"To Blog is To Fly . . ."
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This entry was posted at
3:06 GMT on 12 March 2004
Jane Galt of Asymmetrical Information has a great post examining the lack of intellectual diversity on American university campuses. Money quote:
[In class] We didn't have to learn anything about any of these [literary] works, except that people who lived before 1975 were, by the standards of 1995, a bunch of racist, sexist and homophobic bastards, except for the ones who were probably gay.
Hey, at least she wasn't a straight white male in those classes. I was. The condescending hatred was palpable.
Rather a good post on problems in Bush's Council on Bioethics:
[Leon] Kass [Chairman of the President's Council on Bioethics] has written in the past about how we should base our moral judgments in part on what he calls "the wisdom of repugnance." In other words, the feeling you get in your bones that something is wrong is a reliable guide to what really is wrong. The Council on Bioethics embraces Kass's philosophy. They have declared that happiness exists to let us recognize what is good in life, while real anger and sadness reveal to us what is evil and unjust. "Emotional flourishing of human beings in this world requires that feelings jibe with the truth of things, both as effect and as cause," they write. By extension, repugnance is a good guide for making decisions about bioethics. If cloning gives you the creeps, it’s wrong.
(via Virginia Postrel)
As I emailed Postrel ("Mrs." sounds too formal, "Virginia" too familiar, so I split the difference), this is a disturbing position for an ethicist to proceed from, especially if you agree, as I do, with Ayn Rand's position that emotions are not tools of cognition (that is, that you can learn nothing of the outside world from how you feel). That Kass wields such political power only makes it worse.
It is genuinely sad that both left and right in the US now believe that feelings trump facts and reason. There can be no productive argument in such a situation. One side feels one way, the other side another, both say so, and then the name-calling begins.
Sad.
On a lighter note, Will Duquette started working on an unholy melding of Tolkien, J.R.R., and Seuss, Dr., a month ago, adding bits and pieces here and there. My favorite bit so far:
"The hat man just couldn't
Be with you today.
But I'll help you out,
I am Ranger Man A.
I dwell in the wilds,
In forest and fen,
But I come back to Bree
For a wash now and then."
It is, of course, The Old Man in the Hat Comes Back.
OGIC (Teachout's mysterious co-blogger) posted something last week, and I started licking my lips in anticipation of Haspel's response. Alas, he has been a trifle busy, so probably he did not see this post, which quotes from a reprint of a remembrance of poet Wallace Stevens after his 1955 passing:
No one who thought a poet looked pale, distracted, unkempt and unbarbered was likely to recognize Stevens: he was a physical giant, robust, red-faced, and his large round head suggested not only a banker and judge, but Jupiter. [I presume Schwartz means the god, aka Zeus, rather than the planet. — imh] He said then and after that the boys [from the insurance company of which he was Vice President] would hardly be more shocked to discover him the secret head of an opium ring—and although I would guess that in this instance he may have mistaken tact for ignorance—the important point is that he felt sure that this was how others regarded a poet. He had written poetry for many years a kind of "secret vice;" and he told many stories about himself of the same kind, resorting to that self-irony which often marks his poetic style.
I am sure Aaron has a good poetry post forthcoming. He usually does.
You know, if you don't vary your sources of information, you can come away with some barking moonbat positions:
- [I learned] That John Kerry won a stunning, unexpected, and completely thrilling victory on Super Tuesday, thereby cementing his status as the current President of the United States.
- [I learned] That John Edwards' message of hope, inspiration, and common-man optimism (ie, the "two Americas"; our constant screwing up of the unwinnable WoT; the hopeless situation of the American working class thanks to Bush, the bastard) was responsible for an exciting and respectable Dem primary-race finish. Of second place. In a field of two. Then he inexplicably dropped out, but classily threw his support behind President Kerry. The guy is plainly a real winner, even though he never actually won a thing. But we’re all winners; "winners" and "losers" are dated and reactionary concepts, the mention of which plays right into that bastard Bush’s hands. You small-minded, unevolved knuckledragger.
- [I learned] That Bush's congratulatory phone call to Kerry was devious, Machiavellian, and hateful. The bastard.
- [I learned] That Bush is still a bastard. The bastard.
- [I learned] That unity is quite possibly the single most important goal for all Americans to work toward as we approach our sham November elections. Unless you’re a Republican, in which case you better settle it down some, you wild-eyed, crazy, extremist bastard.
NPR. Gotta love it.
(via Capitalist Lion)
I know I'm a geek, but this is flipping hilarious.
It's a trailer for a romantic comedy. With zombies.
"Two seconds." Heh.
I love Lileks
I can imagine my mail already: Klymer! Clinton! Yellowcake! Plastic turkey! So I ask: imagine, if you will, that we’re at war. (Just pretend.)
Quoth Michael Graham of the National Review:
[W]hy would the AP writers and editors bend themselves into pretzels to keep from stating the obvious? They certainly don't show this kind of nuance when it comes to, say, disputes between the CIA and the White House on intelligence issues.
If the coverage of the presidential race continues at its current, egregious pace, this may be the year when the media finally end the pretense that they are not dominated by liberal interests.
Never happen. These people think words and feelings trump reality. If they can spin it, that changes what happened. As long as they never admit that they're liberal, they aren't.
(via Ed Driscoll)
It's another old post, but apropos of the upcoming DVD release of the Soviet Revisionist version of the Star Wars trilogy, Sharon at The Brazos de Dios Cantina found this great quote:
What I would like to see is a revised version in which Han shoots Jar Jar, instead of Greedo. And Han would shoot first, of course, and then jump on the table and shoot him again and again and again and again and again! And then he'd kick the corpse in the head, and then [defecate] on it, and then shoot it again and again and again and again and again and again! A[nd] then he wouldn't even give the bartender a clean-up fee. And then he'd run back into the cantina and shoot Jar Jar again and again and again and again and again!
Sadly, this seems unlikely.
The title of this post is the bowdlerized title of a song off of Cowboy Junkies' black-eyed man, one of my very favorite albums ever. Sad, sometimes bitter, always heartfelt, the final track is a note of quietly earned triumph. To live is, indeed, to fly, low and high.