A lecture by Japanese ambassador to the Holy See, Kagefumi Ueno. (via the Western Confucian)
The ambassador outlines the various elements that distinguish Japanese religiosity from Christianity. Are these insurmountable intellectual and cultural obstacles to evangelization? Do they have to be broken down by consumerism, worldliness, and an acquisition of the sense of sin before missionaries can be effective?
I do wonder though how big of a role Buddhist nihilism plays in the practical reasoning of the average Japanese. I can't shake the impression that much of Japanese religiosity (especially with respect to nature) is "superficial" in the sense that it has no deep connection to their ultimate end. It is more of a cultural or habitual practice similar to how "cultural Christians" in the West behave than a "religious" practice.
Thursday, August 19, 2010
James Poulos, The Mature and the Immature: Our Real Two Americas
The Mature and the Immature: Our Real Two Americas
Mr. Poulos has been associated with not a few websites, it is difficult to keep track of them all. Ricochet.
Mr. Poulos has been associated with not a few websites, it is difficult to keep track of them all. Ricochet.
The Archdruid Report: Two Agricultures, Not One
The Archdruid Report: Two Agricultures, Not One: "Talking about the future after peak oil is a challenging thing. One of the things that makes it most challenging is the extent to which so ..."
Wednesday, August 18, 2010
AP: Goodbye Iraq: Last US combat brigade heads home
CNN: Last U.S. combat convoy has left Iraq
That presence is far from over. Scatterings of combat troops still await departure, and some 50,000 will stay another year in what is designated as a noncombat role. They will carry weapons to defend themselves and accompany Iraqi troops on missions (but only if asked). Special forces will continue to help Iraqis hunt for terrorists.
CNN: Last U.S. combat convoy has left Iraq
Andrew Bacevich in SF
I should have attempted to brighten the photo before uploading it. Oh well.
One of the advantages of being underemployed is that I can attend events such as Dr. Bacevich's lecture in San Francisco last week. Young people have the excuse that they are working for not attending. But what if they weren't? There was one Asian in his 30s or 40s. The rest were 50 or above -- lots of seniors. By the time the room filled up, there were may be 3 or 4 people under the age of 30. (Including several Asian women.)
Looking at the elderly surrounding me, I was struck with the thought that they should be respected because they have at least more experience, if not actual wisdom. Conversing with the old is one of the simple joys of life. They probably can also teach some us useful things, even if they are unable to guide us in living. (This may not be the case with those who come after the Boomers, as we continue to lose practical skills.)
It's funny, both the Commonwealth Club and the WAC had posters advertising trips and cruises. I suppose such travel services target the senior citizens who frequent their events?
Dr. Bacevich was introduced by Ralph Kuiper, who told us about the WAC's weekly radio broadcast on KQED on Monday. He then told us to check the audio and video archive at the WAC's website. I learned that Professor Bacevich received his PhD from Princeton in American Diplomatic History. I also noted the WAC branding present on the wall hanging behind the stage. It's something everyone who has the money does these days when they filming speakers.
The good professor wanted to spend 18 to 20 minutes summarizing the argument of his most recent book, Washington Rules. The rest of the time would be devoted to answering questions from the audience. He started off by asking two questions: "Why are we in Afghanistan?" and "Why were we in Vietnam?" (the latter being an important question for his generation, especially since he was a soldier in Vietnam). There is a single answer to both questions: Washington adheres to the National Security Consensus or pattern of behavior that no longer works. These are the Washington Rules. Bacevich belives that alternatives do exist to the status quo.
Update on Dr. Laura
CNN: Dr. Laura to end her radio show (via Drudge)
Los Angeles, California (CNN) -- Embattled radio talk-show host Dr. Laura Schlessinger announced Tuesday she will not renew her contract that is up at the end of the year, telling CNN's "Larry King Live" she wants to "regain my First Amendment rights."
William Murchison on Paul Ryan
Another fan, in addition to Daniel Larison. Paul Ryan and the Perils of Realism.
Rep. Paul Ryan of Wisconsin’s First District, one of the smartest men in politics insofar as I can tell, goes around touting his brilliantly conceived free-market, limited-government approach called Roadmap for America’s Future. Whose main defect appears to be that in facilitating economic recovery it would change the ways Americans interface with federal social programs and the tax system that supports them. The prospect of that seems to disturb colleagues; thus … well, hear out Bacon: “[M]any Republican colleagues … even as they praise Ryan for his doggedness, privately consider the Roadmap a path to electoral disaster.”His website. His campaign site.
To tidy up the blog
Blogger: Blog Doctor: Expandable Post Summaries. Instructions for using Javascript; another.
From this thread, a hack to achieve it simply.
No time to try any of them out, need to finish some posts...
Edit. Found the official Blogger how-to page... I guess I should enable the new post editor.
From this thread, a hack to achieve it simply.
No time to try any of them out, need to finish some posts...
Edit. Found the official Blogger how-to page... I guess I should enable the new post editor.
Good news or bad news for US special operations forces?
Defense Review: FN SCAR (Special Operations Forces Combat Assault Rifle) Weapons System Approved for Full-Rate Production (FRP)
If reports about the problems with the Mk16 are accurate, then what is the US Special Operations Command thinking? Another instance of the MIC at work? FN Herstal is a Belgian company, but production of the SCAR would be on US soil?
Would our soldiers be better off using M4s, as they continue to be modified through further innovations, until someone creates the next-generation US combat rifle?
FNH USA
FN Herstal
If reports about the problems with the Mk16 are accurate, then what is the US Special Operations Command thinking? Another instance of the MIC at work? FN Herstal is a Belgian company, but production of the SCAR would be on US soil?
Would our soldiers be better off using M4s, as they continue to be modified through further innovations, until someone creates the next-generation US combat rifle?
FNH USA
FN Herstal
Dr. Laura leaving radio?
According to Richard Spencer in Dr. Laura: Self-Censoring Truth Teller. Apparently she used the "n word" to make a point in her argument with a caller. So I had to check her website. Her apology on her blog and the audio file of the apology from her show, and her most recent blog post on the mater: What I've Learned From the Events of the Past Week. I haven't found any confirmation that she is ending her radio show.
Deceptive Economic Statistics by Paul Craig Roberts
Deceptive Economic Statistics
On August 17, Bloomberg reported a US government release that industrial production rose twice as much as forecast, climbing 1 percent. Bloomberg interpreted this to mean that “increased business investment is propelling the gains in manufacturing, which accounts for 11 percent of the world’s largest economy.”
The stock market rose.
Let’s look at this through the lens of statistician John Williams of shadowstats.com.
Williams reports that “the primary driver of a 1.0% monthly gain in seasonally-adjusted July industrial production” was “warped seasonal factors” caused by “the irregular patterns in U.S. auto production in the last two years.” Industrial production “shrank by 1.0% before seasonal adjustments.”
If the government and Bloomberg had announced that industrial production fell by 1.0% in July, would the stock market have risen 104 points on August 17?
Notice that Bloomberg reports that manufacturing accounts for 11 percent of the US economy. I remember when manufacturing accounted for 18% of the US economy. The decline of 39% is due to jobs offshoring.
Think about that. Wall Street and shareholders and executives of transnational corporations have made billions by moving 39% of US manufacturing offshore to boost the GDP and employment of foreign countries, such as China, while impoverishing their former American work force. Congress and the economics profession have cheered this on as “the New Economy.”
Bought-and-paid-for-economists told us that “the new economy” would make us all rich, and so did the financial press. We were well rid, they claimed, of the “old” industries and manufactures, the departure of which destroyed the tax base of so many American cities and states and the livelihood of millions of Americans.
The bought-and-paid-for-economists got all the media forums for a decade. While they lied, the US economy died.
Gene Logsdon, Throwing Away Billions of Dollars In Pet Manure
Throwing Away Billions of Dollars In Pet Manure (original)
Not until I was well into writing my new book, Holy Shit: Managing Manure To Save Mankind, which is about how to manage manure for soil enrichment, did I realize that cats, dogs and horses are a very significant source of valuable fertilizer that we are mostly throwing away. Or, as our friends’ cat, Django, indicates in the photo above, flushing it down the toilet.
Tuesday, August 17, 2010
Centurion
(source)
Some were expecting more from Neil Marshall, given his early work; others think it is just another chase movie. Eager for any decent swords-and-sandals movie, I found the movie satisfying for the most part, but the final showdown was a disappointment. (Not enough survivors for a better action sequence.) Spoiler alert! The ending is somewhat similiar to that of Marhsall's last movie, Doomsday. I'd have to say that the movie fizzled towards the end.
There's a lot of good stuff at Energy Bulletin today
Just a few of the posted items:
Confessions of a recovering environmentalist (original) Economics as if people mattered (original)
The dilemma of poverty in the South: equity or transformation
The gulf at the gas station: Can we calculate the true cost of our dependence on oil?
The failure of networked systems: The repercussions of systematic risk revisited
Confessions of a recovering environmentalist (original)
Paul Kingsnorth, OpenDemocracy
"Environmentalism, which in its raw, early form had no time for the encrusted, seized-up politics of left and right, has been sucked into the yawning, bottomless chasm of the 'progressive' left." A personal, twenty-year journey through the world’s wild places and the movements to protect them is also, for Paul Kingsnorth, an education in the limits of a project that has forgotten nature and lost its soul.
Carl Etnier, Equal Time Radio
Robert Costanza is professor of ecological economics at the University of Vermont and director of the Gund Institute of Ecological Economics. He talks about the things most economists overlook, like the fact that growth can't continue forever on a finite planet, and the ways our well-being is not connected with how much money we have.
The Transition of Appalachia Anthony Flaccavento, Solutions
The dilemma of poverty in the South: equity or transformation
Rahul Goswami, Energy Bulletin
The gulf at the gas station: Can we calculate the true cost of our dependence on oil?
Mark Engler, TomDispatch.com
The failure of networked systems: The repercussions of systematic risk revisited
aeldric, The Oil Drum: Australia/New Zealand
Opportunity cost of growth
Opportunity cost of growth
Herman Daly, The Daly News
Agroinnovations #99: Ecological Imperialism
Agroinnovations #99: Ecological Imperialism
Frank Aragona, Agroinnovations
Nation and Identity
Nation, as in people, gens.
Dr. Fleming:
Dr. Fleming:
Of course we are right to love our own people more than others and to wish to preserve our people and its traditions. Race is a murky concept, as MAR points out, though it is pretty clear cut compared with ethnicity and nationality. To take the example of Finland, the ruling elite of Finland is thoroughly penetrated by Swedes, while the ruling elite of Sweden has a strong German element. But even Hitler was aware that the German nation was not really a race or a pure group. A nation, in the nationalist sense, includes shared ancestry but also a good deal of fictional ancestry, as well as a sense of tradition, attachment to place.
Such attachments are not always strong enough to survive conquest and subjugation, though sometimes they are remarkably resilient. The Old Testament bears witness to the tenacity, indeed the ferocity of the Jews’ belief in their own superiority and their attachment to their land–though it is conveniently quiet about the fact that most Jews did not return from their captivities. And thre is not a word in the New Testament which, correctly interpreted without guile or malice, that can be used to support the universalists’ contempt for nationality or ethnicity, and I challenge anyone who thinks otherwise to make his case. If it is the usual irrelevant lies about neither Greek nor Jew, I am afraid I shall have to be more severe than I should like to be.
One of the most striking things about the Gospels, especially John’s, is the Galileean origins and attachments of Christ and the eleven faithful apostles. Judas, aptly named, is the one Judaean Jew. Even after crucifixion and death, Jesus is barely risen before he precedes the apostles back to Galilee. Judaea is a terrible place today and it was probably not much better 2000 years ago, while Galilee is well-watered with orchards and pastures. The whole area around the Sea of Galilee is like paradise compared with the rest of the country, and I do not think I am too far off in seeing the Christ’s attachment to his home country–though he was despised and rejected partly for his origins in a region only recently Judaeized– as a model for the rest of us. Our goal, then, working together is to refute the universalist Enlightenment/neopagan heresies that have been injected into Christianity by its enemies.
Jared Taylor, The "Political Structure Doctrine"—Another Excuse for Anti-White Discrimination.
(via Alt Right)
(via Alt Right)
Moreno acknowledged that race preferences are controversial. But he pointed out that it was not the court’s job to decide if they were good or bad—only to decide whether the proposition that banned them was constitutional. In deciding that it was not constitutional, he relied on an obscure set of US Supreme Court precedents that have come to be known as the "political structure doctrine." Like the concept of "disparate impact" , it was conjured up out of the Constitution as part of the tortured jurisprudence on race that goes back at least to the Brown decision of 1954.
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