Thank you to James for his love for and generosity to the Crew of Worthies. As a thank-you gift: the fulfillment of a wish.But seriously, heaps of gratitude to Mr. Poul...
Saturday, June 28, 2008
Friday, June 27, 2008
"You may not be an old fashioned girl, but you're still gonna get dated."
Trapnel has some backtalk on Albanian "sworn virgins":I don't really see the argument here. The Sworn Virgins are a great example of how social practices evolve in ways that can rarely be *justified* by their *explanations*; their very existence calls into question the entire...
"You have been in Afghanistan, I perceive..."
Julian Sanchez thinks you can spot a former parliamentarian a mile away. I tend to think so, and, given the facts on the ground*, it's no surprise. The real question now: is Barney Frank part of the brotherhood?*Jamie Kirchick's article covers the years when I was just coming...
Thursday, June 26, 2008
Soft paternalism not working
To explore the interaction of moral sentiments and self-interest, Bowles begins with a case where six day care centers in Haifa, Israel imposed a fine on parents who picked their kids up late. The fine aimed to encourage parents to be more prompt. Instead, parents reacted to...
Albanian "sworn virgins" revisited
The New York Times has picked up on the disappearance of Albanian sworn virgins:Pashe Keqi recalled the day nearly 60 years ago when she decided to become a man. She chopped off her long black curls, traded in her dress for her father’s baggy trousers, armed herself with a hunting...
You Gotta Rep Your Hood
Aquarium Drunkard's guide to the Triangle is making me homesick:Restaurants: There are some good, affordable mediterranean restaurants in the Triangle, most notably Neomonde in Raleigh, which is by some railroad tracks that have hordes of tiger lilies growing by them from time...
Bookbag: Labor Theory
. . . the futile effort to bring socialism to tzarist Russia in 1905 assumes that the labor theory of value, having its origins in medieval craft society, can continue into the modern industrial age, where all values succumb to market forces. In the Christian conception, work...
Setting the record straight on Jules et Jim
Kevin B. Lee is a grown man with a god-given right to think whatever he wants about Jules et Jim, but this summary begs a little correction:Truffaut builds and expands on Jules and Jim’s vision of love as a dark descent into obsessive ownership killing off the sense of free...
Tuesday, June 24, 2008
Fired two warning shots . . . into his blog!
[PoMoCo]: All the good ones are gay, taken, or Marxist.[PoMoCo]: Three objections to soft paternali...
The authoritative institution of poetry, instantiated!
Read this poem by Luke Kennard ("I take the murderer for coffee./‘Make sure you don’t murder your coffee!’/I joke. He likes my jokes"); hat tip Nikki Trant...
Monday, June 23, 2008
Patti Smith and "the authoritative institution of poetry"
Noah once asked me to explain the Leonard Cohen lyric "I know that I'm forgiven/But I don't know how I know." I always thought that it would have a lot to do with "Jesus died for somebody's sins but not mine," and it turns out I might be right:. . . a quick tour through Smith’s...
Bill Deresiewicz on the area of his expertise
David (the one with the thought experiment catchphrase) forwarded me this article by Bill Deresiewicz on why the Ivy League is breeding "excellent sheep":I’ve had many wonderful students at Yale and Columbia, bright, thoughtful, creative kids whom it’s been a pleasure to talk...
Friday, June 20, 2008
Bookbag: A. J. Liebling on Harold Ross
Ross liked writers, but he would no more have thought of offering a writer money than of offering a horse an ice-cream soda. "Bad for them, Liebling," he would have said. Ross thought that a healthy writer wouldn't write unless he had had to emit at least two rubber checks...
Thursday, June 19, 2008
How many conservatisms can dance on the head of a pin?
I'm inclined to think that the debate over Ross Douthat's definition of conservatism doesn't have much left in the way of shelf life (my take here; my Grand Unified Theory of Traditionalism here, here, and here), so I will close my own commentary on the matter with something...
"Nothing is in itself tragic, not even death."
My dear Arnold, I dimly remember your surname, but take leave to drop it now, so very delightful and friendshipful is the letter I have just had from you. But you mustn't expect from me "a diabolically ingenious defense" of Zuleika, any more than you would expect a woman who...
Wednesday, June 18, 2008
Wide open spaces
A question for urbanists from Owen Heatherly, in the context of the Alexanderplatz:Where do those of us who like the Siberian air to run at us unencumbered in a massive parade ground go, nowadays? Why must all the wide open spaces be either a) outside of the city or b) green?More...
Tuesday, June 17, 2008
The connection between cities and theater
Luc Sante on theatrical urbanism in New York City:There were also businesses that could hardly be found anywhere else: black-eye fixers, for instance, who were essentially makeup artists, and whose ability to maintain sufficient trade to set themselves up in storefronts, while...
Killing modernity every night
[PoMoCo]: Tequila urbanism.[PoMoCo]: Please don't steal my microphone, Conor Friedersdo...
Monday, June 16, 2008
Bookbag, with snark
Celibacy is now more necessary than ever before among the professionals, including the rabbis, because of the tremendous threat from the gay and feminist movements. Obedience to commanding truths may require the sacrifice of sexuality. [...] The defense of sacred order requires...
Wendell Berry, adultery, and epistemological modesty
Gearing up for a post on why I object to Wendell Berry has meant reading him—always a mixed bag. On one hand, he writes CSB-friendly sentences like this one from "The Problem of Tobacco":Though it was often said, when I was a boy, that smoking would "stunt your growth," we...
Thursday, June 12, 2008
My links are red hot! (Your links ain't diddly-squat!)
Somebody over at Popmatters shares my love for old-timey union songs.Somebody else thinks that the demise of local scenes isn't just a problem for pop music.Jennifer Roeback Morse seems to think that gay people are from Neptune. "Perhaps you do not yet understand our Earth...
Tuesday, June 10, 2008
Elseblogging
The operation of honour (as separated from conscience, which is not as between man and man but as between man and God) is to suppose the world acquainted with the transaction, and then to consider in what light the wise and virtuous would regard it. Edmund Burke[PoMoCo]: The...
Monday, June 9, 2008
"They make a desert and call it Poundbury."
An interesting note that didn't make it into my Taki Mag post on New Urbanism: the Scruton article mentions that the original plan for New Urbanist flagship Poundbury didn't have a church, an omission that Krier explains by saying that "it is not for the architect to provide...
Saturday, June 7, 2008
You're my piece of the rock and I love ya, SC.
Dara took issue with my advocacy of sanctuary cities and municipal ID cards by arguing that it's not important that we assimilate illegal immigrants into our communities by means of the state.I wouldn't want to make the Oakeshottian argument that there can be no personal identity...
Open casting? And you made fun of me when I memorized my Disability Studies monologue "just in case"...
Noah is holding open casting for a disability theorist, and if he doesn't know better by now than to get me started, there's really nothing I can do for him.The easiest way to begin is with the ways to get disability policy wrong. Inhumane treatment in institutions (warning:...
Friday, June 6, 2008
You're playing a tomato, Sarah! You don't have logic!
[PoMoCo]: Extreme Virtue![TakiMag]: A review of Sex and the C...
Thursday, June 5, 2008
We are not the Village Green Preservation Society
John, Will, and I seem to be in basic agreement that, in a perfect world, localism would be to the twenty-first century what nationalism was to the twentieth (a force to topple empires!), but, as important as conservatism's intellectual renewal is to me, I'd prefer to achieve...
Wednesday, June 4, 2008
Sanctuary City Blues (Make Me Wanna Holler)
Meanwhile, back at the ranch:[PoMoCo]: We built this sanctuary city on rock and roll.And Dara uses my post to practice her net game, with excellent resul...
Tuesday, June 3, 2008
James Agee, Neko Case, innocence, and old jazz records
I always meant this blog to be, among other things, your go-to site for James Agee links, so here's one from PopMatters:In a little-known short story by James Agee, a poet and soldier has returned home from the Second World War, and in an effort to reestablish something of ease...
More on college loans to needy students at sixth-rate schools
Noah is not a fan of my post on college loans:Take a look at Gateway Community College's course offerings (pdf). Yes, there is one course on Intro to Cultural Anthropology, that Helen can attend, but there are far, far more on keyboarding and Toyota engine repair. Community...
God knows how I've lasted livin' with these bastards in the 'ouse!
The Current short on the most famous of the DC blogger houses focuses more on the fact that Yglesias and Co. blog than the fact that they all live together, which is a shame; the phenomenon of flophouses is less thoroughly played out than "Ooh Web 2.0!"The Yale Mafia operates...
Monday, June 2, 2008
Did I forget to mention. . .
. . . that James Poulos has been kind enough to offer me a spot on Team Guestblog? [PoMoCo]: Lower-tier colleges and student loans thereto are a scam on everybody, rich or poor, booksmart or otherwi...
Dobie Gillis for Commander-in-Chief
Good men nowadays question what form of government is best and search like Plato for a formula, following which this benighted race of ours may automatically perfect itself. The Delta sages of my youth knew there was no such formula. —William Alexander Percy, Lanterns on the...
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