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Books & Blog July 2003 Home | Blog | Sound Track | About the blog | Blog links Find one of my books? Please go to bookcrossing.com and/or re-release. |
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| 30 July 2003: The Great American South, Oh My | ||||||
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Flash flooding here in the Triangle. See photo and article at WRAL.
Dennis Rogers column in the N&O: You probably saw it, too: the Cuban refugees who mated a 1951 Chevrolet stake truck and a dozen or so 55-gallon oil drums and drove that thing half the way from Cuba to Key West."That was some fine shade- tree engineering," Bubba said. "They took two of the finer things in life, old trucks and pontoon boats, and created a work of art."
And more from the News & Observer: The man shot to death by Harnett County deputies Monday after a high-speed chase through three counties was being pursued on charges he had stolen an air conditioner from a church and had pawned it for $70, authorities said Tuesday.
Southerners have a certain pride in a string of stories like this. We're all about flooding, we're all about jury-rigging, and we're all about petty criminals. I'm from California, where jury-rigging and petty crime is general blamed on various foreigners. But here in North Carolina its Bubba, your brother next door. Some Californians who come out here try to bring their "blame it on someone else" attitude with them. They sit smugly in their vinal houses, surrounding by irrigated lawns that suck up all our drinking water and privacy fencing the block our view of the human life and the wildlife, and talk about those Southerners with their bailing wire cars and moonshine. These people should Go. Back. Home.
http://www.wral.com/news/2368073/detail.html http://newsobserver.com/news/story/2733942p-2534580c.html http://newsobserver.com/news/story/2733939p-2534590c.html
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| 29 July 2003: Surfin' | ||||||
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Now one might wonder why I don't just use Blogger or something that might make this endeavor a little easier. Well, I started this in FrontPage and gosh darn it I'm going to keep it in FrontPage. But I envy you-all with TrackBack and all this other cool stuff. Actually, you can use TrackBack as a stand-alone with FrontPage... if you are much, much more clever than I am. As it is I am quaking in my boots that my hard drive is clearly deteriorating and I'm going to have to do a complete refresh any moment. If you don't hear from me for a month, now you know why. All of this is to say that it is very good news that is that FrontPage 2003 is going to have a blogging component built in.
An interesting marriage proposal story. [via Whatever]
They Are Gone Now, His Family, Every Last One: With a memoir and the help of friends, Allen Boyd struggles to break free of the pattern of suicide that has claimed his parents, brothers and sister. From Newsday.
Web Updates Noted:
Flyby: The Bleat (http://www.lileks.com/bleats/index.html)
http://www.urbanpotato.net/default.aspx/document/1144
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| 27 July 2003: Up From the Mire | ||||||
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Wow, last week went downhill pretty fast! Monday started out with something reasonable uplifting, and by Friday it was solid murder and mayhem.
Yesterday I had written a little bit about someone in the news, but I ended up deciding that his personal life wasn't something I wanted to comment on. So instead I'll just leave you with this bit from the General Conference speech I read last week: "President Brigham Young explained that our families are not yet ours. The Lord has committed them to us to see how we will treat them. Only if we are faithful will they be given to us forever." -The Importance of the Family, Elder L. Tom Perry, April 2003 General Conference
I've been struggling with how to make my religion my own. How to own my spirituality and make it a real and vital part of my life. In my reading from the April 2003 General Conference I also found a nice little speech by Elder Craig C. Christensen titled "Seek, and Ye Shall Find": "As we engage our faith and commit our energy to draw closer to Jesus Christ, we begin to understand more fully who He really is. As we seek Him diligently, we gain a deep and abiding testimony of His matchless love, His perfect life and example, and the blessings of His great atoning sacrifice. As we draw nearer to Him, we truly being to find Him and to recognize Him as the Creator of the earth, the Redeemer of mankind, the Only Begotten of the Father, the King of kings, the Prince of Peace."
Web Updates Noted:
Now, your job is to send in a comment. I just noticed that I've had nearly 100 readers in the last two weeks, and not one comment, good, bad or indifferent.
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| 26 July 2003: Human | ||||||
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Titanic Show Coming to Science Museum (Raleigh News & Observer)
The question is, is it okay to look at dead people's stuff? Should it be put on display? Implicit question: like a circus act? It is an ageless question. First off, I don't think that it is prima facia wrong to look at dead people's stuff. Everyone keeps mementos, not only of dead people, but of dead people they don't know at all. And displays of the legacy of dead people are normal: the Donner Party Memorial and Arlington Cemetery aren't that different from the Holocaust Memorial. Legacy isn't different from belongings, because belongings are just meant to stand in for legacy. But the real complaint is probably about viewing the items in a crass commercial environment versus in the respectability of a private home. I just don't think it is a valid complaint- people are pretty crass by nature, and nature goes everywhere we go. That which is safe from humanity is also safe from meaning. A more reasonable "compare and contract" would be to compare disrespectful or respectful intent. We are interested in the hopes and dreams of these people. The headline doesn't say, "Stupid people believe impossible advertising claim and die like a huge frozen fish catch." Who owns the items? If the decedents want their stuff back and are of one mind as a family, then they should get their stuff back. But in most cases, if one decendent gets the stuff and the others have less access to it than they would have had in a museum. Plus the museum can care for it better.
The Visible Embryo (http://www.visembryo.com/baby/index.html). The awesome miracle of life. [via Metafilter]
The Eye Have it: A blog devoted (mainly) to visual communications in the pharmaceutical, biotech and healthcare sectors (http://www.leepotts.com/blog.html). Lots of very cool stuff.
Web Updates Noted:
This web updated: I found that there were some errors with my Amazon.com links, particularly on the older pages. However, the link at the top of this page was also affected. These have been corrected. The problems with the miscellaneous capital letters in the URLS for the 2001 scrap book (a.k.a. the "Calendar") remain for another day...
http://newsobserver.com/news/story/2727696p-2528925c.html
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| 25 July 2003: Blog By A Tired Person Who Has Been Surfing the Internet Too Much | ||||||
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Queens Hero Cop's Shooting 'Amazing': Dead-Eye Officer Hits On 4 of 6 Shots From 40 Feet. Okay, the reason you to send your kids to lots of different classes even though they will never use those skills as an adult is so that they can appreciate the skills of other people. I did a little target shooting as a child (and last year) and I can appreciate this. The whole skill of shooting is keeping the back sight right behind the front sight. Or, um, the front sight right in front of the back site. Anyway, this is why they test Olympic shooters for downers. Your heart is right in the middle of the structure that is going to make this happen, so the point is to slow down the heart. And then stress hormones make everything else shake. So anyway, this guy shot an assassin from 40 feet (2/3 the length of a mobile home) in a sudden emergency, with a pistol (the sights being closer together and the weapon being lighter and smaller adds to the difficulty in the project explained above). So that's neat.
Latter-day exodus: Mormon youth on a journey. Some local Mormon kids do a re-enactment of the handcart trek, which the reporter uses as a springboard for a survey of Mormon culture.
Two CNN stories: U.S. to show sons' bodies to media & Release of photos of bodies raises ethics concerns. The tone of CNN's original report raised some eyebrows over at Metafilter (scan down to see a screen-shot of the offending CNN headline). Like much of U.S. policy, we just sort of wavered in the middle of how we dealt with it. America didn't have the balls to just release the pictures, which Salam Pax says we should have done, or the adherence to principle to refuse to ever release the pictures. I vote for adherence to principle. The people that don't want to believe it are not going to believe it no matter what. So we could have at least adhered to principles.
Animals aren't getting much better treatment than the fellows mentioned above: Pig Owners In Durham Rally Around Dixie. This has been a long running thing. The city wants to kick out the pot-bellied pig. The family says they will sell their house and leave. Barry Saunders says "This little pig ought to stay." Remember the evil person that threw the bichon frise on the freeway? He just appealed his conviction, explaining that the dog almost made it across the freeway safely, but then ran back into traffic and therefore was partly responsible for its own death. You can't make this stuff up. Death of a Derby Winner: Slaughterhouse Likely Fate for Ferdinand.
And then where their is real tragedy, it draws voyeuristic crazies like these people.
But you don't need to wait for people to fall down stairs- Americans are plenty busy killing each other on the freeways, as discussed earlier. RDU Traffic Not Supposed to Go Left, Wants To Go Left. Great headline. Anyway, they put in a right turn loop onto the freeway. But people still drive over the median to take the left-hand onramp that belongs to the opposing traffic. John Valenti, columnist at Newsday, discusses the problem with license suspensions that don't cause people to suspend driving.
Newsday did a series on illegal immigrants.
Iraq Soldier meets helmet makers. Apparently the processing records mean that the soldier who was shot in the head could meet the very individual who created his helmet. From ...turning tables..."...they were being young and they are not yet old enough to be thought immature...i watched them with a smile of admiration at their innocence...and my eyes were drawn to a ping pong table where all their gear was placed...it was covered with assault rifles..."
Web Updates Noted:
Flyby: Blaster's Blog (http://www.overpressure.com/) Corsair the Rational Pirate (http://corsair.blogspot.com/) Sgt. Stryker (http://sgtstryker.com/) Creative Commons (http://creativecommons.org/)
http://www.newsday.com/nyc-hero0725,0,1443236. http://www.newsobserver.com/mormontrek/story/2639840p-2448165c.html http://www.cnn.com/2003/WORLD/meast/07/25/sprj.irq.sons/index.html http://www.cnn.com/2003/US/07/24/sprj.irq.photos.ethics/index.html http://dear_raed.blogspot.com/2003_07_01_dear_raed_archive. http://www.wral.com/news/2357091/detail.html http://news-observer.com/news/story/2722329p-2524312c.html http://www.wral.com/news/2354810/detail.html http://news.bloodhorse.com/viewstory.asp?id=17051 http://newsobserver.com/news/story/2722324p-2524360c.html http://www.wral.com/traffic/2350734/detail.html http://www.newsday.com/templates/ http://newsobserver.com/news/story/2719884p-2521963c.html http://turningtables.blogspot.com/2003_07_20_turningtables_archive.html#105905122450692747
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| 24 July 2003: Invasion! | ||||||
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Millipedes. Really, they provoke the same feeling in me as a snake, except that they run all over the place in an unpredictable manner. And I haven't seen a snake on my lot in years, but the millipedes are inside my house.
http://www.news-observer.com/front/story/2720025p-2521890c.html
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| 22 July 2003: Ten Years Ago... | ||||||
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I've been thinking about the fact that each person forms a unique node in the social fabric. Their spot is irreplaceable. There is a particular set of interactions around each person. I have to think about this sort of think, since my parents lives such strange and unique lives. Racing their sailboats, riding the Pony Express train from Missouri to California... these are definitely unique people. Ten years ago, in 1993, my parents' wedding anniversary landed on the day of a large sailboat race that gathers a large audience. We race one-person sailboats. So they were racing against each other, and my sister and I were also in the race. I wrote in my journal that the announcer announced my parents' anniversary during the start. And then I had a lousy start and he explained to the audience what I had done wrong.
"It has been my opinion that volunteers and employees working together sucks because the employees slack off. That was when I was a volunteer. Now I think it sucks because the volunteers drive the employees crazy with their exuberance." -journal, July 15, 1993
I also found mention in my 1993 journal about an old man named Herb. I was teaching sailing, and Herb hung out at the yacht club on his lunch hour. Apparently he was a doctor of some kind, maybe a psychiatrist, I don't remember. But he has a huge enjoyment of life. Everything was an adventure. I remember him feeding ice cream to a seagull, spoonful by spoonful. And in my journal (July 19, 1993) I recorded these words of wisdom: "You find your limit. Some people can ride a bicycle, but not a unicycle. You know- some people can ride a unicycle, but not on a wire."
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| 21 July 2003: Misc Internet | ||||||
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Went to read Whatever, which is extremely sweet today, and then clicked a link over to a blog called Man Out of Time. Today's entry caught my attention, with its discussion of his wife's inpatient alcoholism treatment, but this first entry on the subject has to be one of the most romantic things I have ever read.
Okay, remember what I was saying about the automobile fatality rate in comparison to deaths from terrorism? With citizens like this, who needs terrorism.
"Reminds me of something Martin Luther said. I paraphrase: 'I'd rather be ruled by a wise turk than a stupid Christian.'" This from ExEditor, a Christian blog referenced on blogs4God. Amen to that.
And finally, one of my Book Crossing books finally got a third entry. See, I read the book and posted, and then I gave to a friend who wrote a post and she gave it to a friend of hers who wrote a post... Pretty hard to get that ball rolling!
Last, for fun, check out the new employee handbook.
http://www.scalzi.com/whatever/ http://www.scalzi.com/whatever/archives/000353.html http://www.seavoy-dickson.org/bill/journal/index.php http://www.seavoy-dickson.org/bill/journal/2003/07/18.php#000552 http://www.seavoy-dickson.org/bill/journal/2003/07/06.php#000550 http://www.cnn.com/2003/US/South/07/20/interstate.pileup/index.html http://www.exeditor.blogspot.com/ http://www.blogs4god.com/linker/index.php http://bookcrossing.com/journal/319196 http://www.rooba.net/forum//viewtopic.php?t=76
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| 20 July 2003: God and His Children | ||||||
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God: A Biography by Jack Miles is truly a marvelous book. Other people think so too- it won the Pulitzer Prize. Unfortunately, I was trying to finish the sequel, Christ: A Crisis in the Life of God before I put up this post. I haven't read very much of Christ, and in the meantime I've lost most of my pull-quotes from God. Christ is just a catalogue of what Jake Miles has learned after an intensive study of the Bible, including a stint as a Catholic priest. It is interesting and indeed I found a life-changing statement within the first four pages, but, after the shear perfection of God, I am nonetheless sulking in disappointment. God is a literary reading of the Old Testament (in the book order used by the Jews) that follows the development of God as the Jews learn more about him and as, presumable, God learns more about himself. The insights are fabulous, the structure perfect, the writing absorbing. It is a perfect book. Next year, when I come across those pull-quotes again, I'll tell you more about it.
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Abraham: A Journey to the Heart of Three Faiths by Bruce Feiler, author of Walking the Bible: A Journey By Land Through the Five Books of the Bible, chronicles Feiler's search for the historical Abraham, in the context of modern-day environment. He finds that since ancient times Abraham has constantly been reinterpreted and reinvented to suite the needs of the three religions that claim him. For the Muslims he is a complete devotee to God, the first monotheist. For the Jews he is an example of triumph through failure. For Christians, his life included a sacrifice the foreshadows the sacrifice of Christ. While it may seem that the pressures of the current day would create a focus on reinterpreting Abraham, those original religious splits may have but even more pressure on reinterpreting Abraham. The result, Feiler finds, is that there or not 3 Abrahams, or a handful of Abrahams, but rather 100s of Abrahams to sort through. The book is written in a light narrative form, requiring no background in religion. And the book is as much about the search for Abraham as it is about the search for the commonality between the three monotheistic religions that Abraham represents. In writing about this book I also have to mention Revenge (discussed previously on May 10th, a book with a similar feel and focus on the middle east.
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Elsewhere on the web: John Gilmore: I was ejected from a plane for wearing "Suspected Terrorist" button. Abbie the Cat Has a Posse- Abbie has an opinion. Will explains why every experienced soldier brings a credit card. PontifexExMachina writes about "Fun in the Sun" putting up cammie netting after it crossed Iraq on the top of a truck. Also about an eternal traveling war-time pot of chili.
I've updated the Blog Links page a bit over the last few days. Now has all the military links that have been appearing the last few days.
http://www.politechbot.com/p-04973.html http://www.abbie.blogspot.com/archives/2003_07_01_ http://rooba.net/will/archives/000513.php http://www.pontifexexmachina.com/archives/000408.html http://www.pontifexexmachina.com/archives/000406.html
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| 19 July 2003: Plus Bloodsucking Lawyers | ||||||
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So someone in this house didn't notice that the speed limit on a freeway near here had been changed and got a speeding ticket. For the reasons explained below & not wanting to have regrets until our graves, the folks in this house generally obey the speed limit. This would be the second ticket for our household (I got one when I was eighteen and didn't know the meaning of the word "regrets."). We have been flooded with advertisements for lawyers. This to the home of the women who only major publication was a letter in U.S. News & World Report (Sept. 6, 1999, page 12) blasting speeding ticket lawyers (for the reasons explained below). Most of the advertisements were boring, "Hi, I'm a lawyer. I'll appear in court for $50," and badly mimeographed." But some of them made an effort at persuasion with insurance rate information or just plan scare tactics. I've collected them all together and the winner is a professionally published flier containing the following section:
Bloodsuckers.
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| 18 July 2003: Murderers Among Us | ||||||
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I am concerned about our fixation on September 11th. I think we protest too much. One of the most basic statements in humanity is, "I am not a cold-blooded killer, he is." How many times have you yourself said something like this. Why? What are you trying to express in your outrage? In 1978 Edward Said wrote this in his book, Orientalism:
Early in life most of us realized that an easy way to express that outrage is "they." "They" ruined the economy. "They" make the taxes too high. "They" won't give me a chance. "They" are bad drivers. Only in reading Edward Said's book did I realize that the eternal present tense "is" is another part of that expression. Our outrage can't be about something in the past. To say what I am not, I have to say what something else is. Jesus was talking about this form of expression when he said,
The alternative of course is,
So lets talk about a mote that was in the news this week. We killed 42,815 people on our nation's roads last year. If you want to find a number so low as to be near the death count from September 11th, you would be looking for the motorcycle fatality rate at 3,197. I'm not a cold blooded killer, you are. We will likely kill at least this many people again this year. Islamic terrorism has killed less than 10 people on U.S. soil since September 11th. I'm not a cold-blooded killer, you are. These aren't premeditated murders. This is all about hubris and carelessness. We call traffic fatalities "accidents." The only kind of accidents we bemoan in any serious way are high-alcohol level crashes that killed 17,419 last year (2,401 for crashes where the alcohol level was under the legal limit). We are afraid of Islamic terrorists because we claim not to understand how they think. This despite the fact that they tell us exactly what their ideology is and why they kill. I'm not a cold-blooded killer, you are. You don't have to go the frightened civilian population of Iraq or the painful poverty of Africa to try to decide if Americans are the cold-blooded killers. Just look out the windshield at people who kill for nothing.
http://www.nhtsa.dot.gov/nhtsa/announce/press/pressdisplay.cfm?year=2003&filename=pr32-03.html
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| 17 July 2003: The Light and the Serious News | ||||||
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Okay, in our little version of the O.J. trial, you can watch the trial in real-time at WRAL, just to prove that North Carolina can be at least as crass as California. Today's intrigue is that the investigators did a rape kit on the dead lady. The defense is outraged. I am lost: if they were having sex, wouldn't that be evidence that they were getting along and maybe he didn't kill her? There is also a dentist that is outraged because someone said in court that maybe he burned down his own building. And this has to do with what? Maybe if we had higher-paid pundits following this case I would understand it better. I'm too dumb to live in North Carolina; I need to move back to California.
And over in the desert... Will is playing "make work.". Will washes ammunition for a living. Really. "...but i have never killed a baby or destroyed a home...but does that make me innocent..." Thinkin' going on at ...turningtables... A young lady in Basra at Ishtar Talking. (Salam Pax provides the English translations.) And of course Salam Pax himself.
The night after I spent hours reading LT SMASH, I lay in bed thinking for a long time. I am a big fat woman, and I had overdone it on a hot North Carolina afternoon a few days before. I overheated and threw my body out of whack, and subsequently put on 12 pounds of water, all from the ankles down. My feet looked like cartoons of feet, except that there were real feet in there and they hurt. So I was laying in bed with the air conditioning turned down to 70 degrees for the sake of my feet, very aware of the fact that there are Americans sweating it out in Iraq and that I don't think about them very much. The problem is that I don't know what I think about the war, and that just isn't good enough. A citizen should have a strong reaction one way or another to having soldiers deployed. It is our responsibility. Either you've considered the facts and you think they should be there and the risk and suffering is worth it, or you think they shouldn't be there. Thinking it through, I realized that my problem is that actually I was for the war. I was for the war, and what does that mean about the occupation? Post-colonialism hasn't been all that successful. The country ends up being at about the same level of success (economic, democratic, secure, etc.) as it started. Imagine what it would take to make a major change in the structure of the United States? It took a civil war, and even that wasn't completely successful. It took the civil rights movements, and even that wasn't completely successful. Why would we think that other cultures are more plastic than our own? So the goal of "re-building" is suspect. So are our soldiers over there to kill all the terrorists? Unlikely. Right now it seems like the plan is to keep them over there until people like them. And people like them less and less. It is a real life example of "The beatings will continue until morale improves." Despite these reasons to be against the occupation, I'm not against the occupation. The war left us with responsibilities. Can we keep our responsibilities, or should we admit that we can't hack it and go home before we cause any more damage? I don't know.
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| 16 July 2003: Globally | ||||||
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It is stuff like this that makes you think maybe the U.S.A. shouldn't help in cases like this. No, I do have compassion for the U.K. family that has had their child abducted by a U.S. citizen and is now on the lam in Europe and hopefully the F.B.I. can solve the rpoblem. But if a U.K. man has abducted a U.S. child and went on the lam in Europe, most European countries wouldn't help. For that matter, the F.B.I. wouldn't help. (We chase our own criminals but we don't help our own victims?!!) It isn't just Egypt and other male/female rights inequitable nations that are guilty, it is most of the "first world" too. I don't have a personal relationship to this issue, I'm just outraged in general.
On the day the Iranian conjoined twins died, a new set of twins conjoined at the head were born in Greece. (CNN) It is an interesting thing. Doctors were trying to change the shape of the universe, and respect the free choice of two particular individuals. Arguably, the individuals won, but so did the universe.
http://www.cnn.com/2003/WORLD/europe/07/16/uk.girl.marine/index.html http://www.cnn.com/2003/HEALTH/07/12/twins.greece.reut/index.html
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| 13 July 2003: Hooked on L.T. Smash | ||||||
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Organic farming growing in North Carolina, based on demand in the urban areas. News & Observer article today on what the farmers think of it.
Reading
L.T. Smash. "In the
middle of the table at dinner was a bottle of Heinz 57 Sauce. The label
proclaimed that you can use the sauce to “add zest to chicken, steak
& Elsewhere he references this entry from The Primary Main Objective, which references back to a L.T.. Smash entry in a kind of nice circle of comparisons of military life. And elsewhere a very nice essay comparing what he calls "the four icons": God, Caesar, Justice and Liberty. Here an entry about the core values and attitudes of America. All around, very worth reading L.T. Smash. Just stayed up an hour past my bed time reading it, actually.
"Salam Pax Is Real: How do I know Baghdad's famous blogger exists? He worked for me." I had heard the American journalist who employed Salam Pax as an interpreter, unaware that in fact the man was the famous blogger. But I hadn't had the energy to track down a written article until I happened across the link to this article on L.T. Smash's blog.
http://newsobserver.com/news/story/2690136p-2494323c.html http://www.lt-smash.us/archives/001477.html#001477 http://www.chinpokomon.com/archives/000562.html#000562 http://www.lt-smash.us/archives/001469.html#001469 http://www.lt-smash.us/archives/001449.html#001449 http://www.lt-smash.us/archives/001441.html#001441 http://slate.msn.com/id/2083847/
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| 12 July 2003: A Random Trip Around the Web | ||||||
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Abbie Watch: Abbie the Cat reports feeling better.
Lawsuit on a psoriasis study in Chapel Hill.
Article on black unemployment. Black-held manufacturing jobs are shrinking 33% faster than while-held manufacturing jobs. The unemployment rate continues to fluctuate more widely for blacks than it does for whites- at the end of the boom black unemployment was sinking extremely fast. At the time I worked for a midnight basketball program that had to shut down because all of the intended participants had jobs! Then in the recent bust, as explained above, unemployment rose very quickly. As I've been studying this issue over the last few weeks, and at the same time Bush is in Africa and the topic of slavery is being revisited, as it is constantly, it struck me that we may be looking at the wrong thing. Slavery was bad enough, but less than 80 years ago, in the great depression, the working black man was completely decimated. Black unemployment during the depression was higher than Albania or Madagascar are now, all of which are higher than the unemployment rate in Baghdad during the war. On the one hand, valiant black people have to be the ones to dig out their community. On the other hand, as white people like me are sitting back and judging, we could take a moment to wonder to ourselves hoe far we think Albania or Madagaskar are going to get in the next 80 years.
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UNC summer book assignment causing controversy. As it did last year. I read some truly horrible things when I was at UNC. I guess assigning a book in class is a little more stealth than assigning a book to the entire freshman body while they are still home in their childhood networks. All of this points to a very good reason why we rip children out of their homes and send them to college- after they are done with the emotional imbalance of childhood they need a few good years of intellectual imbalance before they are ready for adulthood. So, North Carolina, chill out and cut those apron strings. They are going to emerge from the other side of college as independent adults, and they are old enough that they can form their own opinions, not only for or against you but for or against anything UNC can throw at them. This year the books is Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America. I've actually been meaning to read this book for some time. The book last year was Approaching theQur'an: The Early Revelations. Which I purchased but have not read yet, which is too bad because with all the dust this is being a yearly state-wide reading project even more than a UNC freshman reading project and I missed out. And, as one last note on the nuttiness: students are permitted to read and report an alternative book if they are offended by the selected book.
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David Horowitz was on the radio to put in his comments about the UNC summer book assignment. I missed that, but I did hear about his article about "The Trouble with 'Treason'". Horowitz is all over the map and I don't have the information or intellectual reserves to have an opinion about him today. However, this article and his arguments surrounding it are brilliant. This article is an attach on Ann Coulter's book Treason: Liberal Treachery from the Cold War to the War on Terrorism, where apparently she claims that all liberals (Horowitz wants her to say "leftists") are treasonous at heart.
In his article Horowitz makes the point that Ann Coulter is very quick and clever and sounds very witty on the pundit shows, but that her argument doesn't necessarily stand up. And in fact that her argument makes conservatives look daft. And leads other conservatives (who aren't as quick and clever and witty) who try to follow her argument to become easy pickings for leftist with better arguments. Horowitz also makes the general (very sane) argument that McCarthy was a nutcase and the conservatives should not embrace him as an icon of conservatism. There is more to being a good conservative than hating communists. While hating communists of course comes with the territory being relatively sane and balances has a place in there too. If one did want to read further Horowitz articles, FrontPage Magazine would be the place to go. Also, Amazon is showing Radical Son: A Generational Odyssey, as his most popular book.
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The Baghdad Blogger (Dear_Raed) has an article in The Guardian about his recent visit to Basrah. Some blogs of soldiers currently in Iraq[seen on Metafilter.]:
And a Wired article about how these folks have access to the internet. "Multiple dead sheep by side of road. Pls advise." Just one vital instant message sent via the war. (Turning out to be a usual-and-customary level of dead sheep.)
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http://newsobserver.com/news/story/2685094p-2489608c.html http://www.cnn.com/2003/US/07/12/nyt.uchitelle/index.html http://newsobserver.com/news/story/2687795p-2492206c.html http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=8793 http://dear_raed.blogspot.com/ http://www.guardian.co.uk/g2/story/0,3604,989084,00.html http://turningtables.blogspot.com/ http://chiefwiggles.blog-city.com http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/11.06/battlefield.html
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| 10 July 2003: Cam Phones | ||||||
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Cell phone cameras are changing the world. New crimes like digital shoplifting where you just photograph that magazine on the rack. New punishments like photographing sexual harassment (see the very end of the article). Pretty soon I'll need to take my gun and my cell phone when I go for a walk; make that a "cam phone." http://www.cnn.com/2003/TECH/ptech/07/10/naughty.camphones.ap/index.html
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Abbie the Cat Has a Posse has a new entry. Very big fan of Abbie here.
President Bush spoke at The Door of No Return today (transcript). I'd say that the speech writers earned their keep- its one of the more beautiful things I have read. In my July 4th entry I dared not suggest any meaning to the suffering that birthed this nation. In Bush's speech meaning is suggested, respectfully and eloquently.
Had to put up a note about Ladan and Laleh Bijani, the conjoined twins who died today following surgery to separate them (CNN article here). Obviously the entire world is touched by this story of two women who made the most of a situation they found intolerable since their early childhood, and then chose to accept the possibility of death in an effort to gain their independence. As the surgery started to go downhill, the surgeons asked to have the sisters wishes reiterated to them so they could be sure the had a proper understanding of the womens' choice and found that indeed this was their choice. What I find most touching was their passionate embrace of life. That they had so many accomplishments and successes together, AND that they were also willing to take such a drastic step to be apart. The difficulty of whole-heartedly embracing two separate stages of life is something we all know. As even minor changes approach, we either have impatience or dread. Fully embracing the "now" is a very difficult thing, and these women did it while their life story straddled two modes of living far more different than my imagination can grasp. For more reflections on these womens' lives, CNN has put a feedback page here. The words "courage" and "bravery" are used a great deal. In this day and time, were violent deaths of a different sort are in the headlines, these are women who showed the real meaning of a choice worth dieing for.
http://www.cnn.com/2003/WORLD/africa/07/08/bush.slavery.transcript/ http://www.cnn.com/2003/HEALTH/07/08/conjoined.twins/index.html http://www.cnn.com/2003/WORLD/europe/yoursay/07/08/yoursay.twins/index.html
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Just read The Inner World of Trauma: Archetypal defenses of the personal spirit by Donald E. Kalsched. Why? Because I went to the Jung Society meeting the other day and it was sort of fun and the next speaker will be Dr. Kalsched. Jungian thought is enticing for all the same reasons that Freudian thought is, plus Jung makes everything even more enticingly meaningful by claiming that there is a collective subconscious. Fairytales and religions all tell things about how the mind works, and particular things that pop into your mind tell about how the universal subconscious works. I find the idea charming, but I think it has its limitations. It points to the truth, but it is not itself the truth. So here comes Dr. Kasched and his book. Throughout the book he cites fairytale and dreams as "evidence" of his theories. So recognizing that this is a theory built on a house of cards, let us look at a couple of items from the book. The "defenses" referred to in the title take the form of the "self-care system". The argument is that it is this split role of victim and protector, born of trauma, that later leads to problems for the individual and must be healed. On pages 119-120 Kalsched cites Sandor Ferenczi (who wrote a paper called "Confusion of Tongues" in 1933) and explains:
I find that really interesting because popular psychology has emphasized negative, regressive, responses to trauma. The wounded child that is always present. Even the protector is put in a negative light- that child had to be an adult from the very beginning. But wait a minute- that protector was there. It is as if every person is born with their own guardian angel as a component part of their own spirit. Later in the book, in a series of evaluations of fairytales so as to use those fairytales in building his theory, Kasched writes the following (pp. 208-209):
See what I said about enticing? That is absolutely beautiful! But if you read the book, you will find it in the middle of a bunch of absurdity about a giant worm. Yes, really, a giant worm that eats people. Actually, after a little internet surfing, it gets worse. There are all sorts of varieties of Lindworm stories, and Kasched had his opportunity to pick the version that best suited him.
Continuing problems with the photo album. I fixed some of the links in the California Visit page. Some of the links in the 2001 items are still messed up- it is that the capital letters have to be small letters. If you get a link fail just turn the capital letters into the small letters in the address that failed and it should come up. I'll fix it next weekend...
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Finally put up photos from my sister's June 2002 visit to North Carolina. Photos of Duke Gardens and Duke Chapel, and Bolin Creek in Chapel Hill.
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Finally put up photos from my October 2002 visit to my parents' California cattle ranch. California landscape, ranch life, horses, and a little shooting practice.
Also photos from 2002 Thanksgiving, the December 2002 Ice Storm and the 2002 Duke Chapel Messiah Sing-along.
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In 1975 Elder Bruce R. McConkie published an article titled "Agency or Inspiration?" outlining the choices which we much make for ourselves. My favorite lines in the speech is where Elder McConkie's mother says, "Bruce isn't very bright." (My friend says that there are two kinds of Mormons- those who feel that they have to apologize for Elder McConkie and those who feel they have to apologize for the scholar Hugh Nibley.) Despite all that, Elder McConkie left the world with many carefully thought out presentations of gospel principles, and this article is no exception. In the article, he writes:
I refer to this article today because it is Independence Day here in the U.S.A, the day upon which we celebrate the expression of the idea of liberty as a right endowed by God. That expression, the "Declaration of Independence," is fundamentally true as an expression of independence, outside of the successes and failures of the U.S.A. Where the men who wrote to have failed and died, the document may well be just as important as it is today where the U.S.A. is the supreme power of the world. And if the document were forgotten, the idea still would be just as important and true.
And what are we to do, as free people driven forth by our own consciences? In the article above Elder McConkie is explaining that our freedom is even endorsed by God. Even those who accept inspiration and revelation from God still have the responsibility of free choices. Below are references to our relationship to government. The LDS church has two main references to our relationship to governments. The first is Article 12 of the Articles of Faith, a 13 article document written for the press to explain the fundamental principles of the church. Article 12:
The other is Doctrine and Covenants Section 134, written in 1835, which begins:
The LDS church teaches that the United States of America were founded by God to set forward true principles. (This includes the establishment of the LDS church, but that is not the topic today) The process of creating the U.S.A. of course involved great suffering of the native peoples of North America and African peoples who were kidnapped and dragged to this land in chains. I cannot pretend to explain that; I cannot claim that the establishment of the U.S.A. was worth it or that it was all for the best. This is an impossible thing to comprehend- that the seminal establishment of human liberty involved utterly crushing entire communities of people. This summary in a children's article gives the general gist of the claim. In 1976 President Ezra Taft Benson wrote about the special place of the Constitution of the U.S.A. In 1992 Elder Dallin H. Oaks, lawyer, judge, and leader of the church, published an article titled, "The Divinely Inspired Constitution." I suggest reading this last article in its entirety.
In "The Divinely Inspired Constitution," Elder Dallin H. Oaks writes of the process which brought us the document, the value of the document, and the responsibilities which liberty place on citizens. The historical background is fascinating- it was so unlikely that this group of men with all their individual preoccupations and failings, in a time of turmoil, managed to succeed in producing a document so great. And Elder Oaks, while expressing his appreciation of this great work, also includes a small bit of reservation:
In the midst of the article is this paragraph about liberty:
While this is about political liberty, I would also suggest linking it back to the more fundamental discussion of liberty in Elder McConkie's article mentioned above.
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More information... The American Declaration of Independence. The Constitution of the U.S.A. The online companion to Liberty!, the PBS series on the American Revolution.
And in the news... July 4th message from President Bush. Liberians hoist the American flag in hopes that America will return and help them with their present predicament. Foreign born members of the military are now eligible for immediate citizenship.
http://library.lds.org/nxt/gateway.dll/Magazines/NewEra/1975.htm/new era january 1975.htm/agency or inspiration.htm?fn=document-frameset.htm$f=templates$3.0 http://scriptures.lds.org/a_of_f/1 http://scriptures.lds.org/dc/134 http://library.lds.org/nxt/gateway.dll/Magazines/Friend/1976.htm/friend july 1976.htm/a choice land.htm http://library.lds.org/nxt/gateway.dll/Magazines/Ensign/1976.htm/ensign may 1976.htm/the constitution a glorious standard .htm http://library.lds.org/nxt/gateway.dll/Magazines/Ensign/1992.htm/ensign february 1992 .htm/the divinely inspired constitution.htm http://www.law.indiana.edu/uslawdocs/declaration.html http://www.house.gov/Constitution/Constitution.html http://www.pbs.org/ktca/liberty/ http://snsimages.tribune.com/media/thumbnails/photo/2003-07/8449698.jpg http://newsobserver.com/nc24hour/ncnews/story/2668572p-2474487c.html http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2003/07/20030703.html
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| 03 July 2003: Grrr!!! | ||||||
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"If you ever intend to bathe an adult exotic feline for fleas or in the event of an accident involving something spilled onto the cat, the only chance you have of surviving the ordeal is to have regularly bathed him from a cub." This and more useful advice about your pet lion, tiger, etc. at Wildlife on Easy Street. Here are some pictures of their kids.
Meanwhile, back home, neighbors are looking out for each other and taking out the thieves.
http://www.msnbc.com/local/ksby/m308333.asp
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| 01 July 2003: Vinegar | ||||||
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In general it was on a sour run in the journal last June: "One manifestation of the Peter principle is that your best people move on while your worst people hang on. So your institution is made up of your worst people. A company is constantly fighting against this entropy of competence and this stagnation of incompetence. Every company has leaden feet- it is a miracle that any successful group accomplishments (e.g., corporate accomplishments) ever occur." journal, June 6, 2002 I'm not saying that it isn't true, just that I'd better start writing more pleasant things or I'll be reading this stuff for another year.
Gosh, remember this article on incompetence? (a legitimate version of the article cannot be found) The incompetent are the least likely to know they are incompetent. Fascinating. It is the #1 Google return for "incompetence". Everything after that is more specific- incompetent attorney, incompetent judges, incompetent police. Actually, there's something of a theme there. Five pages later on Google is this article, too bad it isn't a little more popular, because it is much more fun. The argument, to link with my own comments above, is that if your institution were actually founded on competent people, then the business would fall apart if someone got hit by a bus. If your employees are incompetent, then an entire busload of them can fall off a cliff and nothing much will change.
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This page last updated 01 August 2003.
Original content copyright 2001, 2002, 2003.
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