The Archdruid Report: The Recovery of the Human

The Archdruid Report: The Recovery of the Human: The myth of the machine, the theme of last week’s Archdruid Report post, has implications that go well beyond the usual terms of discussion...

Girls Generation in NYC

On Late Night with Letterman:


Soompi
AllKpop

On Live with Kelly!:


Soompi
AllKpop

Does Kelly Ripa really deserve to have that show all to herself?

More Items of Interest, 31 January 2012

Mark Sisson:
Musings on Specialization and Self-Sufficiency in the Modern World
How much specialization/division of labor is necessary for a polity to reach its natural perfection?

I am Now Leaner and Stronger than I Have Ever Been in My Life

Diet and Health:
Grape seed extract kills head and neck cancer cells, leaves healthy cells unharmed

American History:
An interesting tidbit via The Pittsford Perennialist: The American Revolution and the Six Nations of the Iroquois
Rebellion: Dismantling the Republic

Music:
Jordi Savall: "La música es lo único que ayuda a soportar el dolor"
Richard Egarr Revives Baroque Music

Lana Del Rey, Reactionary

Her recent performance on SNL was criticized.




Feminism and Femininity
Traditional Christianity: The Feminine Woman
Oz Conservative: A car sticker for jaded women?  and From the horse's mouth



Masculinity and MRA:
Oz Conservative: Three Prides
Is honor that Rob Roy speaks of in the Liam Neeson movie the same as the third thing named "pride" by Mark Richardson, the kind of honor that one gives to one's self through one's actions and cannot be taken away by someone else? Honor is not the same as recognition of excellence; it is due once that excellence is recognized. Pride as the ordinate desire for excellence... or ordinate self-love.

Shame and Dehumanization Prevent Reform and The Problem with Socializing the “Best Interests of the Child”


TV:
The Chuck Finale: What Network TV Tells Us About Love and Marriage

Items of Interest, 31 January 2012

Patrick Buchanan, Obama Sandbags the Archbishop
Tom Piatak, The Evil Party Rides Again
Vox Populi: Selective and belated protest

Karen De Coster: Amy Alkon on Homo Barbarus and A Book About Flinching and Fear

Pillars of Agrarianism

Jeffersonian Exceptionalism by Paul Pillar

Brad Birzer's series of interviews with Catholic "conservatives," "Bearers of the Word," can be found here. His interview with Daniel McCarthy. (via Daniel McCarthy; Rod Dreher's post)

Fabius Maximus: Martin van Creveld explains the essence of Airpower Yesterday,Today, and Tomorrow and Some foes of the Republic revealed themselves by sponsoring the Enemy Expatriation Act

NDAA Taking You Back to the 19th Century

State Governments check Federal power

Daniel Larison, What Santorum Learned from Bush-era Foreign Policy Failures, Santorum Still Stuck in 2002: They Hate Us Because of Our Freedom, The Dangerous Idea of NATO Expansion Will Not Die

James Antle on the Republicans behind Obamacare: Now what the doctor ordered.

"The Conservative Believes..." by Russell Kirk

What is a Conservative?

Mark T. Mitchell, Monstanto vs. Family Farmers

Franklin C. Spinney, The On-going Scandal of the F-35

Iran:
The Ongoing War on Iran by PATRICK COCKBURN
Where to go for information about our conflict with Iran, and why you should understand what’s happening
Iranian aircraft carriers in the Gulf of Mexico
Israeli Officials: Attack on Iran Must Come ‘By Summer’
Daniel Larison, Nasr: Iran Sanctions Leading to War
Hormuz-Mania: Why closure of the Straits of Hormuz could ignite a war and a global depression by Michael Klare

Economics:
The Crisis of Civilization reviewed (EB)


Kevin Carson, Why the State Will Fail
Interview with Richard Heinberg on Occupy Educated
Beyond GDP: New Measures for a New Economy by Lew Daly, Stephen Posner (EB)
Capitalism only creates misery – we need a system that puts human wellbeing first
The Price of Growth by Gregor Macdonald
Where Did All the Workers Go? 60 Years of Economic Change in 1 Graph
More reasons why we are reaching limits to growth by Gail Tverberg (EB)
The fallacy of the tragedy of the commons by Marq de Villiers (EB)

Sustainability:
A guide for sustainability advocates by Niki Harré (EB)

Relocalization:
Education and the Way Home by Jeffrey Polet
For Farmers Everywhere, Small is (Still) Beautiful by Robin Broad, John Cavanagh
Meet the New Boss: You
5 Big Ideas For A New Economy
Sharing a Skilled Future (EB)
Is Valpo Ready for Citizen Finance?
My prices are not too high: A farmer fires back by Shannon Hayes (EB)
Brewing Better Local Economies with American Craft Beer

Peak Oil and Energy:
Peak Oil: Yes, Still a Serious Issue (EB)
The Hydrogen Dream (EB)
Oil prices, exhaustible resources, and economic growth: report extract
by James D. Hamilton (EB)

Muleskinner Blues

Sara Evans With Del Mccoury Band - Muleskinner Blues


And Dolly Parton...




Karen Wheeler


Bill Monroe

More on Act of Valor

Act of Valor featurette featuring live ammo is dangerously cool

Medieval England - Anon., ca 1265 : Worldes blis ne last no throwe


Ensemble Belladonna (not to be confused with the Belladonna Baroque Quartet)

Dreamt about the same person two nights in a row - last night's dream was longer, and bore no real relation to reality. It was more like a Hollywood movie or drama than anything.

A consequence of trying to put someone out of my thoughts?

Black Belt: Tim Kennedy Shows You H2HC Self-Defense Moves Based on His MACP Combatives, SOCP Combatives and Army Rangers Training

Uh...

Matthew Broderick goes full-on Ferris Bueller in Super Bowl Ad

And Russell Shaw is at it again..

Riding his hobbyhorse, inveighing against the Catholic ghetto - of course, he relies upon his understanding of Opus Dei's teachings about the [lay] Christian vocation and his stance is understandable if incorrect. Culture and Evangelization (via Rod Dreher).

Some home-school their children to avoid the sex education imposed in schools. Some have given up on television and take great pains to police internet use. Still others have made the radical move of quitting big cities and their suburbs in favor of smaller, more tradition-minded and culturally homogeneous communities making fewer assaults on their eyes, ears, and morals. (Thomas Monaghan’s Ave Maria, Florida is a high-profile prototype of this.)

Meanwhile, the infrastructure of a new Catholic subculture has begun to emerge. It can be seen in a handful of proudly orthodox Catholic colleges and universities, media ventures like the Eternal Word Television Network (EWTN) and rapidly expanding Catholic radio stations, a growing number of websites and periodicals and a few publishing houses, and organizations and movements dedicated to promoting Catholic spirituality—especially, a spirituality of the laity. In other cases, older Catholic institutions and programs have begun taking steps to reaffirm their Catholic idenity. Often, these things happen with encouragement from a new generation of bishops and priests who have gotten the message and taken it to heart.

This is all to the good—up to a point. But note that when I speak of the desirability of a new Catholic subculture, I do not mean a self-regarding, inward-looking ghetto. Unfortunately, signs of such a thing already can be glimpsed here and there. They seem likely to spread if steps are not taken to discourage that from happening.

Here is where the new evangelization comes in. It provides rationale and motivation for Catholics to set their sights on something far better than a Catholic ghetto—the creation of a new, dynamic American Catholic subculture specifically designed to be a source of creative energy for preaching the gospel far and wide, with particular attention to former Catholics and nominal Catholics who are teetering on the brink.

The work of evangelizing (as a work of love of neighbor) must be inserted within the order of charity and not as seen as a goal that outweighs all others. What must be the first priority is the recovery of communal life in the form of local parish. There is no real  (sub-)culture without a community; what Shaw calls a subculture is rather misleading, since he is attributing it to certain institutions and mass media companies that seem to have a wide influence. The scale is all wrong.

Can Catholics show others what it means to be Christian and be a means of attracting them to God? Yes, but I think a convincing Christian witness requires that they live in community with other Christians, and not as individuals who have embraced the modern American lifestyle. Hence, his recommendations for the lay vocation are off because his doesn't grasp the socio-political problems that affect these United States. Any discussion of the lay vocation requires a good moral theology that (1) includes the ordo caritatis and (2) incorporates a good elaboration of the science of politics - a recovery and development of medieval political theology.

Rod Dreher continues his criticism of Ron Paul: What racism means.

Those who would be race "realists" versus those who want to make a statement against racism. Yawn.

The Bee Eaters on this week's Pig in a Pen

Episode expires in 2 weeks.

official and MS

David Stockman on Crony Capitalism

Bill Moyers - Vimeo.

David Stockman on Crony Capitalism from BillMoyers.com on Vimeo.

(Complete episode via this Kunstler Cast.)

Davichi & T-ara(다비치&티아라) _ We were in love(우리 사랑했잖아) MV

More crap from Hollywood

"Just shut it down."

The movie opened this weekend. It appears that Glenn Close is heavily invested in the movie, financially and emotionally.


official and Apple

Lock-Out

You'd have to accept the silly premise that the resources and money exist to build a prison in outer space, and that its construction is justified by its effectiveness. A better action movie than M:I 4, Haywire, or The Grey?

Aussie Guy Pearce doing a job Uhmerican actors can't do - play a manly man.

io9

Christopher Ferrera on the Republican candidates: A Mormon? Seriously?. He puts his support behind Ron Paul.

The decline of customer service

Were women first recruited as customer service agents because they would be more soothing and disarming to customers? How about as flight attendants? Because of anti-ageist laws, Uhmerican airlines cannot discriminate and hire only young women to be flight attendants. That wouldn't be so bad, but many women working at the counter and on the airlines are generally lacking in feminine grace. On the morning I was leaving Phoenix there were a few female airlines representatives who were rather curt in giving directions to customers as to where they should line up or go. It just makes more feminine employees more noticeable. (Hence, that there was one female flight attendant who acted ladylike on the plane was somewhat remarkable.)

Feast of St. Thomas Aquinas

From last year:


Fr. Barron has a video, but I'm not going to embed it. I'll just link to it, since his fans may be reading this.

Useless fellows

Academic philosophers, that is.

A friend of KK posts the following by Gary Gutting of Notre Dame: Philosophy - What's the Use?. A better piece than one might expect, given his areas of interest. Perhaps only one of his AOI, philosophy of science, could be relevant to non-philoshopers and that is assuming that he does it well.

He makes a rather modest claim about the usefuleness of philosophy:
It is useful in "defending our basic beliefs against objections" and it aids us in clarifying "what our basic beliefs mean or logically entail." Is this enough to save academics their jobs when the Big Crunch comes?

Such distinctions are major philosophical topics, of course, and most non-philosophers won’t be in a position to enter into high-level philosophical discussions. But there are both non-philosophers who are quite capable of following such discussions and philosophers who enter public debates about relevant topics.

Might it be the case that most academic philosophers aren't able to enter into such high-level philosophical discussions, either?

He closes with an admission:

The perennial objection to any appeal to philosophy is that philosophers themselves disagree among themselves about everything, so that there is no body of philosophical knowledge on which non-philosophers can rely. It’s true that philosophers do not agree on answers to the “big questions” like God’s existence, free will, the nature of moral obligation and so on. But they do agree about many logical interconnections and conceptual distinctions that are essential for thinking clearly about the big questions. Some examples: thinking about God and evil requires the key distinction between evil that is gratuitous (not necessary for some greater good) and evil that is not gratuitous; thinking about free will requires the distinction between a choice’s being caused and its being compelled; and thinking about morality requires the distinction between an action that is intrinsically wrong (regardless of its consequences) and one that is wrong simply because of its consequences. Such distinctions arise from philosophical thinking, and philosophers know a great deal about how to understand and employ them. In this important sense, there is body of philosophical knowledge on which non-philosophers can and should rely.

Why should we trust an academic's opinon about morals if he has no substantial ties to the community and is more of a parasite than the guru he aspires to be? What we need aren't professional thinkers, but emplaced teachers of classical or traditional scientiae and sapientia so that we, too, may learn to reason to the truths which we no longer acknowledge as a community. But this is possible probably only for a few, and so what is more important is the renewal of evangelization, first through effective witness. As the professor points out, knowing how to reason well can help us in apologetics. But if philosophy just provides us tools for thinking but no direction, then what will happen to society as people continue to bicker about the big issues? Who will save people from themselves? Because of the consequences of original sin, the division into competing schools or individuals will never be resolved, but God is merciful and has revealed Himself to us.

Ethnic Nationalism

Rod Dreher: WaPo: Ron Paul approved racist newsletters

Someone else I know has said that if the allegations about Ron Paul are true, then it is worse than mere racism; it is racism as opportunism. I have not read the newsletters in question; I've only seen snippets here and there and they seem more politically incorrect than "racist," with content or a focus that might approach what you would find in a white nationalist publication (crime committed by members of minorities, etc.). Can valid generalizations be made at all? Will there be any honest discussion of these sort of issues? This sort of chiding by Mr. Dreher is evidence why some readers believe they have cause to worry about the direction of The American Conservative. Should AmCon become a white nationalist magazine? I don't think that is likely and I still believe that white nationalism as a political program cannot be reconciled with traditional conservatism, if we believe assimilation is the goal - it violates the precepts of charity and justice. I do not think that having a preference for a member of the same race is part of the ordo caritatis, and it is detrimental to the well-being of a community - that we are members of the same political community is of greater import. To prefer someone merely because he is of the same race would vitiate the shared understanding that we are one community, one people. I would say the same of any other ethnic nationalism. There is some sort of natural affection towards one's own, but race is a rather weak constituent of identity and only comes into play when one perceives division along racial lines. But common opposition alone doesn't create solidarity or trust.

Of course, one rejoinder would be that "one community, on people" is not really true at any level in California.

What should be the response to members of other ethnic/racial groups promoting ethnic nationalism in the U.S.?

Items of Interest, 27 January 2012

Dr. Wilson reviews The Founding Fathers Guide to the Constitution by Brion McClanahan (via Rebellion)

Facebook and the Degradation of Personhood

A Tale of Two Cities: Beijing and Detroit
Which symbolizes success, and which disintegration? It may not be what you think.
by Helena Norberg-Hodge

Vox Populi: Consequences of Post-Christianity

U.S. Probe of Border Attack Hardened Pakistani Suspicions by Gareth Porter

The New Pentagon Budget: Better, Not Great by Benjamin H. Friedman

McRaven plots global expansion for spec ops

Issa rips Holder, Justice Dept. over 5th Amendment ‘escalation of culpability’


Marriage:
Marriage and Procreation: The Intrinsic Connection
by Patrick Lee, Robert P. George and Gerard V. Bradley

Community and Localism:
Neighborliness: On a Shared Life by Brian Phillips

Exploring The Ingredients For Transition w/ Rob Hopkins (mp3) (EB)

Social Justice, Institutions, and Communities by Adam J. MacLeod

Diet and Health
16 Signs You're Primal

Music:
Where I Go: Yo-Yo Ma
The Goat Rodeo Rides Again (January 31): A Conversation With Stuart Duncan Plus Chatting With Chuck Prophet (Video Exclusives)


Vevo

The civilian version of the HK417.

Some more bad news involving cancer

Fr. Z: PRAYER REQUEST: Msgr. Ignacio Barreiro

He has been involved with HLI and the promotion of the EF. Kyrie, eleison.

In commemoration of Mozart's 356th birthday

From the AAM's FB page:

Happy 256th birthday, Mr Mozart!


To celebrate, listen to the first-ever recording of Concerto No.25 on Mozart's own piano over on the AAMplayer, with AAM and Robert Levin. The instrument has lasted just as well as the music - and will still be going strong on his 356th birthday, we reckon...

A sample from:
Piano Concertos Nos.15 & 26
Mozart, Wolfgang Amadeus (1756–91)

Robert Levin fortepiano

Christopher Hogwood conductor