Ralph Nader on the Terrence McNally Podcast

Q&A: Ralph Nader the 17 Solutions: Bold Ideas for Our American Future

John C. Médaille at Students for a Fair Society

John C. Médaille on Catholic Economics - Friday, October 19, 2012 (audio files of the lecture available)

Jacques Barzun

NYT obit

A Masterpiece of Cultural History: Barzun's "Dawn to Decadence"

From 2007: A Tribute to Jacques Barzun on His Centennial by Tracy Lee Simmons

A review of one of his books from 1989: America’s Fin de Siècle: End of a Century or a Civilization?

Some videos:

The Importance of Fathers as Fathers

Men Don’t Mother by Jenet Erickson

Cultural misandry will get its payback.

Andrea Doucet, Do Men Mother?

MMO: Men and Mothering: An Interview with Andrea Doucet

Matt Cain versus various objects

Matt Cain w/ Kari Byron & Tory Belleci from Mythbusters destroy things mid air with his fastball

For the HALO fans...

Exclusive Clip From Halo 4: Forward Unto Dawn Episode 4

I began viewing the first episode; the actors (especially the males) were too young in their demeanor, and the feminism was too much and I couldn't finish the episode. As far as I know, the games do not push such an egalitarian agenda (though there are some female characters)

The Hobbit Posters

Empire (JoBlo)

The Lincoln Propaganda Film

The propagandist-in-chief gives his perspective:



Opening the same weekend as Skyfall. Guess which gets my money, if any?

Another video...

Michael Pollan on Democracy Now!

Michael Pollan: California's Prop 37 Fight to Label GMOs Could Galvanize U.S. Food Movement


Michael Pollan: From GMOs to NYC’s Soda Ban, Local Efforts Challenge Agri-Giants’ National Control

Food Fight: Debating Prop 37, California’s Landmark Initiative to Label GMO Food

The Drifter Sisters

Upcoming shows include opening for the Kathy Kallick Band at Redwood Bluegrass Associates this Saturday, and they will be performing live on KALW on November 3, from 7:15-8 (PM?).

(They've added a new member...)

Farewell to Costco Food Court, Too?

The last few times I've had it, the Costco chicken salad has struck me as tasting funny - there's an odd taste to it, something artificial or chemical? All this time I thought it was real chicken breast, but I may have been too naive. (Or unfamiliar with chicken breast.) Something resembling chicken sandwich meat instead? The food at the Costco food court may be cheap, but it's most likely not very healthy. Running out of options fast...

Bread and Circuses

So the Giants win game 1. Professional sports are the athletic equivalent of employing mercenaries to fight a war - no real connection with civic spirit or a local patriotism. There were plenty of fans watching the game on TV at Roam and cheering "their" team on (how many of them are actually natives to the area, rather than transplants from elsewhere) but that team spirit is a very poor substitute for a true civic-mindedness.

Driving to SF...

Game 1 of the World Series starts in an hour. Will Giants fans clog the streets and make traffic into SF even worse? Natalie MacMaster is performing at Yoshi's SF tonight; she was in Livermore yesterday. Not sure if I will have time to drop by ROAM before the 8:00 performance.

Another Related to Norcia

NLM: Visit of Dom Cassian Folsom, OSB, to Wyoming Catholic College

Related:
Meeting Christ in the Liturgy
Bishop Peter J. Elliott: Benedict XVI and the Liturgy: Vision, Teaching, Action

"The Pernicious Myth of the Individual"

Dr. Fleming, Back to the Stone Age IIB

The decay of precise usage, however, may be less harmless than our unwary conservative thinks. In this case, the misuse and overuse of "individual" is used to perpetuate one of the favorite American myths, that ours is an exceptional nation, founded by "rugged individualists" who left settled communities in Britain and Europe to come to a New World, where they never stopped moving from place to place in search of opportunity and adventure.

A closer look at our colonization and migration patterns reveals a different story: in many cases, towns along the Atlantic seaboard and later in the Middle West were settled by family groups and something like whole villages. Outside of Rockford there were Scottish settlements (Argyll and Caledonia) established by a group of related Lowland families who had been transported to Argyll. Going West, American frontiersmen were less often lone individualists like the mythical Daniel Boone than they were men of family and community, like the real Daniel Boone.

The proper word for a human being, considered in his own right, is "person," and some conservatives such as John Lukacs have preferred to speak of persons. It is a neutral word, that does not specify the human being's relations to his society.

I'd like to read a book detailing these patterns. At what point in American history did the causes of social atomism become dominant?

Another notable passage:

Man is by nature a corporate being who belongs to a family, a tribe, or a religious brotherhood. It is only within a society, especially in a civilized society, that family members, kinsmen, neighbors, and co-religionists can cooperate in protecting each other from the depredations of thugs, gang-leaders and the would-be petty tyrants who administer the organs of the modern state.

On Murray Rothbard:

Our most fundamental disagreement was on individual rights, which Rothbard made the centerpiece of his moral and political philosophy. His famous rule of non-aggression was rooted in the classical liberal notion of rights. When I told him that rights were a philosophical fantasy and the social contract a myth, he bristled. One day, over a little gin, he concluded that for him rights were a means to securing the protection of liberty, and he acknowledged that I accomplished the same object by insisting on natural duties that arise from one's position in life, what Bradley referred to in a brilliant if condescending essay on "My Station and Its Duties." A mother's duty to her children, a father's duty to his family, a neighbor's duty to his community should not be invaded by higher levels of social organization such as a state or federal government. What do we call such invasions, I was asked. The answer is simple: tyranny. It was on this understanding that Murray and I found ourselves on the same side of this and many other debates with his disciples and colleagues.

At the Daily Mail: Bishops Defend Freedom From Religion

Energy Bulletin Becoming Resilience.org

Resilience.org is live! by Staff


beta version for preview - FB

Related:
Survival Blog

Don't They Have Bigger Fish to Fry?

Rebellion: Hispanic groups complain Disney character hardly ‘Latina Princess’

Forget Disney - how about Univision or Telemundo? Do they complain about those networks or Ibero-American television networks in general, which reinforce certain "aesthetic" standards in casting and hiring as anchors? Probably not, because it's easier to try to cow "white" liberals, right?

Medal of Honor Warfighter PWNED Special

alt

Fr. Rutler on Pope Pius XII

The Tragic Heroism of Pope Pius XII by Rev. George W. Rutler

"Eastern Catholicism," with Abbot Nicholas Zachariadis

Catholic Answers: (mp3)

Trailer for Documentary on St. Kateri

A documentary on Kateri Tekakwitha, the first Native American Saint

Who Will Be In Charge of the Food Now?

Jeffrey Stout let go from Alexander’s Steakhouse

Interview with Kathy Kallick

Bluegrass Signal - listen online (archived for one week).

It will also be archived briefly at Bluegrass Country.

Kathy Kallick Band

I was originally hesitant about attending last night's concert at the Freight and Salvage, but it turned out to be very, very good. Another spectacular local bluegrass band! The band is doing a CD release tour, and they have some more performances in the area for next weekend:

Thur., Oct. 25 (7:30 pm): USS Potomac, Jack London Square, Oakland, CA
Fri., Oct. 26 (8:00 pm): Asbury United Methodist Church, Livermore, CA
Sat., Oct. 27 (7:30 pm): First Presbyterian Church Of Mountain View (CA)
Sun., Oct. 28 (7:00 pm): French Garden Restaurant, Sebastopol, CA

Redwood Bluegrass Associates, 2012-2013 Season

Some videos from a concert last year:




Annie Staninec is one awesome fiddler. She also has some cute facial expressions...

Only in Uhmerica

Can adult women wear their flannel pajamas in public and not see anything wrong with that.

It doesn't help matters that their pajamas resembles the scrubs of some nurses and doctors, even though the material may be different. Those medical professionals generally have no qualms wearing those scrubs outside a hospital environment.

I saw three women wearing pajamas today at a certain county park; presumably they were camping there, but that does not justify their choice of attire.

I have not seen Uhmerican males wearing their pjs in public - maybe one. I suppose there are still some boundaries that they won't cross... yet.