics to bid for time. In Afghanistan, the historic graveyard of invaders, hope springs infernal.

Neatly dressed Generals—who probably would never have gotten into this mess if they, not the civilian neocon, draft dodgers in the Bush regime, had made the call—regularly trudge up to Congress to testify. There they caveat their status reports, keeping expectations alive, while cowardly politicians praise their bravery. General David Petraeus could receive the Academy Award in Hollywood next year, as long as he doesn’t say what he really thinks, obedient soldier that he is. Listen to General Stanley A. McChrystal, not known for his squeamishness. Speaking of civilian deaths and injured at military checkpoints, he said: “We have shot an amazing number of people, but to my knowledge, none have ever proven to be a threat.”

Also from Counterpunch: Maximillian C. Forte, The Wikileaks Afghan War Diary: Reasons for Celebration, Causes for Concern

James Howard Kunstler continues writing about the economy: Skidding Toward Fall. Then he returns to slamming the electric car fantasy and taking up the cause of trains:

We really have a choice between two ways of dealing with this. We can downsize and re-scale consciously and coherently, or we can continue to chase after the phantom of growth and allow the nation to fall into a shambles of desperation. So far into this long emergency of an economic fiasco, we seem to have chosen the pursuit of a phantom. That's what President Obama was doing last week in Detroit, shilling for a new electric automobile which, he said, will make us "energy independent." If Mr. Obama believes this, then it isn't a very good advertisement for an Ivy League education.

I'd like to know how many Americans believe that electric cars run on virtually free energy (but I don't have pollsters on my payroll). I'd bet a lot of them do, including President Obama. Sorry to rain on this uplifting parade. At best, such a car fleet would run on coal -- that is coal-fired electric power plants -- but even that is a ridiculous fantasy when you actually pencil-out the details. Not to mention that a nation full of people with dwindling or vanishing incomes won't be in a position to fork over forty-grand for one of those new pseudo "green" vehicles. Also not to mention -- wait for it -- that due to rapidly vanishing capital there will be far fewer car loans available. The only thing growing in this part of the picture is the number of Americans who cannot possibly qualify for a car loan under normal terms that would require regular repayment of interest-and-principal. (Plenty of Americans qualify for the new "innovative" kind of loan -- the kind that you never have to make payments on, but for the moment, the banks are choking to death on them, so additional approvals may lag for a time.)

It's instructive that so much current hoopla about economic growth revolves around the issue of cars. For, if anything, reality is telling us very clearly that the mass motoring paradigm is near its end. Our determination to prop it up at all costs, despite the grave impairments of available capital and energy resources is a symptom of our detachment from reality. It's also a fine illustration of the psychology of previous investment, which prompts a desperate society to squander its scarce remaining resources on the very things that are putting it out of business.

We don't need need more highways. We're about to find out that we don't have the money to keep up regular repairs on the highways we already have. The hundreds of millions of "stimulus" dollars that President Obama flung into "shovel-ready" highway projects was among the more tragically dumb mistakes he made early on, and he has apparently learned nothing along these lines since then.

How critical can one be of the Church's use of rights language?

I do not think it can be shown that "rights language" is a part of Sacred Tradition. So will the Magisterium one day issue solemn definitions concerning rights in order to clarify what the Church teaches concerning morality? Bring back the anathemas, some might say. "If anyone deny that a right is..." "If anyone deny that there is a right to..." Such a text would seem bizarre to a traditionalist, but if rights were defined by an ecumenical council or a pope. A traditionalist would have to assent. A long elaboration of rights, like what one would find in a philosophical or theological treatise, would not be necessary, as long as the definitions were clear (and prohibited propositions that contradict Church teaching concerning rights were laid out)?

It still seems to me though that the use of rights language is a temporary concession to our age (and unnecessary). I think it can be described in other ways... Still, while I have been using the blog as a way to reflect and write, is it the appropriate to put such thoughts about the Church's use of rights language out in public? What is required with regards to rights? Religious submission of intellect and will? How "much" dissent is appropriate or permissible?

From the CDF Doctrinal Commentary on Ad Tuendam Fidem:

As examples of doctrines belonging to the third paragraph, one can point in general to teachings set forth by the authentic ordinary Magisterium in a non-definitive way, which require degrees of adherence differentiated according to the mind and the will manifested; this is shown especially by the nature of the documents, by the frequent repetition of the same doctrine, or by the tenor of the verbal expression.

Misc:
This website seems very questionable; I was thinking of using its page on the degrees of assent, but that needs to be evaluated.

Tactical Arms vids

Jason Falla and Larry Vickers on tactical arms with the S&W M&P






Related:

Ted McAllister on liberalism

Pale Liberalism

Mr. McAllister is affiliated with the Claremont Institute and a member of the faculty at Pepperdine. He examines in particular the liberalism of Alan Wolfe, BC professor and Director of the Boisi Center. The presence of the Boisi Center at Boston College was a bit baffling to me when I first learned about it, but I should have remembered quickly that the school was run by post-Vatican II American Jesuits.

The Future of Liberalism (Google Books)
Review by K. Anthony Appiah

AFP: Hong Kong people rally to save Cantonese language

Chinese authorities have been anxious to suppress the growing pro-Cantonese movement, sparked after a political advisory body in Guangzhou proposed this month that local TV stations broadcast their prime-time shows in Mandarin instead of Cantonese ahead of the Asian Games there in November.

Adopting China's official language, also known as Putonghua, would promote unity, "forge a good language environment" and cater to non-Cantonese-speaking Chinese visitors at the huge sporting event, authorities were quoted as saying.

Hundreds of Guangzhou residents defied government orders and staged their first demonstration last Sunday. But the protest was soon suppressed by the authorities, according to reports.

To echo the Guangzhou campaign, about 200 protesters marched to the government headquarters in Hong Kong Sunday.

"We want to show our support to our Guangzhou friends in their campaign to protect Cantonese against any threat of elimination," said Choi Suk-fong, organiser of the rally.

Participants wore white T-shirts with a logo which said: "You want us to shut up! We will speak louder in Cantonese!"

A number of Guangzhou residents crossed the border to take part in the Hong Kong rally, saying that authorities there were trying to silence the protesters.

"I really regretted not going to the rally in Guangzhou last week. I came to Hong Kong today because I want to protect my own culture. Unlike on the mainland, here I can voice my view more directly," said 21-year-old Wyman, who refused to give his family name for fear of retaliation by the Chinese authorities.

Instances of mainland protests spilling over into Hong Kong, which was returned to China in 1997, are rare since China's 1989 Tiananmen crackdown on pro-democracy demonstrators.

Cantonese is the mother tongue for an estimated 70 million people in Hong Kong, Macau and China's southern Guangdong province, and is widely spoken in overseas Chinese communities.

The Guangzhou city government on Thursday sought to deny rumours that they planned to ditch Cantonese in favour of Mandarin, according to the state-run Guangzhou Daily.

Its spokesman Ouyang Yongsheng was quoted as saying that the government had a responsibility to protect and promote Cantonese culture, including the language.

"The citizens and concerned people can be reassured that Guangzhou would... not go for the so-called cause of 'abolishing Cantonese to promote Mandarin'," he said.

Now if only Hong Kong young people would learn how to speak Cantonese properly... I read the claim before on some newsgroup that Sun Yat-Sen and others wanted to make Cantonese the official language of Chinese. (Since there is corroboration in an newspaper, this must be a fact, right?) How would Mandarin-speakers feel if Cantonese had been chosen?

Communist China is an example of how not to order a polity in so many ways... Cultural and linguistic homogeneity is the hobby horse of centralizing bureaucrats. At least the emperors did not seek to impose one language on the Chinese Empire. It was enough for government officials and the literati to know classical Chinese and to be able to communicate with one another.

Learn Cantonese! 學廣東話!

Noveske Rifleworks KX3 flash suppressor

I mentioned this to Sarge tonight after seeing a replica (or something similar) on an airsoft rifle in the August issue of Combart Arms. Those Japanese airsoft gun manufacturers do their best to keep up with American rifle manufacturers so they can make up-to-date replicas. Sarge found the following videos:





Flash Suppressors - Noveske Rifleworks

442 to be shown in San Jose

The movie about the 442nd Infanty Regiment. It will be shown on August 15th at Camera 3 Theater in San Jose (288 S. Second St.) at 12 PM, 2:20 PM, 4:40 PM, and 7 PM. (Advance tickets are $10, general admission is $13.)

Japanese-American 442nd Regimental Combat Team

Trailer at imdb.







Related:
442nd Regimental Combat Team Historical Society
442nd -- Rescue of the Lost Battalion
442nd RCT
442nd Regimental Combat Team - Unit Pages
The History of the 442nd Combat Team
Nisei
HI Nisei Story
Nisei World War II Stamp Campaign
Nisei Veterans Memorial Center
Nisei Warrios of World War II - Medal of Honor Heroes

Today we had 3 priests celebrating -- one of them was a Dominican missionary to Kenya. I don't know who the other two were, but one of them resembled Fr. Fessio. (But it wasn't him, I could tell from his voice. I think he's also taller than Fr. Fessio.) He said the Confiteor during the penitential rite; that threw us off. Also, when it came time for the Liturgy of the Eucharist, they celebrated Mass ad orientem. I was surprised by that as well. Did they tell anyone beforehand that they were going to do this? I didn't ask... but it was nice. If only this observance would spread throughout the diocese.

What will it take to convince people about the dangers of peak oil? by Kurt Cobb (original)

If they already believe that the amount of oil is finite, and not continually being created through abiogenesis, then they just need some data to be convinced that we've reached the half-way point? However, the economics of peak oil may be a bit more difficult to understand, even though it is a function of supply and demand.