while we're at it...

     O, I don't do the 'New Year's Resolutions' thing. I do, however, have a business to run, and with that in mind I made a plan of sorts. My plan you see is to have no plan. It's really best that way.

is it really a new year?

     Well, Columbus has sped past the line, so it is now 2014 here. For those of you still in 2013, I can tell you that not much has changed. We still use iPhones and debit cards and spend too much time looking at cats on the interwebs. O, and there are alien ships hovering over every major city.
     So, yeah, 2014 is really more of the same.

the impending 2014 book purge...

This book purge will be the most radical yet - nothing is off limits. I am stalled, and a revolution is therefore in order. Such a move requires deliberation, but be of good cheer for I have a cunning plan...

i'm about to wield my threshing fork once again...

     You see, I am considering another book purge. This one would be even more radical than any in the past. With a few exceptions, all 'secondary' works would go, no matter the author. Even studies and monographs and suchlike by scholars I rather like would be fair game. This, I imagine, would reduce the stock by at least a third. 
     Already, the books plead with me, 'Spare me. Keep me for another day, a week, a year even, and I will prove my worth.' O foolish books, it is not your worth that I weigh. My reasons are inscrutable, my decree irrefragable. Do not try to avoid your destiny with simpering pleas. I will keep those book that I will keep - that is the end of it.

prattling on about a book...

     So, a copy of the classic text and translation of Bernard of Clairvaux's The Steps of Humility arrived today from Engelond. In addition to the essay by Bernard himself, the translator gives us an introductory study of Bernard's epistemology. It's a delightful example of old school scholarship in medieval philosophy and theology. 

Here you see the volume itself. It was published in 1940. The Latin text of De gradibus humilitatis et superbiae is that edited first by one Barton Mills and published in 1926 by Cambridge University Press in a volume entitled Selected Treatises of S. Bernard of Clairvaux. I happen to have that little volume as well.

     The volume that arrived today actually has many uncut pages. This is what they look like.

     Now, it was common for books of this vintage to have uncut pages. The reader would cut them as needed. That said, I was not expecting any in this particular book, but find 'em I did, all through the book. So, I get to cut them, which is something I haven't done in a long time. What's more, this tells me that I will be the first to read this copy since it was printed in 1940.
     

a poem...

Invitation

How long ago it was, I cannot tell,

the dreams have overtaken every thought;

we must proceed as if this boring hell

were real, and not the fancy men have sought

even as their twiddling daydreams came to nought.

Enough. Come, have another glass of wine

with me. I know, I know, there’s not a lot

to say between us now, yet see how fine

remains this fractured world we may, somehow, divine.

Armenia & Persia Music

Now, this may seem out of place on this day, but I assure you, it is not.

The Divine Liturgy of the Greek Orthodox Church in English

It's not just the liturgy of the Greek church, but that of all the Orthodox churches. Just thought I'd mention it. 

Christ is Born -Χριστός Υεννάται

2(9) - Gloria (I) Missa Solemnis (Beethoven) 2011 BBC Proms 67

Something from lovely lovely Ludwig van for the Feast.

a poem, revised...

How Fortunate the Fall



It seems a memory, not fit to amuse
us when we so desire to slip away
into a dream of all the good we may
or may not dare. For we yet hate to lose,
shambling and resentful of the news
that loss is woven into every play
we make. The sun yet burns us as we weigh
the odds that love’s an everlasting ruse.
So like a dream, this memory undone.
The hour's not as early as we thought,
yet we bear the remnant of our love
for a garden City lost, then won -
a fugitive law presses from above
that all as one might be more dearly bought.

We’re yet waiting in a silent hour,
penned down with our brand of vanity
into a little space, where we can see
only a hint of joy beyond the power
of easeful death. The promise of the flower
is enough for now. We can only be
and hope God never posts a probate fee,
for he always makes a strong man cower.
Listen to the echo now of every fall
of every one alive, the weal and woe
of time that is itself the final call
to flee our place of self-made famine, low
enough that God himself learned how to crawl -
it’s his delight to charm us from below.

a poem...

This is one I wrote in 2006 if my notes are correct. I thought it apt for the night.

Nativity



An old man stares, as in a trance;
with cracking joints he bends down low,
laughs and sobs at love’s mischance –
what men had lost through guile, they’ll know
at last in dereliction, one
child he’ll pierce with his own lance
and nails; he glances up – the stars look on
while drifting in the blank expanse –
and, cold, he flinches at the blow
in the savage, silent night.

She rests as though a torn up sack
which, tossed aside, a total loss,
its burlap stitching frayed from lack
of care, is left to mice as dross;
but when she rises, holds her child
at last, her son, her Lord, whose rack
this birth prepares, she feels such mild
and calming pangs, while, through the black,
she sees true light with darkness cross
in the savage, silent night.

The moon, though pure, yet hides in shame
before that newborn human face
streaked with tears and blood, that lame
and shit-stained flesh which yields pure grace;
o hear how helpless is this Lord
who still commands the ranks of flame,
those ministers who hear his word –
God wails, pukes; he bears our blame
to put us, finally, in our place
in the savage, silent night.

The world’s one root and only friend
falls still at last.  He sleeps, delight
steals up and takes them, and they bend
once more in prayer to stand aright
in the savage, silent night.

"God is With Us--з нами Бог" (Christmas) Compline Nativity of Our Lord

It is almost time for the Feast. I'm giddy my friends.

have some Mozart...

stuff you need to know...

     So you see, I lift weights. Then I eat meat, lots of meat, and drink gallon after gallon of whole milk. Then, I feel the urge to lift weights even more than I did before eating all that protein and fat. That, in turn, makes me hungrier, so I eat still more meat and drink still more milk.
     Today I ate five hamburgers, without buns, and drank a gallon and a half of milk. O, there were vegetables of course - sautéed poblano, red, and green peppers with onions and mushrooms. I'm not a barbarian after all. The protein cravings, however, were what drove me on to such a delightful feast of ground round, sirloin, and chuck.
     Still, still, I never feel full. As we speak, dear reader, I am hungry enough to eat a dozen eggs. I must remain content for the night with a large mug of hot tea.
     Yes, that's right, I even need super sized mugs of hot tea - a mere cup will not suffice.
     I'm caught in a delicious circle, though just a beginner. Who knows where it will end.

Gojira...still not a movie review

     So, I just watched the original Gojira in all its Criterion Collection glory. It's been a long time. I forgot how complex the story is - there's a debate early in the film over whether to make the truth about Godzilla public. One representative asserts that if it's true that the beast has been set loose from a habitat devastated by H-bomb tests, then Japan's diplomatic, economic, and political recovery would suffer. That's fairly canny for a monster movie. Of course, Gojira is as relevant now as ever - Fukushima comes to mind, as do the continuing rounds of threats and talks over Iran's rather whimsical nuclear program. O, and the sound of the creature's footsteps from early in the movie scared the hell out of me when I was a kid. 

     Now, to settle in and wait for the 2014 film. 

so this is humility...

     So, I found this essay by one Henri Blocher at the site La Revue réformée:

     « Qu’enseigne Calvin sur la justice que Dieu déploie dans toute son action, et, spécialement, dans l’expiation rédemptrice ? (Il ne s’agit pas ici de la « justice de Dieu » au sens de Romains 1.17, au sens que le réformateur attribue à la formule dans ce verset, c’est-à-dire comme le don fait au croyant et mis à son compte.)
     « Sous l’influence du grand libéral Albrecht Ritschl, certains auteurs ont rapproché Calvin de Jean Duns Scot, qu’ils caricaturaient du même coup, et des nominalistes auxquels Scot avait ouvert la voie. Le même accent sur la volonté, le décret souverain, leur suggérait une convergence substantielle: pour le réformateur comme pour les nominalistes, le bien et le juste auraient été déterminés par la libre décision de Dieu, auraient dépendu de sa puissance absolue – ce qui aurait frappé leur définition de contingence et permis d’imaginer une définition différente. La conséquence fait vaciller, dans le cœur des humains, le sentiment éthique.
     « Les meilleurs calvinologues ont pulvérisé cette erreur de lecture[6]. Calvin attaque plusieurs fois la conception nominaliste. Après avoir dit que « le Seigneur se défendra assez par sa justice, sans que nous lui servions d’avocats », il ajoute : « Toutefois en parlant ainsi, nous n’approuvons pas la rêverie des théologiens papistes, touchant la puissance absolue de Dieu », et il insiste : « Car ce qu’ils en gergonnent est profane, et pourtant [pour cette raison] doit nous être en détestation. Nous n’imaginons point un Dieu qui n’ait nulle loi (exlegem en latin), vu qu’il est loi à soi-même. » (IRC, III,xxiii,2; cf. I,xvii,2) Richard Stauffer cite dans le même sens plusieurs sermons sur Job (le 64e, le 88e), et le 21e sur Jérémie[7]. »

     I get the drift - Calvin is not a Nominalist Voluntarist. Nominalist Voluntarism being by definition Very Bad, we cannot help but fall down in gratitude that Calvin escapes such a fate. So much the drift, but I couldn't translate it into good English prose for all the Earl Grey in the world. That's a problem, my friends.
     So much to do, so much to do.

fed up here with a few things...

     So, dear reader, allow me to rant a while. Outside the sun shines, the sky is blue, and snow gleams with a blinding brilliance. Since it's a delightful day, I would rather walk about and take the air, then read for a long time. Instead, I must vent my complaint upon the world.
     I have had my fill of sentimentality, my fill of cant. The world does not labor under the weight of an excess of reason. Our autumnal polity does not stand desiccated by a mass of people devoted to the goods of intellect alone. We are on the contrary besotted with ourselves, with our feelings; feelings, mind you, with no moorings, no moral consequences. We are a gaggle insanely craving self-expression, yet we lack any sense of agency. So we drift with the currents of opinion, seeking to associate our vacuous selves with anyone and anything that draws approval from those whom we would please and cajole. We don't do anything, but if we can support the right causes, praise the right people, then we too will, by sheer force of association, come to seem virtuous.
     We will know this because then we, too, will be praised as if by proxy. This is devoutly to be wished, for here and now it is better to seem than to be. So we pretend that any of us might become a poet, an artist, or otherwise be creative, without discipline, without risk, without any danger at all to our fond self-image.
     I have had enough of this. I will no longer hesitate to take apart a friend's 'poem'; no longer will I suffer foolish sentiment, casual cliché, and emotive bombast to go by without censure. My scorn and my anger will wash over them all, and those with moral intelligence, a sense of reason and proportion, those who know true, deep feeling, as opposed to momentary passion or manufactured sentiment, they will likely stick around. The rest, well, they can go to their reward. 
     With that, my friends, I must beg your indulgence, that I might descant upon my own art.
     I am a poet. I know this not because I 'feel creative' or because I seek to 'express myself,' but simply because I make poems. I work in a discipline that weaves its works across thousands of years. You will find poets in every civilization, poets devoted to a demanding discipline, working within - and sometimes breaking apart - forms that require skill, daring, invention, and knowledge. Unless you have submitted to the discipline, can name your masters, and would put the made thing ahead of your self, you have no business calling yourself a poet, for being a poet is not a matter of publishing, fame, or self-assertion. It is, at the last, a matter of love, and as always, love is labor over time. That is why an artist is devoted to the good of the thing to be made, first, last, and always. 
     So, if you want to scrawl a few words in order to exorcise some feeling or another, feel free to do so, but do not call it a poem. If you wish to burden the world with your opinion, there is nothing anyone can do to stop you, but know this, an opinion is worthless. Only knowledge growing into wisdom is worth a damn in this or any other world. Spare me therefore the shoddy, sentimental, half-assed opinions you have borrowed without risk or effort from the latest marketing campaign. Time is short, you see, so you're really better off taking a walk or reading a good book. 
     With that, it's time for me to do both.
     Peace out.

sweet thoughts for Advent...

     Before I sign off for a few hours’ sleep, here is something from Johannes de Silentio’s Fear and Trembling, A Dialectical Lyric, Problem One, as translated by one Walter Lowrie: 

‘One is deeply moved, one longs to be back in those beautiful times, a sweet yearning conducts one to the desired goal, to see Christ wandering the promised land. One forgets the dread, the distress, the paradox. Was it so easy a matter not to be mistaken? Was it not dreadful that this man who walks among the others - was it not dreadful that He was God? Was it not dreadful to sit at table with Him? Was it so easy a matter to become an Apostle?’

notes from a commonplace book...

'Still more important is the following observation: the eminent sensual refinement of a Baudelaire has nothing at all to do with any sort of coziness. This fundamental incompatibility of sensual pleasure with what is called Gemütlichkeit is the criterion for a true culture of the senses. Baudelaire's snobbism is the eccentric formula for this steadfast repudiation of complacency, and his "satanism" is nothing other than the constant readiness to subvert this habit of mind wherever it should appear,' Walter Benjamin, 'Central Park', in The Writer of Modern Life: Essays on Charles Baudelaire.

'[W]e must be careful to distinguish between the moralizer and the moralist. The former believes in goodness and badness, the latter in righteousness and sin; the former is a materialist, the latter holds to spiritual values; the former is odious to Baudelaire - and not only, one may hope, to him - the latter, Baudelaire assuredly is, with his conviction that belief in original sin is the true foundation for all human attitudes to life and art. The moralist's attitude ensures an unflinching gaze at life, admits of pity but not of sentimentality in human relationships, cuts at the root of cant, of false values in creative work and critical judgments, strives, at least, to strike dead all human vanities,' P E Charvet's 'Introduction' to Baudelaire, Selected Writings on Art and Literature. 

it's all about Jesus...

     Spend a moment with St Maximus.

     'The mystery of the incarnation of the Logos is the key to all the inner symbolism and typology in the Scriptures, and in addition gives us knowledge of created things, both visible and intelligible. He who apprehends the mystery of the cross and the burial apprehends the inward essences of created things; while he who is initiated into the inexpressible power of the resurrection apprehends the purpose for which God first established everything,' (Centuries on Charity and Economy 1.66).

     'For Christ's sake, or for the sake of the Mystery of Christ, all the ages and all the beings they contain took their beginning and their end in Christ. For that synthesis was already conceived before all ages: the synthesis of limit and the unlimited, of measure and the unmeasurable, of circumscription and the uncircumscribed, of the Creator with the creature, of rest with movement - that synthesis which, in these last days, has become visible in Christ, bringing the plan of God to its fulfillment through itself,' (Quaestiones ad Thalassium 60, trans. by von Balthasar).

looking ahead...

     I see on page 21 of Biggar's In Defence of War that it is 'mistaken to assume that Christian love is properly disinterested . . . .' Well, that's a problem right there. I can only assume that he will elaborate on this, but it's a theologically false claim whatever one's position on Christian participation in rough politics and war.
     I also wonder if it's proper to take Hauerwas as the test case for 'Christian pacifism'. He is right to note that Hauerwas is rather well known. Indeed, Hauerwas is both notorious and popular. What's more, Hauerwas is unusually provocative for an academic theologian, and always forthright. I do much wonder, though, if he is truly representative of 'Christian pacifism'. It is in fact unclear that such a term of art can be applied univocally across all the theological, political, and ecclesial movements that assert Christians must refrain from all coercive physical violence. Again, to reduce this complexity by means of a brief engagement with Hauerwas will hardly advance Biggar's case.
     This opening gambit in the book troubles me, for if he sets up a straw man by a single-minded focus on one particular, and admittedly peculiar, theologian, which in turn allows him to set up his own convenient 'definition' of what I will say is so-called 'Christian pacifism', then his whole book will be one long exercise in begging the question. Biggar is, of course, entitled to throw a polemic into the fray. But a good polemic will do more than take apart a conveniently constructed simulacrum of the opponents' position or positions. I fear that Biggar will merely stop with this easiest of straw men while setting up the counterargument to his own. (Here he would, in fact, be in good company with Hauerwas, who is, yes, often provocative at the expense of careful argument and exegesis.) If I'm right about this, my friends, then Biggar will have failed on a fundamental level to have argued his case, making his book a waste of paper and time and money.
     We shall see.

'apocalypse now'...

     O boy o boy o boy o boy - Miley Cyrus is coming to Columbus!
     Some days you just know it's good to be alive.

lazy cross-platform posting about war...

     Over there on Facetube, I offered the following as a comment to a post commending a book entitled In Defense of War, by one Nigel Biggar. I have not yet read the book, so it seemed meet and right to make clear that this was a comment provoked by the very thought of defending war. It was not, and could not, be an intelligent response to the specifics of the book’s arguments. Now, I did say a few things about Kosovo, Iraq, and WWI, that are excised here for reasons of space. So, without further ado, here’s the rub.
     I have noticed a lamentable trend, especially among young Reformed folk, toward almost embracing war as a good, while ridiculing (in fine form and good two kingdoms fashion) those Christians who have offered principled and nuanced arguments for avoiding any participation in the bloodshed of this world.

     Perhaps the problem is with the word 'peace' itself. 'Peace,' in Christian terms, is an eschatological reality we cannot make ourselves, but we can so order affairs that some level of tranquilitas is possible. Often this is accompanied by the credible threat of force against those who would otherwise disrupt that good order. Whether we should be about the business of defending war is, to say the least, dubious. It often happens in such a context that one will find that even expressing sadness over the necessity of such an evil enterprise will draw condemnation. Only a moral idiot would find the actual fighting of a war anything but a grave evil - it is death and pain and brutality on an unimaginable scale. All the methods and weapons of war are designed for one purpose, to kill in the most painful, horrifying way possible. (That last is the important qualifier - there is nothing clean, surgical, precise or unambiguous about battle.) We should be everlastingly wary of loud calls for war, and less than eager in its pursuit until absolute necessity presses us. Then, we must repent and beg with Augustine that we might at last be freed from our necessities, knowing that war in such a case is a scourge (sin being the punishment for sin at all times and in all places).

     An aside - Realist pacifists like Yoder (he's on the Niebuhrian end of the scale here) never imagine that their nonviolence will result in worldly 'peace', though it would be pleasant if that were so. They realize that the likely outcome is that they will get plowed under. Yoder, what's more, in The Original Revolution, offers a kind of Mennonite Two Kingdoms, wherein the State and its policing, war making capacities are unfortunately necessary in this fallen world, but Christians are not to involve themselves in such business. Over time, he said, it just might fall out that were more and more folks to convert to following Jesus, the number left over for that kind of business would grow smaller and smaller. He wasn't holding his breath for that, however, being the Niebuhrian sort that he was.

     It comes to this - even if, in the final rigorous analysis, war is in certain cases permissible and even necessary (that latter being vastly more difficult to prove), it does not follow that one cannot take the even more difficult road of martyrdom by refusing to kill. For my part, I tend to take the nonviolent way because I am, quite frankly, the most violent man at heart you will ever meet. My instinct is to refuse the 'proportionate response' and the 'defensive posture', and wipe out those who would threaten me before they can act. I suspect that I'm not the only one with such a streak of amoral brutality, and it is precisely that which is let loose in a war, even a 'just war'. After all, one of the criteria for a just war is a reasonable chance of success, which means you have to be able to reasonably assert that winning the war is possible. Look at history, and tell me what it takes to win a war. If you're honest, you'll see that it's precisely that amoral brutality, the willingness to kill without restraint, to inspire terror and obedience by turns, and in the end, kill more people in more horrifyingly painful and terrifying ways, than your enemy, that wins a war.

yet another book purge underway...

     Well, of all the book purges seen at chez Hall, and there have been some, this is the most difficult. This one is not the largest, nor the most comprehensive, but for some reason it is simply hard to finish. I just don't want to liquidate all these reprobates. 
     Still, the job must be done. I will harden myself like a good revolutionary, and create a true state of terror: 'He got rid of that one? He loved that one! What then will he do to us?'

for the record...

     I fear a world without suffering almost as much as I fear one where a man cannot disappear if he's of such a mind.

this isn't really news is it?

     Belgium’s Culture of Death - don't get sick or fall down in Belgium. Don't get old, don't get a headache. It's probably not a good idea to be a child either. Don't feel sad, don't miss your mother, don't worry about your taxes or the electric bill. Be shiny and happy all the time, or your life is not worthy of life. 

a thought experiment...

     The universe appears to be expanding as we speak. It seems that acceleration is fairly constant, a = 1.2×10⁻¹⁰ ms⁻² . If memory serves, this is also the acceleration that would take an object from rest to the speed of light (c) in the theoretical lifespan of the universe. 
     Imagine that the acceleration of the expanding universe allows all objects in the universe to asymptotically approach c as the universe approaches its theoretical terminus in time. Time dilates as we approach c, meaning that time 'slows down'. This implies, it would seem, that as the universe and all it 'contains (does the 'universe' contain objects, or is it simply the sum total of all objects that exist in spacetime? Is spacetime an 'object'? Is it...well, moving along...)... 
     Where was I? O, thank you.
     It would seem, dear reader, that the universe, whatever it is, will paradoxically cease to age as it gets older. This further implies that it has a beginning (big bang), but no end, understood as a 'moment' when it 'dies', either through a cataclysmic collapse or a 'heat death' understood according to the laws of thermodynamics. Indeed, this would violate the laws of thermodynamics, at least as understood by a groundling like me.
     Does this imply also that all things would approach stasis? Only when viewed from a frame of reference outside the universe itself, which is inconceivable (and yes, that word does in fact mean what I think it means). 
     This is all so much elementary school noodling of course, but it seems to make sense as I sit here watching people walk by on Grandview Avenue. 
     Finally, let it be understood that even if this is more than mere vapor, the condition described would not be the eternal life promised in the Kingdom of God which is coming and which has come. There is no process imminent in creation that yields the eschaton as a predictable result, and eternal life is not eternal duration.
     Good, glad we cleared that up once and for all. 

Baudelaire!

I give you Charles Baudelaire reciting 'L'Albatros'. Do try to ignore the creepy animation.

a poem...

Adventus

This is the hour when the final snow falls
from bare branches trembling like plucked strings
the sun bleeds and the last songbird sings
for the graying of the sky and the winter squalls

hear bare branches trembling like plucked strings
hear too in memory the voice that always calls
for the graying of the sky and the winter squalls
as the memory of that voice yet stings

hear too in memory the voice that always calls
a heart to the world from the nothingness that rings
as the memory of that voice yet stings
and the ivy is dying on the cold brick walls

a heart to the world from the nothingness that rings
that world is afire with a thought that appalls
and the ivy is dying on the cold brick walls
yet the voice calls Time like a trap that springs

dum dee dee dum dum dum dee dee redux...

     This is some first class insomnia. I've had insomnia for decades, and let me tell you, it doesn't get much better than this. Tired? Yes. Slightly loopy? Check. Using the Amazon.com 'One Click' feature too much for my own good? O hell yes. Thinking on Plato, Augustine, Baudelaire? Why not. Listening to Beethoven? Like I would listen to anything else right now. 
     I could, of course, do some work, you know, like updating my files and suchlikethatthere. But no, on second thought, I'll just listen to Beethoven. To while away the hours otherwise, I will challenge myself to a game of 'Avoid Amazon'. O, and for you, gentle reader, I offer this, the best XKCD in many a moon. As I've been interviewing candidates for a few days, this just made sense somehow. Enjoy.

a few thoughts on the value of work...

     There are times when I realize that I'm only masquerading as a 'man of action', a hard-charging businessman. This 'man of action' much prefers contemplation, study, writing, and endless, almost aimless wandering as a flaneur. Yet, and here's the self-referential rub, such a life is in many ways bad for me. 
     I suffer from acidie, you see, classical sloth. Without the job, I would have too many extended periods of torpor, during which I don't so much practice Christian contemplation as peer into the abyss of nothingness into which I can fall at any moment. I quite like that abyss, you see, there are secrets in that abyss that no man has yet to hear, and that makes it for a man like me supremely dangerous. Having the job does not free me from this temptation, but it limits the times when I can completely slide into a fascination with the abyss. 

Nietzsche is not beyond good and evil here...

'Or have you once experienced a tremendous moment when you would have answered him: "You are a god and never have I heard anything more divine!"'

     I have actually experienced that tremendous moment. In fact, there have been many such moments. For a man, however, to abandon his wife in search of 'freedom' is in fact slavery, slavery to the passions of childhood. Maybe I say this because one of those moments was when I met my wife. There is such a thing as disordered love - it cannot be made righteous by mere desire. There is also such a thing as hopeless love - it cannot be requited by a wish. Real love is a gift of pure freedom, and it is absolute. To abandon the beloved in search of freedom is to forfeit freedom for all time.
     Yet in one thing is Nietzsche not only right but righteous - the union of the lover and the beloved is not some deontological confection, ordered by a calculus of duties performed. It is a free union that can never be broken without grave sin. It is self-abandonment for the beloved (here the good philosopher loses his mind), never the abandonment of the beloved for the self.*
     For those whose loves are inherently disordered, this world is harder still than it already would have been otherwise. There is nothing to be done, for there is a Love greater still than our human loves, though it is not inimical to all of them. That Love, which moves all things, bears all things, saves all things, is a subject for another time.

* For what it's worth, I speak as one who was once abandoned.  

this remains my dream car...

     Yes, the price is over $1.5 million, you need an army of folks to take care of it along with a place to store it, and, yes, it's probably a bit touchy and high maintenance, but let's not allow such details to get in the way of a decent fantasy. Now, I wouldn't go for the orange trim package. Keep it elegant - that's the key. The Bugatti is a hypercar that flies at paint-peeling speeds, while remaining civilized. 
     Picking up one of these is like buying a private jet more than anything else. Come to think of it, if you're in the market for a Bugatti Veyron Super Sport, you might also be in the market for a Gulfstream - that's a dream for another day.
   

dare to dream, dare to dream...

     I would like one day to take on the Nürburgring in something with way too much brake horsepower. Should that dream ever come true, you can rest assured dear reader that I, too, will crash at some point. 

a poem...

Adam’s Question

Am I doomed by this cunning mind
to wander so far from home day and night,
to wander at will among storms of wind
and hail, or scattering waves of light,
tricked by a tale though I hope to alight
at the last among those of your kind?

an observation occasioned by halloween insanity...

     The Young People of many ages were out and about the neighborhood for Halloween. Oddly enough, they all had their parents along, or at least a parent - I suppose someone has to stay home and pass out the bearer bonds. I don't remember too many parents tagging along with us when I was one of the Young People - that was kind of the idea you know. Of course, we live in one of the safest neighborhoods you could possibly imagine, and this my friends tells me that the intensive parental presence had more to do with the parents than with the Young People themselves. Mom and Dad must constantly micromanage everything in the lives of their delicate offspring, even at the emotional level. This leads to one conclusion. As the siécle waxes toward its fin, parents grow more and more annoying and stupid. The kids, on the other hand, are just being kids, to the extent anyone will let 'em. 

i never stood in line on Halloween...

Halloween madness.

Still more Halloween madness.

And it's not even Halloween! Who are these people?! 

deep questions...

     Well now, here I find myself with an hour to kill.

     How exactly does one 'kill' an hour? How does one discern that the hour is truly killed to death? there are obvious tells, of course. If you look back upon an hour devoted to catching up on Jay-Z's tweets, it's likely the hour in question is long since dead. That does not, however, help those of us who might wish to kill an hour deliberately, slowly, with due mindfulness to the hour's passing into the Kingdom of Memory.

another thought...

     By the by, I suspect there really is Paradise Somewhere (just what's a where?), and there really is an Angelos with a sword of flame guarding the gate - water does the trick, you see, in getting one through that gate. Now, what do we do as Christians that involves water? Let's think on that - I'm sure the answer will present itself. 

just a few thoughts...

     This is an all-too brief response to my friend Tripp's post over at Conjectural Navel Gazing. He poses a few questions, to which I of course have catechetical like answers. Bear with us.

     'If one believes in angels but not in "the Church", is that a religious belief (the angels bit) or a spiritual insight?' Well, one could be an orthodox Jew or a Muslim, but let that pass. For most of the people I meet who 'believe in angels,' and I meet a lot of people in my line of work, it's neither a 'religious belief' nor a 'spiritual insight,' but a trace of sentimental whimsy. I doubt most have any idea what an 'angel' might be. (Here's a hint: they're terrifying, and if one appears to you, he's there to ruin your life as you know it).

     'If one sits silently with one's eyes closed, feet placed comfortably on the ground or legs folded underneath, and meditates on breathing in and out seeking peacefulness, is this a spiritual practice or a religious one?' Neither, but it does sound like a good way for an insomniac to fall asleep.
     'What spiritual practices can one participate in that are *not* an invention of some human being somewhere?' It's terrible to have to deal with all those humans and their inventions. (Invenio, etc.) I know folks like to imagine there is a pure, unmediated form of 'encounter' with the 'divine,' but since I like being a human among humans, I'll take the stuff they invent with all their 'ethically ambiguous histories.' 

     After all, humans were never meant to be angels; humans were meant to sit in judgment on angels. 

clarification...

     Why yes, I do enjoy revealing the horror latent in beloved children's classics. Thank you for asking.

falling ladders, a Seussian psychopath, boys' names, and Beethoven...

     What's happening around here, you ask?
     As a contractor, I carry around in my truck these folding ladders. As you can see from this link, the typical heavy duty sort weighs around 54 pounds or so. Well, earlier this afternoon one of these collapsed onto my right foot as I helped an idiot insurance adjuster extend his. 'Got away from me,' he said rather laconically. Huh. Anyway, I am apparently what the kids call a 'lucky bastard,' because there isn't a mark on me, and the foot only aches a little. Now, I had boots on, but they weren't steel toed or otherwise protective. (Needless to say, I now need a new pair.)
     In other words, my foot was crushed by a ladder collapsing at top speed, and nothing happened. Weird it is, in every sense of that old, old word.
     What else is new?
     Do head over and give a listen as Leonard Bernstein all to briefly descants on the wonders of Beethoven's Third Symphony, the Eroica. The simplicity of means by which Beethoven achieves the most daring and complex works always astonishes me. 
     What else, what else...how can I beguile you into staying with me instead of taking in the latest episode of Black List? 
     Speaking of Black List, does that show rock, or what?
     Anyway, what else, what else...o, I know. As you can see from this gif, my brothers and I - William, Daniel, Thomas - are distinctly outliers when it comes to popular names for boys over the years. William does not come into its own until fairly late in the cycle, and then only in a few southern states. Daniel and Thomas don't seem to ever make the cut. For no reason at all, this pleases me. 
     Finally, it seems I need to explain my hatred of Sam-I-Am. For those of you who don't remember him, Sam-I-Am is that noxious little troll from Dr. Seuss's beloved tome Green Eggs and Ham. I have always, and I do mean always, loathed that pestering, nagging, intrusive little sonofabitch. To my ear, he sounds like a monomaniacal psychopath. Had he not succeeded in browbeating the hapless guy into eating what, let's be honest, sounds like food that's gone off, then I shudder to imagine how things would have escalated. I see Sam stalking his prey for months, growing ever more violently insistent, until...o, dear reader, let us not sully our evening together with such horrors.

more grad school idiocy...

     To be sure, grad students kill themselves at an alarming rate, but this article is nonsense. 'Graduate programs should offer (or even require) courses or workshops that teach yoga and mindfulness techniques.' Not on my dime. If forced to do yoga, I might just take some folks with me when I decide it's time to trip the light fantastical. Besides, no one seems to have thought of what might need to be cut from the course of study to make room for such 'courses or workshops,' or are they to be added to an already heavy load of work? 
     What's more, 'mental health' as a barrier to success sounds suspiciously like a euphemism for 'stupidity'. Yes, again, some few grad students need real help, but most are just too stupid to deal with the demands of a good program. Of course, we get into a loop here: a good program will never require something a insipid as yoga or 'mindfulness' techniques. Spare me. Finally, overlooked in all this is the simple fact that folks might just have a reason to be a little crazy. Is that so bad?

poor, poor anna...

     "'Yes, yes,' said Anna, turning away and looking out of the open window. 'But it wasn't my fault. And whose fault was it? What does "fault" mean? Could it have been otherwise? What do you think?'...," Anna Karenina, p. 635.
     She has no doubt rehearsed this justification over and over again with great discipline. 
     And can anyone tell me what has become of Banana Republic's 'Anna Karenina Collection'? Something so absurd is somehow salutary. 

apropos of nothing at all...

     Why doesn't the guy just kill Sam-I-Am? He could stuff him in a box, he could serve him up with lox; he could bury him in sand, he could mount his mummied hand; he could dispense with all green eggs and ham, he could find peace without that Sam-I-Am.
     Think about it, dear reader, think about it. 

simon conway morris, heretic...

     We find this on page xiii of Life's Solution, by one Simon Conway Morris: 'There is, however, a paradox. If we, in a sense, are evolutionarily inevitable, as too are animals with compound eyes or tiny organelles that make hydrogen, then where are our equivalents, out there, across the galaxy? . . . To paraphrase much of this book, life may be a universal principle, but we can still be alone. In other words, once you are on the path it is pretty straightforward, but finding a suitable planet and maybe getting the right recipe for life's origination could be exceedingly difficult: inevitable humans in a lonely Universe. Now, if this happens to be the case, that i turn might be telling us something very interesting indeed. Either we are a cosmic accident, without either meaning or purpose, or alternatively ...'
     It indeed trails off, that isn't an ellipsis of omission. If you know anything about the good paleontologist, you will know the significance of that ellipsis. (Let's just say that it's enough to drive some folks to distraction.) If you don't know anything about the good paleontologist, then his department faculty page is a good place to start.

all good things...

     I have tried several times to post this link on Facetube, and it just won't work. This cannot stand! You need this vital link! How is the information and transparency revolution that is Facetube to advance from strength to strength if I can't post links to gifs? What's next? Will I be refused the power to show the waiting public real time photos of my lunch? 
     The horror!
     Our technological ascendency is at an end. My only course of rational action is to drink scotch in my bathrobe at nine in the morning, and lament the passing of an era of greatness.

take and read, contemporary poetry edition...

     From the fantastical poem, 'Lord Byron's Foot,' by one George Green, comes this final stanza.

It’s best if we just contemplate your bust,

a bust by Thorvaldson or Bartolini, 

and why is that you ask, and why is that? 

So no one has to see your friggin’ foot,
your foot, your foot, your clomping monster foot,
your foot, your foot, your foot, your foot, your foot!

Is that not hilarious? Do read the whole thing. You might also want to pick up Green's book as well..

take and read thrice over...

     Head over and see what Robert J. Richards has to offer. The man writes a good book. If you want to understand what Darwin, Haeckel, and the gang were really doing, you need to have a look at Richards's work. Whatever one ultimately thinks of the matter, the story is fascinating in all its complexity.

it occurs to me...

Nietzsche had it wrong. 

That which doesn't kill you isn't worth a damn.

another thought...

     Before I return to bed, it occurs to me that a Victorian is a Romantic who identifies the Absolute and the Sublime with the Vulgar and the Utilitarian. 
     It's just a thought.

Lyell's prose, along with Darwin and Kafka...

     So, it seems that I have a sinus infection. Haven't had one of these in a long time, especially one this bad. It's really quite painful you know. O, how I suffer! 
     Well, whatever - let the pain I currently endure with stoic resolve at the least explain the rambling nature of this post. For the seventeen or so of you out there who are real as opposed to VirtualBots - and that number has grown dramatically in recent days, as it used to be only around five or so - this will  be the thrill of your Saturday. O yes it will.
     What to do, what to do...
     I know, let's pick some books from around the desk, open 'em, and see what we find. Of course, the question then becomes, Where to start, where to start...
     From Charles Lyell's Principles of Geology, we read, 'But it would be idle to controvert, by reference to modern analogies, the conjectures of those who think they can ascend in their retrospect to the origin of our system. Let us, therefore, consider what changes the crust of the globe suffered after the consolidation of that ancient series of rocks to which we have adverted. Now, there is evidence that, before our secondary strata were formed, those of older date (from the old red sandstone to the coal inclusive) were fractured and contorted, and often thrown into vertical positions. We cannot enter here into the geological details by which it is demonstrable, that at an epoch extremely remote, some parts of the carboniferous series were lifted above the levels of the sea, others sunk to greater depths beneath it, and the former, being no longer protected by a covering of water, were partially destroyed by torrents and the waves of the sea, and supplied matter for newer horizontal beds.'
     Lyell's great work appeared in three volumes from 1830 to 1833. Think what you will of the science, and I think quite highly of it, but you cannot deny, without thereby showing both moral and intellectual wickedness, that the prose is just damn fine. 
     Now, Lyell's work exerted a profound influence on the work of one Charles Darwin, so how fortunate that we have to hand Darwin's The Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or, The Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life. (Just trips off the tongue, doesn't it?) The passage in question is not entirely a random choice. I marked and noted it just last night, as it is indicative to my ear of Darwin's character as a writer and scientist. That is, he is both a Romantic in quest of the Absolute and the Sublime, and a Victorian in quest of the Vulgar and the Utilitarian. To wit: 'In looking at Nature, it is most necessary to keep the foregoing considerations always in mind - never to forget that every single organic being around us may be said to be striving to the utmost to increase in numbers; that each lives by a struggle at some period of its life; that heavy destruction inevitably falls either on the young or old, during each generation or at recurrent intervals. Lighten any check, mitigate the destruction ever so little, and the number of the species will almost instantaneously increase to any amount. The face of Nature may be compared to a yielding surface, with ten thousand sharp wedges packed close together and driven inwards by incessant blows, sometimes one wedge being struck, and then another with greater force.'
     If that does not strike you, dear reader, as a Kafkaesque image of Sublime Nature as a perpetually punitive Nightmare, then you lack all sensitivity to literature. What drives Sublime Nature to assume the form of a perpetually punitive Nightmare? Why nothing more than a concern with numbers in a ledger; with, if you please, an equation that is ever on the verge of flying out of balance. 
     With that, I must away. The drugs have worn off, so with your indulgence, I will drop some few doses of antibiotics, decongestants, and antihistamines, then slip back into bed.
     Peace out.

take and read this too...

     Since we're a little busy now, do have a look at this essay by Marilynne Robinson, 'A Common Faith.'
     Peace out,
     The management.

take and read...

     Dear reader, I give you Rilke's Sonnets to Orpheus. Do spend a few happy hours with them.

why are my premiums going up?

     Apparently Obamacare, as the current health-insurance overhaul legislation is known to the cognoscenti, is a harbinger of the End of Days. Around here, of course, we thought the new sitcom with Robin Williams was enough of a portent, but folks need ever more dramatic reasons to believe the meteor is about to hit the earth. So, many ask with a combination of innocent wonder and bloodthirsty rage, Why the hell are my premiums going up? 
     The answer to that is quite simple: the elimination of underwriting for pre-existing conditions drives up the cost of claims and, thus, premiums bolt through the stratosphere. 

     The insurance companies are actually in a pickle. (Yes, among absurdity upon absurdity, the Current Madness makes insurance companies sympathetic.) The majority of Americans support the elimination of those restrictions, but don't connect claims and costs. The companies you see are required by law to have enough cash on hand to cover claims...
     I can see your eyes glazing over, but please bear with me. All premiums paid to a company for health plans go into a general fund, which is then quite conservatively invested so as to grow the fund from year to year. This becomes a vast sum of cash that the company can draw upon to cover claims. They do this, dear reader, because the law of the land requires it. Therefore, if they can't do underwriting, they must raise the cash to cover the projected flood of diabetics and terminal cases. 

     This is also the reason why everyone has to buy insurance. Consider an employer's group plan - there are no health questions because most everyone will enroll. Thus the plan draws from a decent population, allowing the premiums paid for healthy people to cover the claims of the sick people. Even then, however, there is often a buffer period before certain conditions can be claimed. Still, after that the conditions are covered no questions asked. Just so, requiring that all Americans purchase health insurance creates an enormous Group, allowing companies to eliminate health underwriting and simply cover anyone who stumbles along regardless of their pre-existing conditions.

     By the by, our Chief Justice was right - the fine for those who refuse to buy insurance certainly is a tax. How can it possibly be construed as a tax? Lessee, it's designed to raise revenue to cover costs of claims. See? It raises revenue, therefore it's a tax. QED. O, and that revenue is for federal subsidies intended to offset the inevitably higher premiums everyone will have to pay for private health insurance plans. Leave that for another day.

     Where does that leave us, my only friends? Whether we like it or not, as long as people demand that insurance companies eliminate underwriting for pre-existing conditions, health insurance premiums will remain ridiculously high, and that individual mandate must hold. 

     So, to answer your question as succinctly as possible, your premiums are so high because you got what you wanted. 

     Take the win, and have a nice day.

lines on an artist's vocation...

     I left behind a few possibilities - architecture, etc - because I knew I could never be *great* at them.* To my mind, this had nothing to do with recognition or fame - though it's impossible to practice architecture, for instance, without building the damned buildings (one must fail in public, while finding clients to pay for the failure). 

     No, as in poetry, I looked to those I knew to be great, the transcendent ones, and wondered if I would ever make anything as beautiful, daring, and true. As a poet, see, I'm more concerned with how John Donne or Dante will regard my best work when it's All Over. The Kingdom of God is given by grace; the Kingdom of Art is all about works, and reverence - even, and especially, when reverence leads you to try and surpass your masters. 

     So Yeats was wrong. For an artist, perfection of the work is ingredient in the perfection of the life. 

* Hell, I was barely competent at many of the things I tried to do.

changes!

     So, over the weekend I made a couple of decisions that will, by next autumn, radically change our lives around here. Ancillary to these decisions was a stunning insight (for me anyway) - the whole Seminary Quest is over. My last gasp of Seminary Nostalgia was the whole "I'm going to Nashotah House" debacle. Long time readers of ER have long grown used to such histrionics; to those of you who are new the the Spectacle, my apologies. As so often happens, I needed to make such a bold assertion in order to expel it for all time, and clear the way for the real decisions that force themselves upon me every so often. 
     In any case, it's clear to me now that Seminary, as a route to something called Ordination, is a phantom. It's never going to happen. That's not really my calling, dear reader. This does not imply that I will never return to formal studies in theology and philosophy, but such studies, if a reality at all, are in the future. For now, I have other work to do. 
     As for the details of those decisions made over the weekend, I'll leave those to your imaginations for now. I will say that if all goes as planned, this time next year my company will have a completely different direction and focus. I also hope to be launched on a difficult venture that could allow me to pick up some teaching gigs here and there. Again, leave details aside - suffice it to say that we have a plan, we have the means, and all we need now is patience. Yes, patience, my greatest virtue...

What a great poem by David Wheatley. Yes, that's a sort of sonnet, and it's brilliant.

Here you go. I love a good anthology.

more lazy cross-platformed lunacy...

In my reeducation camps you'll find only the best scotch. And tea. But no coffee - that will be banned from all areas of life, every sphere of our revolutionary world.

I'm sick of hearing about it. I can barely write or say the word.

Starbucks can remain, however, for the sake of the lemon pound cake. But they'll serve no coffee. Tea and scotch from 6am onward, with wine starting at a civilized 2pm - that's the universal drinks menu.

Some of us from the Flyover States will all be drunkenly laughing as we move into George Clooney's houses and take over Matt Damon's ranch and suchlike. In quieter moments, with our tea, we'll all recite from the Book of Kafka, and eat gumbo from Jamie Oliver's skull.

Can I still live in the hills of Virginia! asks a counterrevolutionary friend.

Absotively! I encourage it, once you are released from the camp. Just remember that when the wind shifts, the smoke from the ruins of the wealthier suburbs of Washington, D. C. will sting your eyes a bit.

This will be the first revolution against overweening pretension and condescension. So Warren Buffet is safe, but George Soros is hosed.

But of course, the ultimate goal is the incarceration of Bono until he signs the confession.

And anyone caught with a Che Guevara T-shirt will suffer some sort of indignity. Walter Salles will certainly be relieved of his $2.6 billion in assets and cash, and he will be forced to watch The Motorcycle Diaries backwards for the rest of his natural life.

lazy cross-platform posting about revolution or something...

     I propose a Revolution!
     When the revolution comes, and the wealth of the Ruling Class is expropriated, it'll impoverish whole populations in Berkeley, Palo Alto, San Francisco and Hollywood. New York'll be stripped bare. Texas will just secede, so we won't have to worry about 'em. Meanwhile, much of 'flyover country' will be just fine. 

     Yes, the wealthiest of the pretentious will be found among the Liberal Intelligencia, our Betters who daily encourage us to live ‘simply‘ on ‘less‘ as they carve for themselves ever more lucrative means of escaping a dystopia they helped to create.
     It’s not money in itself that is the problem. I don’t care if you own an island and half of Montana. No, I can do without their smugness, their smallness, their obvious love of power. 

     O how I hate people with jets and supercars telling the rest of us to ‘accept less mobility‘ so as to ‘save the planet’. Enough already of idiots milling about Davos chattering about income gaps and global warming while looking for a waiter with more champagne. Sink to the bottom of the sea Progressives With Expansive Portfolios, movie stars with ranches and palaces on Lake Como who lecture the Masses on Social Justice.

This tea isn't bad either.

You know, wine really does gladden the heart. My heart is gladdened after only two glasses with my dinner. Yes, it's a good consolation on the way.

everyone needs a profession...

Yes, I watch this sort of thing for fun. 

trendy trends trending...

'Pussy Riot' is 'trending' on Facetube - do I want to know what that means?

do stop whining about your ph.d. and the market for perfessors...

     So, you went and obtained, at great cost in both time and treasure, a Ph. D. in one of the disciplines delightfully bundled as The Humanities. Good for you. Perhaps it took many years, and perhaps you had to endure hour upon hour of hard labor to finish everything. Again, good for you. Now hear the good news - the world owes you not a damned thing for such an achievement. 

     That's right, you are owed neither a tenure-track position, nor a good salary, nor benefits, nor the prestige that used to accrue to the title 'Professor' (such as it was). If there are no good teaching jobs available for you, well, suck it the hell up. You took the risk, you signed on the line that was dotted, and now you have to live with your decisions.

     Here's the even better news - the sheer fact of obtaining a Ph. D. in The Humanities signifies nothing. From the fact that you now possess a Ph. D., I can infer nothing about your intelligence, your talent, your brazen originality or lack thereof. To be blunt, I find most Ph. D.'s to be little more than somewhat smart time-servers. They have an uncanny ability to please, to negotiate bureaucratic tangles, and to stay just on this side of the truly transgressive. Most can write somewhat serviceable prose, but don't ask me to spend time reading it. In short, rarely does the labor and time required to obtain a Ph. D. signify anything other than a desire to never leave school, and that, dear reader, qualifies a person to do absolutely nothing.

     This implies that the lack of good teaching jobs might just reflect on you, the holder of that newly minted Ph. D., as much as it does on the 'Market'. Perhaps, despite your GPA and all those reviews, you're at best a passable teacher and a mediocre scholar. To put it in the most brutal terms possible, perhaps you're just not worth the $250k a year a good school would spend on you as a tenure-track professor pulling down a good salary. 

     So please, stop whining about the State Of The Humanities. Stop whining, for the love of God, about how you can't make a living teaching Old Church Slavonic at the local state school. You knew the odds, you took your chances, now be a grown up and live with the consequences. 

     Now, if you'll excuse me, I have to review the Greek Verb in the Subjunctive Mood, then drive thirty miles to inspect an enormous roof. If all goes well this week, I should secure three contracts worth around $18,000 to my company. This might allow me to hire another person - it'll take some more math to figure out if that's possible. All the while, there will be world enough and time to read Homer, study some Greek, and contemplate Pranger's argument in Eternity's Ennui. What do you have planned?

Homer and Plato, together again...

     'The real culprits, and the only ones, are the gods, who live "exempt from care," while men are consumed with sorrow. The curse which turns beauty into destructive fatality does not originate in the human heart. The diffuse guilt of Becoming pools into a single sin, the one sin condemned and explicitly stigmatized by Homer: the happy carelessness of the Immortals,' Rachel Bespaloff, On the Iliad.

     Here we find a key, perhaps, to Plato's decree of exile for the poetes who would thus sow corruption not simply by the unworthy mimetic rendering of unworthy gods, but also by the displacement of responsibility from the human heart to the whimsy of those unworthy immortals. 

     Here too we find a theological crux that remains alive to this day. More about that anon - for now, note that Plato offers a radically new vision of virtue and the formation of the soul inclined to the Good. There may, for all that, be a way through the thicket, one which will allow us to have our Homer and keep some fellowship with Plato. 

     To find that way, we need Augustine as revealed by James Wetzel. We also need Paul. 

     It's a tangle, no?

stuff you really need to know...

     So I made spaghetti carbonara for lunch, and yes, I cooked with white wine in the middle of a workday. Even had a small glass. Altogether, it took twenty minutes to cook, forty to eat.

     It's called civilization my friends. You really should try it some time. I could descant on how civilization is a manifestation of our priestly calling as creatures made in the image and likeness of God but hey, you already know all about that.

     By the by, spaghetti carbonara is a peasant concoction, like most great classic dishes. Thus, you can now slide into a fine dining establishment and buy it for up to $30. 

     Mine probably cost about $6. 

     Both are civilized. Think about it.

     Anyway, back to work.

an amiable encounter...

Came upon this philosopher on my stoop yesterday afternoon. 

so it looks like 'Blame Canada' isn't just a South Park bit...

     'Meanwhile, one might have expected the American Civil War to have refocused American military thinking, but as Richard A. Preston shows in The Defense of the Undefended Border, until 1940 anglophobia remained a central motivating factor in the United States, and Canada a target for conquest. Between the world wars the United States developed three major war plans: one against Japan, one against Mexico, and War Plan Red, against the United Kingdom. (Germany was color-coded black, but there never was a War Plan Black.) In 1935 secret congressional hearings for air bases to launch surprise attacks on Canada, based on War Plan Red, were mistakenly published by the Government Printing Office and reported by the New York Times and the Toronto Globe. The story was re-discovered in 1975 and again in 1991 before being dug up once more in 2005. The existence of such a plan was treated with a sense of disbelief and laughing up the sleeve. But War Plan Red was not funny: it was detailed, amended and acted upon, and . . . it was no defense plan. The United States would start the war, and even if Canada declared neutrality the United States would still invade and conquer it, planning to "hold in perpetuity" all territory gained and to abolish the Dominion government. The plan was approved in May 1930 by the secretary of war and the secretary of the Navy in expectation of "consequent suffering to the [Canadian] population and widespread destruction and devastation of the country." In October 1934 the secretaries approved the strategic bombing of Halifax, Montreal, and Quebec City "on as large a scale as practicable." A second amendment, also approved at cabinet level, directed the U.S. Army to use poison gas at the outset as a supposedly "humanitarian" action that would cause Canada to surrender quickly, and thus save American lives. Even as late as 1939, as the free world was mobilizing to fight fascism, the U.S. Army War College and the Naval War College set as their planning priority "Overseas Expeditionary Force to Capture Halifax from Red-Crimson Coalition." This enduring hostility to Britain and Canada within the U.S. military was a legacy of the War of 1812 and was finally extinguished only by the Second World War, which ushered in the "special relationship,"' Jon Latimer, 1812: War with America, p. 407-8.

intervention fever...

     Below you have an illustration from Punch, as found on page 318 of Amanda Foreman's A World on Fire: Britain's Crucial Role in the American Civil War. 'Reports of the terrific slaughter at Antietam shocked the nation [Britain]; the 25,000 casualties on a single day seemed inconceivable, especially when compared to the 25,000 Britain suffered during the entire Crimean War,' (p. 315). 

yes, i watch football...but not futball...

     OSU's football team plays the California Golden Bears later tonight. California Golden Bears - are their biggest rivals the Care Bears? Do they enter the stadium doing an interpretive dance? 

     If Urban Meyer is looking for a terrible fifteenth string player for this game, I'm available.

something apt to the day...

     'Achilles pays for nothing; to Hector everything comes dear. Yet it is not Hector, but Achilles, whose insatiable rancor feeds even on victories, and who is forever "gorging himself with complaints." The man of resentment in the Iliad is not the weak man but, on the contrary, the hero who can bend everything to his will. With Hector, the will to greatness never pits itself against the will to happiness. That little bit of true happiness which is more important than anything else, because it coincides with the true meaning of life, will be worth defending even with life itself, to which it has given a measure, a form, a price. Even in defeat, the courage of Hector does not give way before the valor of Achilles, which has been nurtured on discontent and irritable anxiety. But the capacity for happiness, which rewards the efforts of fecund civilizations, puts a curb on the defender's mettle by making him more aware of the enormity of the sacrifice exacted by the gods of war. This capacity, however, does not develop until the appetite for happiness has been stilled, the appetite the drives the aggressor, who is less civilized, on toward his prey and fills his heart with "an infinite power for battle and truceless war," Rachel Baspaloff, On The Iliad.

something from Fr. Capon +

     'Omnes dii gentium daemonia sunt; Dominis autem coelos fecit. Deliver us, O Lord, from religiosity and Godlessness alike, lest we wander in fakery or die of boredom. Restore to us Thyself as Giver and the secular as Thy gift. Let idols perish and con jobs cease. Give repentance and better minds to all pagans and secularists; in the meantime, of Thy mercy, keep them out of our [wine] cellars,' The Supper of the Lamb, p. 88.

yes, this...

Sometimes you just need a little encouragement. 

something from Ernst...

'...it is never unequivocally clear who God is. The one for whom we live and die, whom we love or hate, who possesses us in our inmost being, yields the evidence. If this is so, then Christianity is not merely akin to conviction, even less a mere religious doctrine, or conversely a particular morality within a limited social sphere. Rather it is worldwide service in the discipleship of Jesus and in resistance to superstition. What is determinative is the tie to the Lord, who was crucified on Golgotha, ' Ernst Kasemann.

not a movie review...

     In a fit of melancholy, I watched Taken 2, and found it hilarious. Apparently, one can set off hand grenades all over Istanbul without anyone noticing a thing.

     Like I said, it's hilarious.

the elca never fails to disappoint...

     I see the ELCA continues its slide into both fully embraced apostasy and the bad sort of irrelevance. I've long since accepted that the ELCA's was a false promise. Still, it saddens me from time to time.

time to denounce the Left once and for all...

     Yes, when I say that the US Progressive Left is more dangerous, more Totalitarian, than Russia's Authoritarians, I mean just what I say. Soon, we will find the illusion of neutrality stripped away once and for all. For me and my house, we reject the Progressive Left and all its pomps and works.

     And what are those pomps and works? Well, behold the gifts of the Progressive Left in the US: eugenics (abortion; euthanasia; the elimination of the poor and unfit); a vast digital panopticon; war without end for revolutionary ends both vague and dubious; the destruction of the family (itself a product of an earlier, more truly progressive movement).

     That's all just the beginning of the end you know. 

yes, i wrote this...weird it all is...

     So, we're in Oppositeland - Russia seems more and more sane a place, even with its outbursts of violence (which are, perhaps, over-hyped by the Progressive West). Progressives in the US are, to my ear, the greatest threat to life and liberty at the moment. In fact, they are for all intents and purposes the new Fascists in this country. 
     It comes down to what is, at the moment, the only choice - Totalitarian or Authoritarian order. What's so hard to accept is that the US is rapidly moving in the Totalitarian direction, while Russia simply follows its Authoritarian ways. I really don't know what to do with that.