The New Beginning

Thursday, December 05, 2013

Inside Llewyn Davis

The Coen Brothers

NPR: On Becoming Llewyn Davis, A Hero Who Excels At Failing

Apple
Forbes

Showtime - premiering Dec. 13
American Songwriter

Economic vulnerability to Peak Oil by Christian Kerschner, Christina Prell, Kuishuang Feng, Klaus Hubacek

Related:
Imminent peak oil could burst US, global economic bubble - study
Major industrial sectors are at risk without a swift transition to a more resilient, post-carbon economy

Tara Firma Farms Special

Post by Tara Firma Farms.

website

Just Another Day in Middle-earth

Wednesday, December 04, 2013

A Quibble Over Words?

Or does antifragile really mean something different (and better) than resilient?

AoM: Beyond “Sissy” Resilience: On Becoming Antifragile

Civil War Photogaphers

Civil War Photographers Captured, Created History

Wonder Woman in the Superman/Batman movie now? Setting the movie up for failure by increasing fan expectations?

Tuesday, December 03, 2013

Kurt Cobb on Sustainability

The single most important principle for sustainability (Resilience)

NLM: Dominican Rite Masses in the SF Bay Area this Week

One Benefit of Living in L.A.

One has the opportunity to attend this event on Friday.

Post by Japan Film Society.

Monday, December 02, 2013

Statists, Feminists, and Homosexualists Killed It

Whatever Happened to Male Friendship? by Brandon McGinley

McGinley's post is inspired by the recent Tullamore Dew Irish Whiskey ad. I posted a video of the commercial here.

Daily Mail: To be a happy chap, see your pals twice a week: Men's wellbeing depends on meeting up with friends and 'doing stuff'

True?

A comment at Vox Day: "North Vietnam Sodomized the invading PLA in 1979. The PLA suffered more dead and wounded in 6 weeks than the US suffered in the entire Vietnam war. As a side affect it also proved to the PLA leadership that women, who made up 20% of the invading army, should not be in combat. This toned down any belief they may have had in the PLA being a competent instrument of foreign policy."

The Dominant Value of California Culture is Comfort?

I have not seen any evidence of tool-sharing or skill-sharing groups popping up in this part of the Bay Area - I had thought that if this is reality, then this part of the Bay Area may be doing well despite the ~~Recession~~ Depression. But then I thought about another possibility, mentioned in recent articles about Silicon Valley and I was reminded of it as a cousin mentioned that there are many California transplants moving into his town in AZ, having moved there for work opportunities.

In the survival of the financially fittest, those wage slaves who become employed or would be in need of tool-sharing group or other solutions may not be able to stay to use such solutions. They may have been pushed out of the state already because they can no longer afford to live here, having lost their jobs or they are no longer able to make payments on the banks' houses.

Who's left? Those who still have decent-paying jobs or those who are being subsidized by the public, or live in poor, undesirable areas (bad school districts).

Many of the immigrants who come here do so because of high-paying jobs and good school districts (which they believe will enable their children to have high-paying jobs as well). Those whites (geeks) who are employed at the various tech companies can't be said to be different in this regard. (Besides, both the whites and non-whites who live here are predominantly 'liberal' in their politics and mores. Do the Indians excuse fornication, so long as it is with white women? I wonder.)

Middle-class and upper middle-class people move to California for the "good" jobs, the pleasant weather, the possibility of road trips to spectacular natural areas... the nice life. For the sake of joining a community, of being part of a people? No.

Hedonism and self-gratification. It doesn't have to be in the form of drugs or rock n' roll.

Are there any gray market alternatives? What a hotbed of cultural insanity California is, and the people who live in the blue areas are ignorant of their own sickness.

Edit.
Something I read at Vox Day which was appropriate to this post:

"The Chinese are generally entrepreneurial , hard-working, family oriented, social conservatives."

That's just dandy, but none of those thing make them or anyone citizens of a nation. Is the qualification for citizenship: must be hard-working, family oriented, and conservative?

Also, they may work hard, but it's to benefit themselves, not the community. They may be family oriented, but they are oriented not around their communal families, but their nation i.e. Chinese families. And like we need more people to vote Republican.

All my Chinese expat friends are moving to Houston. There, they will move out the indigenous population and take over schools and businesses. They will not assimilate or work to improve Texas as a whole. This is all textbook Putnam.

'Feminine Genius'

Francis, women and clerical temptation. Andrea Tornielli

Most importantly, Francis writes that “the Church acknowledges the indispensable contribution which women make to society through the sensitivity, intuition and other distinctive skill sets which they, more than men, tend to possess. I think, for example, of the special concern which women show to others, which finds a particular, even if not exclusive, expression in motherhood.”

And yet...;

“I readily acknowledge,” the pope adds, “that many women share pastoral responsibilities with priests, helping to guide people, families and groups and offering new contributions to theological reflection. But we need to create still broader opportunities for a more incisive female presence in the Church. Because “the feminine genius is needed in all expressions in the life of society, the presence of women must also be guaranteed in the workplace” and in the various other settings where important decisions are made, both in the Church and in social structures.”

What Catholic feminist, liberal or conservative, would not cheer him for this? How will the Church mount a resistance to liberalism, statism, and social atomism if endorses the perpetuation of the social structures that are their manifestation?

Also saw this tonight: Breaking Through: Catholic Women Speak for Themselves, edited by Helen Alvaré, whose own contribution to the volume is on 'single motherhood.' (Does she endorse the restoration of patriarchy as a solution?) I think those who have power are quite content to continue having women become wage slaves.

One essay "Sex, Mating, and the Marriage Market" by Elise Italiano, whose credential (a M.A.) is listed after her name. The editor's decision? Or hers? One possible red flag. There is the common complaint, "Where are the good men?" How many chaste Catholic "nice" guys has she dated? If she were to be interrogated by a manosphere writer, what would her answers reveal about her and her actions? Does she think the description "Catholic professional woman in her late 20s who spent her 20s finding her identity) applies to herself as well? If so, more red flags?

Commonweal review
NCR
Washington Examiner interview with Alvaré.

None Dare Call It Treason?

The Roman Catholic recreation of the proposition nation.

Saw this book on display tonight.

Immigration and the Next America: Renewing the Soul of Our Nation by Archbishop José Gomez

What does Archbishop Gomez endorse specifically in this book? Any talk of assimilation and what is required to make it happen? Does he sound like an ethnonationalist who seeks benefits for his people at the expense of another group? Or at the minimum, without any duty to assimilate, being permitted to carve out their own place if they so wish?

Conquest by another name? He may deny that it is his intention to advocate it, but what of 'unintended' consequences? Is he that naive?

A Test for America

One man's mission to renew America's soul By looking at immigration’s past, Archbishop José Gomez of Los Angeles conceives its future by Gretchen R. Crowe
Gomez's "Immigration and the Next America" by Michael Sean Winters
Immigration and the Soul of America by Elise Hilton
Read: Immigration and the Next America by Meinrad Scherer-Emunds
Immigration And the Next America: Renewing the Soul of Our Nation by Mark and Louise Zwick
The Catholic Spirit
Archbishop Gomez writes book on immigration, discusses America’s Catholic heritage
Archbishop Jose Gomez's vision of 'Immigration and the The Next America'

An endorsement from Archbishop Chaput.

I am reminded of Paul Gottfried:

Even more importantly, says Ryn, Catholics recognize in Straussians figures who share their own “alienation” about living in a predominantly Protestant country. As Canadian philosophy professor Grant Havers documents in a forthcoming book about the studied avoidance by Straussian interpreters of America’s Protestant heritage, Straussians provide a narrative about the American founding that make ethnic Catholics feel secure about their Americanness.

According to the Straussians, America was founded on secular, materialist and democratic principles, but in no way on Protestant ones. Thus, if the Straussians try to de-Christianize and de-ethnicize America, they also conveniently cover up the Protestant aspects of a specifically American tradition.

Catholic Straussians (of whom there are many in Conservatism, Inc.) feel safe living in a “propositional nation” and “global democracy” in which they don’t feel threatened by the real American Protestant (and/or Northern European) American past, extending back to the colonial period. It’s more convenient to jettison such associations for the vision of a constantly changing hybrid society that is held together by universal, egalitarian propositions.