Syrian Choices

The destabilization of Syria was and has been a calamity of choice by people in NATO and the USA and the EU who did not stop and think through what was going to happen.

NATO and the rest cannot be a force for peace if they cannot stop a disaster while it is being slowly built up step by step, because they lack the will for peace.
One does not need a will for war; one is forced to it by active transgression or - lacking an external stimulus - insanity. Peace requires will and resolve. Peace requires virtue.

--

North Korea

Kim Jong Un has reportedly killed his uncle.
That is not a good sign for events in that region. Most good dictators know that the elite should be executed away from the public eye, otherwise people get ideas about the mortality of their leaders.

--

Aid Stops To Syrian Rebels

 Syria's Civil War

The USA has stopped all aid to the Syrian rebels, at last recognizing the fact that moderates do not have a chance against radicals.

Our allies, the Saudi Arabian rulers and the Likud in Israel, will not be happy. They devised this civil war, and they put a lot of time and effort into it.

If only we had bombed the chemicals weapons instead of relying of successful diplomacy! We could have seen a chemical pall cover parts of Syrian, increased the death toll, and committed ourselves to another ongoing "winning of hearts and minds".

Now ex-CIA chief thinks Assad may be the best choice for Syria.

The Conservative War Hawks almost pulled it off.

Perhaps this is the beginning of the end for the war party. Of course, polls will be taken and the results will show that the USA has lost influence in the world.

Peace is always unpopular among a certain element.

--

Green Piece

Interesting story from Blessed Quietness Journal
http://www.blessedquietness.com/yarn/living_without_the_greens.htm

Checking out at the store, the young cashier suggested to the older woman, that she should bring her own grocery bags because plastic bags weren’t good for the environment.

The woman apologized and explained, “We didn’t have this green thing back in my earlier days.”

The young clerk responded, “That’s our problem today. Your generation did not care enough to save our environment for future generations.”

She was right — our generation didn’t have the green thing in its day. Back then, we returned milk bottles, soda bottles and beer bottles to the store. The store sent them back to the plant to be washed and sterilized and refilled, so it could use the same bottles over and over. So they really were truly recycled. But we didn’t have the green thing back in our day.

Grocery stores bagged our groceries in brown paper bags, that we reused for numerous things, most memorable besides household garbage bags, was the use of brown paper bags as book covers for our schoolbooks. This was to ensure that public property, (the books provided for our use by the school) was not defaced by our scribblings. Then we were able to personalize our books on the brown paper bags. But too bad we didn’t do the green thing back then.

We walked up stairs, because we didn’t have an escalator in every store and office building. We walked to the grocery store and didn’t climb into a 300-horsepower machine every time we had to go two blocks. But she was right. We didn’t have the green thing in our day....

Not even mentioning that milk was delievered instead of each homeowner making a separate trip to the store.

--

Full Metal Jacket On Hearts And Minds

 Tet, 1968

I am watching Full Metal Jacket while my computer backs up. I just heard the quote "winning hearts and minds".
Jacket is about 'Nam, the Tet Offensive of 1968, and was released in 1987.

I am sure that I have heard about winning hearts and minds about Iraq and Afghanistan.

I like a well defined policy that works.

We have a nation's capital that is referred to as "Hate City" because of the political acrimony that exists there, we have just had a government shutdown because of our inability to work together, and we have just seen the Democrats in the Senate change the rules on majority votes on presidential nominees with a Republican response that they would get even.

Where did we learn how to win hearts and minds?
We can't even stand each other.
If we truly believe over the past 50 years that the only Americans that can win hearts and minds are Marines and the military, we have an interesting future ahead of us.

--

Fowler's Modern English Usage

One of the books that make an tremendous impression on me was H.W.F. Fowler's Modern English Usage.
The "modernity" of his book was just around World War I, but it was a breath of fresh air to me.

Below is a Fowler cartoon, based on the correct usage of "can" and "may".
I shall wing this from memory, and I am sorry if I am mistaken, but I believe the correct usage of the verb "can" is in expressing the ability to do something; e.g., I can go to the movies by driving my car there.

"May" is used to express allowance, permission, or a possibility; e.g., May I go to the movies, if I clean up the bathroom?

--

Conservative Obscurantism

The American Spectator
 http://spectator.org/articles/57083/mandela%E2%80%99s-african-cold-war

What Mandela called an “armed struggle,” Margaret Thatcher had called something else in 1987 when she described the ANC as “a typical terrorist organization.”

Written by a man who loves to relive The Cold War. The acme of his life may have been the wise Reagan years.

Margaret Thatcher knew terror. The IRA was after her in 1987. I knew many good Americans of Irish descent who supported the IRA  at the time, lending support, sending contributions, etc. Now some of them read stuff like this and do not bat the proverbial eye.

Not one word about reconciliation in the article, arguably the most important contribution Mr. Mandela made to his country. Reconciliation did not exist in The Cold War. No one even imagined of reconciling with one's erstwhile enemies.
So you figure, is this writer a step forward or a big lummox step backwards.

--

Welcome Home

 United States Navy Memorial - The Lone Sailor

I spent a few more days than usual at my mother's. We got a lot done: fixed the legs on a kitchen chair, cleaned up some of the basement (about 2% of it), banking, shopping, and repaired my father's statue of The Lone Sailor.

Now this statue is located in Washington D.C. at The United States Navy Memorial. Sometime back in the 90's I remember we sought it out and spent some time there. I remember a number of people made a number of cracks about what the Lone Sailor was actually looking for on that street in Washington. It was like On The Town, with Gene Kelly, Frank Sinatra, and Jules Munshin all rolled up into one, lone sailor.
I assume my father made some donations to US Navy events or projects, and this replica of the statue was sent to him. One day in 2011 or 2012 my mother picked it up to dust, and the base broke off at the ankles of the statue.
I recall talking to my father in 2012 about how to go about repairing such a statue; since it was irregular is shape, it could not simply be laid down on a table and glued together. We had to come up with some way to hold the base and the rest of the statue together.
I thought about placing it in a bed of small styrofoam balls. Why I was thinking of styrofoam balls, I have no idea, but such a bed would conform to the irregular shape of the statue, and possibly allow the two pieces to rest alongside each other and be joined and let rest while the glue worked.

Early 2013 my father passed, and I have thought about the statue since then. At some time in 2013, I read a post in a blog about using pie weights, then dried peas, or beans, or lentils for the same purpose.
So I had a bag of dried lentils, and bought a bag of white rice for $1.67 while my mother and I were at the drug store. Tuesday morning, I took a look plastic cake cover - my mother has an extensive collection of designer cake covers, cardboard boxes, and packing items - turned it upside down and placed the bag of lentils in it. I opened the rice and filled in the space between the lentil bag and the perimeter of the cover.
The statue I put on the lentil bag, and pressed it down, getting it flat. I worked the base into the pile of rice until it was lined up with the statue.

At that point, I saw it was almost perfect. I removed the base, fluffed the rice up a bit, applied glue to the statue breaks, then re-worked the base into the rice, and joined them.

By the time I left, The Lone Sailor was back upstairs next to my father's easy chair.

Good work.

My mother and I had only one argument, and it lasted about 3 minutes. Politics as usual. She wants to elect Republican Senators, as she is under the impression that the Senate is the primary bottleneck in the governmental process.

How does one argue these points? And I do not mean with my mother, because unless she thinks of something, it does not actually exist.

For example, Andrew Napatitano in his article cited last week (http://www.wnd.com/2013/12/pray-for-my-ignorant-pope/) says:

...Thank God, so to speak, that his teaching authority is limited to faith and morals, because in matters of economics, he is wide of the mark...

...The pope seems to prefer common ownership of the means of production, which is Marxist, or private ownership and government control, which is fascist, or government ownership and government control, which is socialist. All of those failed systems lead to ashes, not wealth. Pope Francis must know this. He must also know that when Europe was in turmoil in 1931, his predecessor Pius XI wrote in one of his encyclicals: “(N)o one can be at the same time a sincere Catholic and a true Socialist.”

...Timothy Cardinal Dolan, the archbishop of New York, recently discovered serious structural problems with St. Patrick’s Cathedral that will cost $200 million to repair. He will soon have that bill paid. Where did that money come from? It came from the disposable income of rich Catholic capitalists. Who will benefit from this? The blue-collar workers whom the restoration project is employing now have jobs, and everyone – rich and poor – who attends Mass at the refurbished St. Patrick’s will do so in comfort and beauty.
What shall we do about the pope and economics? We should pray for his faith and understanding and for a return to orthodoxy. That means Holy Mother Church under the Vicar of Christ – saving souls, not pocketbooks.

Mr. Napolitano cannot make up his mind as to which questions are matters of faith and morals. He seems to quote Pius XI describing the possibility of a Catholic being a Socialist as if Pius spoke ex cathedra, but he did not.

Mr. Napolitano reads into the Pope's remarks sinister implications as to ownership of property, but I have missed it, if the Pope actually said something like that.

The paragraph about the repairs to St. Patrick's is a veiled threat to withhold funds, contributions, or tithes. It does not make much sense otherwise. If all the Catholics who have contributed to their parishes since World War II, building churches and schools, repairing churches and schools, were to read this article, they would realize that they were classified as "rich Catholic capitalists".
Mr. Napolitano's construction is such that he seems to contrast the rich capitalists alongside the blue-collar workers, and those workers have jobs, but surprisingly enough, those blue-collar guys do not contribute to church repairs. Only the rich Catholic capitalists do.

I know. I make no sense to criticize something obviously written on the fly, or by the seat of Mr. Napolitano's pants.
He just doesn't like all that talk about poor folks.

--

Mandela's Passing Reveals The War In The Heart Of America

Senator Ted Cruz posted the following on his FaceBook page:

Nelson Mandela will live in history as an inspiration for defenders of liberty around the globe. He stood firm for decades on the principle that until all South Africans enjoyed equal liberties he would not leave prison himself, declaring in his autobiography, 'Freedom is indivisible; the chains on any one of my people were the chains on all of them, the chains on all of my people were the chains on me.' Because of his epic fight against injustice, an entire nation is now free.

We mourn his loss and offer our condolences to his family and the people of South Africa.

Some of the comments generated were racist and disgraceful. They can be Googled if you wish to see some of them.

Clearly, there is a portion of the population that is racist and rabid.

The passing of Nelson Mandela has made it clear that we are at war right now. We live in the opening skirmishes of the next civil war.
If we ignore our responsibilities to vote and support moderate politics, we will not avoid the paying the Piper... we would be lucky to barely avoid the Reaper.

We are at war now, and a lot of us have a lot of guns and ammo.

--

Ender's Game and Unbreakable

 

Bruce Willis in Unbreakable

I had a post on the film Ender's Game (http://fatherdaughtertalk.blogspot.com/2013/11/enders-game.html ) , and I think it was messy; I suppose it was due to my thrill at seeing the film. But I tend to throw things together in my posts, so maybe I should have waited and worked on it, essay-like, a little more.

It does not matter.
I had read the book a few years ago, so my experience of the film was enhanced, I think. It was a very good story.

I emphasized the importance of Play versus Work, and Play was very important in Ender's Game; endless simulations of battle - games - were run, and these games were how warriors learned, and in deep actuality it was how the children warriors fought, but that rreality was hidden from them.

Ender resented how the adults kept changing the rules of the game. That resonated with me.
But upon reading Orson Scott Card's memoirs of writing the story, that aspect was subsidiary to the business of finding and developing military leaders; he had specifically mentioned the search for a leader of the Army of the Potomac in the Civil War.

That was his focus. Yet he knew how important Play was.
I gave it too much importance in his story. In my version of Ender's Game, it is emphasized a bit more.

Play is more than learning without serious and deadly consequences.

It is the Lilies of the field, who neither toil nor spin.

It is Cowboys and Indians who deathlessly shoot, die, and rise up to play more - a playing at the archetype of the Resurrection: a war in peace, and a peace within a war.

Elementary particles play when they are entangled; they dance together on separate sides of the universe.

When we play, we are like Bruce Willis in Unbreakable, serious and working hard in life, yet not of it in the same sense that other people are enmeshed in the coils of their mortality.

I wish us to be Unbreakable.

--

Dickensian Village

 Dickens Village - Not Mine

I finished with my Christmas Dickens village. I had not put it up for a few years, for it seemed there was always a shortage of time.

I put it up in a new spot that allowed me to create a vague semi-circle about a ceramic town well. Around this I put four lampposts which run on two C batteries. Four lampposts does not seem like much, but it is a lot when you have to work out how to anchor them and how to run the wires so they are not seen.
There are only six houses, but it seems enough: Scrooge's house, the Poulterer's store, the Counting House, the Old Curiosity Shop, a Tavern, and a thatched roof cottage.

The lay-out was on a corner of the library desk, and measured 34 inches wide by 24 inches deep. The six houses with some other figurines were enough to create a cozy central square, yet allowing for a outlying structure - the cottage out the old main road by the cross at the four corners!
The layout is white felt and poly fiber. I had set it out on the floor first, measured it up, then worked out how to run wires, then to obscure the wires and the bumps and rills in the felt.

I pulled fiber and placed it extending from chimneys to tree branches, like a misty smoke on a cold, brisk Christmas morn.

I finally sat down around 1:00 PM and looked across the room at it. It looked not bad, I thought.
The phone rang, and it was my niece calling to tell me why she sounded so distant when I had called her up this morning.
I had called because she was to have gone with her daughters to my mother's to put ornaments on the tree I had put up Monday past, and when she answered the phone this morning, she acted  as if she had just awakened. I told her the tree was up at mom's, so have at it.
I felt as if I had called too early, although it was 9:00 AM. I had been up since 4:00 AM.
She called back at 1:00 to explain her car would not start in the cold this morning, so she was at sixes and sevens when I called her earlier.
And she would not be going to my mother's.
Too cold for 60 miles in a dubious automobile.

Well, that is fine, because I had talked to my mother yesterday, and she said she had put up about three-quarters of the Christmas tree ornaments herself. I told her to slow down, that my niece - her granddaughter - and her girls might want to put a few up.
My mother said she could not imagine that group decorating a tree the way she wanted it done.
I said that maybe they were looking forward to it like some sort of weird Christmas-Tree-Grandma-Cookies-and-Ornaments good time they could enjoy and would remember scads of years hence.


My mother granted the plausibility of such shenanigans - if not monkey shines - and said she'd leave a pile of ornaments aside for them.

I left all this out when I spoke to my niece.

I mean... really! What does one have to do at Christmas time?!

--

Shadow Of Dark Matter

MIT News
You Can't Get Entangled Without A Wormhole
http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2013/you-cant-get-entangled-without-a-wormhole-1205.html

... A theory of quantum gravity would suggest that classical gravity is not a fundamental concept, as Einstein first proposed, but rather emerges from a more basic, quantum-based phenomenon. In a macroscopic context, this would mean that the universe is shaped by something more fundamental than the forces of gravity.

This is where quantum entanglement could play a role. It might appear that the concept of entanglement — one of the most fundamental in quantum mechanics — is in direct conflict with general relativity: Two entangled particles, “communicating” across vast distances, would have to do so at speeds faster than that of light — a violation of the laws of physics, according to Einstein. It may therefore come as a surprise that using the concept of entanglement in order to build up space-time may be a major step toward reconciling the laws of quantum mechanics and general relativity. ...

Maybe we can do away with the Dark Matter hypothesis, if and when our understanding of gravity is amended, for it was the need for the extra mass and the extra gravity of that mass that led to the almost Ptolemaic hypothesis of Dark Matter.

--

The Raglans Of Life

 

Drugget Handwork and Imagery

When I was much younger, I wanted people whom I knew to read my blog. I soon discovered the down side. Who can count the times I have heard the following:

"Montag, you have more spelling errors in your blog."
or
"Montag, don't you proof read the things you write?"
or
"Montag, you have more factual errors in the blog."

Now I say that no one has to read it. In fact, I would prefer it if certain people did not. Go find some other congenial spot to spend your time; find something you like, a blog which soothes the soul and takes those worrisome furrows from the worried brow.

She-who-must-be-obeyed summoned me one morning. She was, so I found out, reading my post Florida , and had some inputs. Since it was a reprint, I have to assume she missed it first time around.

"Montie, in this story, you obviously want to portray the mother of Lizard Breath and Gecko Eyes as being wealthy and upper class. Yet, you have her call one of her daughters Madison."

I stood there, sort of silent, waiting for the punch line to develop. At length, I had to tilt my head a bit and plastered some sort of inquisitive look on my face, and let an "Ummmm?" sort of ooze out.

"Madison is not a highfalutin name. It is definitely lowfalutin."

She did not use the terms "highfalutin" nor "lowfalutin", but I do so to save me the trouble and ire of anyone who reads this. When I talk or write of social class distinctions, I would prefer to resemble Pat Buttram or Minnie Pearl rather than Karl Marx.

"Oh...?' I said. I think that pretty well summed it up, too. It said about all I had to say.

I did add, "I thought 'Madison' was a bit spiffy.... not magna cum spiff, but definitely on the snazzy side of spiffitude de rigeur."

"No. It is like.... oh, Trinity." she intoned.

"Trinity?" I positively goggled at that one. "What does that refer to?"

"I should think the divine Trinity."

"Oh," I said, "not the atomic bomb test?"
I said this even though I cannot imagine why the atomic bomb test in July of 1945 would be deemed appropriate for a young girl's name. Of course, I still cannot get the propriety of the Christian Trinity's use as a name. Naming conventions are not my strong suit.

"Give me some examples of highfalutin names," I asked.

She pondered briefly. "Whitney, Carson,... India,... Sloan..."

"Sloan?!" I said. "Like Edgar Sloan?"
It reminded me of her aunt Marcella, nee Sloan in Pontiac County, Quebec. I had returned from visiting The Pontiac one summer, and I mentioned to her I had met her brother, Edgar.

"Oh, wonderful, " she said. "Which one?"

That event had a profound effect on me, and the name "Sloan" has a mighty baraka and aura about it. Marcella was a wonderful, blessedly simple (in the Amish sense) woman, God rest her soul. (note: I believe the explanation was she had a half-brother and full brother both named Edgar.)

I was indeed a product of the middlefalutin. Our names are plain and homespun, like the burrel and drugget  raglans of our lives.

--

Photography, Mary, and Nelson Mandela

 

 Photograph by Ansel Adams

I was walking to the kitchen to get another cup of coffee, when it dawned on me that December 8th, today, was The Feast Of The Immaculate Conception in the RC Church. I stumbled a bit, some things ran through my brain, then I recovered.

As I stood making the coffee - I use a Melitta filter system, making each cup individually - I took the Holy Day and transformed it into something-something-something about photography, so an image of Mary, mother of Jesus, took the form of one of Ansel Adams mountain shots.

Then it dawned on me how odd it is that we trap the light, and try to force it into an unchanging matrix of a photograph. We try to imprison it.
Yet life would always burst the bounds of our improvised jails, would it not?

Holy days can be routine, or maybe they can be innovative, but what is there in dogma to inspire us? The intricacies of the teaching on the Immaculate Conception have always mystified me, for they gave me the impression of a Newtonian divinity, which operated according to a law of thermodynamics in which original sin was the entropy of chaos.

Then I thought that maybe that is why Hitler esteemed films are the most potent weapons of propaganda: that film could lock up a lie into a golden prison and go about showing it off to all and sundry.
Photography in a sense is a lie, for it gives us the sense of duration where there is none. We think to encapsulate those times we think we wish to remember, and then we post them away into albums, or scan them into digital panopticons...

(By now you are getting the idea how jumbled the old grey matter is at times. These things fly by like birds on the wing, and it is all I can do to keep up.)

The apartheid government thought that it had imprisoned the light of Mandela, but it found that it had given his life a new meaning, and when Mandela emerged from the arrest of his normal life, he dazzled the world.

By now, the coffee was ready, and I hoped my day would not be quite so filled with wonders as my mornings tended to be.

--

When Will The Retirement Age Be Increased To 70?

The retirement age will be increased to 70 years when it is no longer necessary.

That is, by the time enough pensioners, whose promised pensions have been looted, have died off, by the time that enough people have died from malnutrition, by the time that the state of health care is such that people begin to live shorter lives, then you will see the increase in the retirement age: when it is too late to effect whatever the political dreams and impostures that were its motives.

--

The Minimum Wage

Many prominent conservatives have spoken of Schumpeter's notion of the "Creative Destruction" of Capitalism, which is essentially an economic Darwinism that says the out-of-date and the inefficient companies die away, and thus make room for the new capitalist companies; creating and destroying.

Thus, the concept of "destruction" and any accompanying suffering get a pretty good suit of clothes to put on, doffing the old jail cell orange that it had to wear when "destruction" was bad. Now it can be good.

Fine. I won;t argue the point.

However, when numerous people cry and moan about raising the minimum wage, someone should just say,

"Creative destruction, lads; creative destruction. If your fast food eatery falls along the Darwinian wayside, its place will be taken by another restaurant that can sling hash and pay better and make a go of it.

If they have razor thin margins, there are more bumps in the road than just the minimum wage.
They can keep wages down, and go under if Christmas sales are down 2% from last year.
Again, survival of the fittest, new broom sweeps clean, and gets more profit for it."

--

Observations On Great Men

Bill O'Reilly on Nelson Mandela:
http://thegrio.com/2013/12/06/oreilly-on-mandela-great-man-but-he-was-a-communist/

“He was a communist, this man. He was a communist, all right? But he was a great man! What he did for his people was stunning!… He was a great man! But he was a communist!”

John of Patmos on Bill O'Reilly:
Revelations 3: 15-16

I know your works: you are neither cold nor hot. Would that you were either cold or hot! So, because you are lukewarm, and neither hot nor cold, I will spit you out of my mouth.

When Senator Ted Cruz lauded Nelson Mandela, his FaceBook page was disgraced by crude racist comments.
http://thegrio.com/2013/12/06/ted-cruz-trashed-for-paying-tribute-to-nelson-mandela-on-facebook/

 “Let’s not forget that Mandela called Castro’s Communist revolution ‘a source of inspiration to all freedom-loving people,’” said Mike Bates.  Another commenter, Derek Crawford wrote, “stunned to see you support this scumbag, Mr. Cruz…Mandela was a murderer, and a terrorist..not to mention a communist.”

The Conservativism is dead in the USA, and in its place reigns the Tea Party.
Bill O'Reilly tries to pretend that there is a place for intelligent Conservatism, but it seems to be a hollow charade. 

Matthew says of all of us:
12: 33-37

“Either make the tree good and its fruit good, or make the tree bad and its fruit bad, for the tree is known by its fruit. You brood of vipers! How can you speak good, when you are evil? For out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks. The good person out of his good treasure brings forth good, and the evil person out of his evil treasure brings forth evil. I tell you, on the day of judgment people will give account for every careless word they speak, for by your words you will be justified, and by your words you will be condemned.”

If the good person brings forth good, then if Mandela was a great man, then we must conclude that the matter of Communism is meaningless. The tree is known by its fruit.

When the crunch comes, Mr. O'Reilly will abandon the Tea Party radicals.

-- 

Gather Ye Whatchamacallits While Ye May....

 Mediaeaval View Of Taranto (Tarentum In Roman Times)

In Laudator Temporis Acti today:
http://laudatortemporisacti.blogspot.com/

The Tarentines
Theopompus, fragment F 233 Jacoby, quoted by Athenaeus, Deipnosophistae 4.166 e-f (tr. Charles Burton Gulick):

The city of Tarentum offers sacrifices of oxen and holds public banquets nearly every month. The mass of common people is always busy with parties and drinking-bouts. And the Tarentines have a saying of some such purport as this, that whereas the rest of the world, in their devotion to work and their preoccupation with various forms of industry, are always preparing to live, they themselves, with their parties and their pleasures, do not put off living, but live already.

ἡ πόλις ἡ τῶν Ταραντίνων σχεδὸν καθ᾽ ἕκαστον μῆνα βουθυτεῖ καὶ δημοσίας ἑστιάσεις ποιεῖται. τὸ δὲ τῶν ἰδιωτῶν πλῆθος αἰεὶ περὶ συνουσίας καὶ πότους ἐστί. λέγουσι δὲ καί τινα τοιοῦτον λόγον οἱ Ταραντῖνοι, τοὺς μὲν ἄλλους ἀνθρώπους διὰ τὸ φιλοπονεῖσθαι καὶ περὶ τὰς ἐργασίας διατρίβειν παρασκευάζεσθαι ζῆν, αὐτοὺς δὲ διὰ τὰς συνουσίας καὶ τὰς ἡδονὰς οὐ μέλλειν, ἀλλ᾽ ἤδη βιῶναι.

My interest is not this antique "gather ye rosebuds while ye may" philosophy expressed here, although I do envy the Greek font used in printing as well as the Greek fun.
I had quoted a post from the blog yesterday, and as I was walking back from my morning run at 7:30 AM, I started to think about the name of the blog.

Underneath the title, Laudator Temporis Acti,  is the quotation:

"A peculiar anthologic maze, an amusing literary chaos, a farrago of quotations, a mere olla podrida of quaintness, a pot pourri of pleasant delites, a florilegium of elegant extracts, a tangled fardel of old-world flowers of thought, a faggot of odd fancies, quips, facetiae, loosely tied" (Holbrook Jackson, Anatomy of Bibliomania) by a "laudator temporis acti," a "praiser of time past" (Horace, Ars Poetica 173).

So I asked myself why "tempus actum" - or the genitive "temporis acti" - for time past? I think of French, which is my foothold into the Romance languages, and think of  temps passé  , time (long) past, and of passe-temps, a hobby or pastime.
Why "acti"?
So acti is the passive participle of agere, which means to do, drive, force, and has the idea of getting stuff done.
The word "agenda" comes from agere, being the gerund  (or gerundive - I could never get them straight)  of agere, and meaning "things to be done". (Only later did it come to mean a list of things to be done. I still say "My list of agenda" and most people ignore it.)

The word "pass" such as in "to pass the time" in English (and don't forget how much English was influenced by Norman French after William the Conqueror... 1066 and all that) comes from Latin patere, meaning to undergo, experience, suffer, etc. The past participle of patere is passus, and that leads us right to "pass" in the sense of "having experienced", as well as words such as "passion", meaning suffering.

Furthermore, most verbs have Voice, which is either "Active"; e.g., I throw, or "Passive"; e.g., I am thrown.

It struck me that a writer who was also aware of style might very well distinguish between two senses of time past: the passive, in which times runs by us and we are but spectators, and the active, in which we configure time itself as a series of our actions within it.
It is a difference in participation in life.

Which leads us right back to the introductory quote about the Lucky Tarantinoi !

Gather ye those rosebuds!

--

Why Is The Film Alien So Good...

 

Harry dean Stanton Meets Alien\

... and the prequel,  Prometheus, so bad?


Alien just tells a story.

Prometheus tries to have meaning, and to make sense of a previous story. It is a self-important bunch of crap. The next film will probably be crap.
Narrative is not crap.

Prometheus has Ego.
Alien just Is.
Alien has Zen; Prometheus is a corporative intelligence as defined by the US Supreme Court:, trying desperately to exercise its right to free speech. It can hardly put two thoughts together, much less attempt free speech.

Prometheus is just marginally better than Alien Versus Predator.

\--

The Economy

I am feeling a bit more chipper than I have. There is room for a good deal of expansion in the US economy, and from the most recent jobs report, US industry is taking advantage of it.

Good show!

I really would like nothing better than to have all my negative forecasts be proven wrong. If the country is well, the people are well, I and my family and friends are well.
Almost brings a tear to me eye, as I think of Scrooge on Christmas Day!

--

Beyond Strunk and White

From Laudator Temporis Acti
http://laudatortemporisacti.blogspot.com/2013/12/the-evidence-of-style.html

The Evidence of Style
Simon Leys, The Hall of Uselessness: Collected Essays (© 2011; rpt. New York: New York Review Books, 2013), p. 318 with endnote on p. 554:

Textual problems have led some modern scholars to question the credibility of the Gospels and even to doubt the historical existence of Christ. These studies have provoked an intriguing reaction from an unlikely source: Julien Gracq—an old and prestigious novelist, who was close to the Surrealist movement—made a comment which is all the more arresting for coming from an agnostic.

In a recent volume of essays,² Gracq first acknowledged the impressive learning of one of these scholars (whose lectures he had attended in his youth), as well as the devastating logic of his reasoning; but he confessed that, in the end, he still found himself left with one fundamental objection: for all his formidable erudition, the scholar in question had simply no ear—he could not hear what should be so obvious to any sensitive reader—that, underlying the text of the Gospels, there is a masterly and powerful unity of style, which derives from one unique and inimitable voice; there is the presence of one singular and exceptional personality whose expression is so original, so bold that one could positively call it impudent.

Now, if you deny the existence of Jesus, you must transfer all these attributes to some obscure, anonymous writer, who should have had the improbable genius of inventing such a character—or, even more implausibly, you must transfer this prodigious capacity for invention to an entire committee of writers.

And Gracq concluded: in the end, if modern scholars, progressive-minded clerics and the docile public all surrender to this critical erosion of the Scriptures, the last group of defenders who will obstinately maintain that there is a living Jesus at the central core of the Gospels will be made of artists and creative writers, for whom the psychological evidence of style carries much more weight than mere philological arguments.

2. Julien Gracq, Les carnets du grand chemin (Paris: José Corti, 1992), pp. 190-91.

(paragraphing is mine)

 I reminds me of a Science that forgot Art, and is closely parallel to Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451 .

--

Multi-Tasking

I used to multi-task. I still can easily do more two or more things at once.

Example from just yesterday:  taking a bite from an orange peel, while tossing the peeled orange into the garbage bin.

--

GPS Versus Glonass

From Terra Daily:
 http://www.gpsdaily.com/reports/CIA_Pentagon_trying_to_hinder_construction_of_GLONASS_stations_in_US_999.html

The US Department of Defense and Central Intelligence Agency have been trying to persuade the US State Department not to allow Roscosmos to build several GLONASS ground-based measuring stations in the United States, alleging that they could be used for military purposes.

They fear that the structures could help Russia spy on the United States and improve the precision of Russian weaponry, the officials said. These monitor stations, the Russians contend, would significantly improve the accuracy and reliability of Moscow's version of the Global Positioning System, the American satellite network that steers guided missiles to their targets and thirsty smartphone users to the nearest Starbucks.

The Pentagon argues that if the State Department sanctions the GLONASS station deployments, Russia might be able to increase the accuracy of its guided missiles and could also use them for intelligence activity from inside US borders. The arguments have prompted the White House to postpone decision-making on the issue until Russia provides further information, according to anonymous sources in the US Administration and Department of State.

US congressman Michel Rogers, who earlier requested the Pentagon's estimates of the consequences of deploying GLONASS stations for US national security, said he didn't understand why the US should be interested in encouraging GLONASS, a competitor to the American GPS system, when the use of GPS worldwide gives the US obvious advantages in many respects.

Moscow rejects the suggestion that the structures have anything to do with surveillance operations, contending they are designed to improve the accuracy of Russia's version of the Global Positioning System (GPS), the American satellite network that steers guided missiles to their targets and helps with navigation.

"They don't want to be reliant on the American system and believe that their systems, like GPS, will spawn other industries and applications," said a former senior official in the State Department's Office of Space and Advanced Technology...

Perhaps we should try to apply sanctions against Russia until they dismantle their satellite system.

The USA has set an awfully high bar on spying and espionage around the world; I just saw todaay that the NSA goes through 5 billion telephone calls a day.

I really do not see why any country would not just trust us to do what is best by all mankind. We believe in technology for all, as long as it is trickle-down technology.

--

Responsibility To Spend

 

CashNetUSA:
http://www.cashnetusa.com/blog/majority-american-workers-reject-idea-spending-help-u-s-economic-recovery/?CNU-content

In a survey conducted by Harris Interactive for CashNetUSA, 57 percent of the 2,014 Americans polled indicated that healing the economy through spending is not their responsibility. This group included 1,833 individuals who are currently working and receiving a paycheck. At 53 percent, households sized five or more feel more responsibility than any other group polled. Men ages 18 to 34 come in second with 50 percent acknowledging economic accountability.

The survey also discovered that over the course of the last year, six out of every 10 American workers have seen either no change or a decline in the amount of each paycheck. This breaks down to 37 percent who have seen no change, and 24 percent whose pay has decreased.

This general sense of financial insecurity has led to many Americans altering their spending habits since August, with as many as 44 percent spending less on food and eating out, and 38 percent deferring purchases on technology products.

“As consumer confidence is rattled again, it is taking a toll on Americans’ spending habits,” says Megan Staton, CashNetUSA’s director of marketing. “They are making these cutbacks to manage their personal finances through this uncertainty, with less interest in what their personal role might be in helping to fuel the economic recovery. That’s no surprise when half of Americans are living paycheck to paycheck, and one in four says their paycheck has declined.” ...

This should come as no surprise.
And the workers are quite right in their attitude, "quite right" here meaning "acting as self-interested entities engaged in classical theory economics."

It was my understanding of Keynes that the self-interested refusal to spend money, or "good money after bad", is one of the mechanisms which are expected to occur in such times of economic distress, and are one of the main contributors to the increasing severity of the problem.
The correct response was massive government spending, Massive. Hoover spent money; he did not sit on his hands and say "balance the budget". But FDR spent massively, and World War II led to undheard of government debt levels.
Massive.

Paul Krugman has already said that we are getting ready to pay the piper for our lack of massive response to the Great Recession.

For my part, I have never held such a view as it was my responsibility to spend to help the nation's economy. It is not based in any economic theory, rather it is my miserliness.
I still use a cellphone, not a smart phone, and I buy my minutes. I refuse to commit to ongoing monthly payments; I have enough of those.
I admire greatly Saint Augustine, who prayed, "Let me be good, but not just yet," or maybe "...good, but not too good right now."
I shake my hoary head when a star goes supernova, and smile at my own Messier catalog of faint stars that are miserly of their light, and hide their slendor behind an anorectic treacly sweetness.

And fuel economy was always of prime importance for me, even when back in the tech boom time of 2000 (before the tech bubble burst) when looking for a new car, I startled a salesman at Russ Milne Ford by asking about fuel economy. He said no one ever asked about it any more. That surprised me, but soon everything came back to historical averages.

--

Italian Prays For His Ignorant Pope!

Mr. Napolitano

Pray for my ignorant Pope, says Andrew Napolitano.
http://www.wnd.com/2013/12/pray-for-my-ignorant-pope/

I guess that means Mr. Napolitano is educated and smart, whereas the Pope is..;. well, ignorant as only a former bouncer from the back streets of Argentina can be.

Mr. Napolitano's prime article of Faith seems to be:

No economic system in history has alleviated more poverty, generated more opportunity and had more formerly poor people become rich than capitalism.

Since no proof is adduced, nor is ever adduced for this statement, it is an article of Faith, and there is absolutely nothing wrong with that. However, using such beliefs as cudgels to hit people over the head with is not a good idea.
One should only use irrefutable truths to do that!

Wealth can be evanescent unless the wealthy have instituted laws to hinder the the outflows from themselves to others. There can also be laws that unfairly reward the rich. I believe the 2008 Bank Bailout to have been a trillion dollar one.
These blemishes are beneath the level Mr. Napolitano operates on, however. They are not germane to his point, which is the ignorance of this particular Pope.

Oh, well. Have at it. Time will tell, and toll.

In the meantime, the Egyptian poet Ahmed Fouad Negm passed away:  a star in the sky has set.
He was known for his revolutionary stances:

Regarding the question of beans and meat

An alleged official source has decreed,

That medicine has advanced greatly and Dr Mohsen says:

That Egyptian people specifically are

better off eating beans instead of meat,

and that eating Egyptian beans makes you as strong as an ox,

and that such complete protein cannot be found in any other food.

Eat a portion, and Dr Mohsen is responsible.

It gives you great energy and strength,

It makes you big and strong,

It’s vegetarian meat.

Eat a pot and you’ll live long and healthy.

And Dr Mohsen adds that meat is assuredly poison,

It causes stomach pains and turns you into a thief.

It causes a person to sleep more and “blow away” appointments.

In general, those who eat meat will most definitely go to hell.

Oh, chunky Dr Mohsen, you incredible source,

You need to tell the world and the world needs to know,

What does your excellency think of a crazy man who goes around saying:

“Leave us to die from eating meat,

And you can all live on eating beans.”

What do you think, Captain Mohsen?

Isn’t it a great idea?

Not all that radical.... or is it, Mr. Napolitano?
It is not really related to your article, but it is related to inequities.

Tell us your take on it.

It would be much more edifying than seeing you call the Pope "ignorant", then reading your listing of an entire litany of your own virtues!

--

ps.

Mr. Napolitano ignores the fact that Pope Francis is not opposed to Capitalism, but is opposed to a form of Capitalism which diverts the main riches to one group.
That group uses the laws and customs to keep this status quo, or to even exacerbate the inequity.
The fact that a seamstress in Bangladesh gets more in a clothing factory than living on the farm does not mean that the analysis has come to an end. We must see what the prospects are in the future for the seamstress and her family and her children, and her childrens' children.

Mr. Napolitano is being willfully obtuse, and insists on seeing a small corner of the world, whereas the Pope sees a panorama. It is easier to make sense of a small corner. The problem is one of scaling-up to the entire world.

I have often thought that the scale-up problem is endemic in our way of looking at things starting out from our sacred egos.
The religious geniuses of the world have given us the sure ways to individual happiness that assuredly scale-up to include the world as a whole. It is, however, a bit of work to love God and love one's neighbor. It is easier to merely tolerate them.

--

Rush Calls The Pope A "Marxist Whore"!

Well, not actually quite that.
I am trying to emulate Rpert Murdoch's British tabloids with their emphasis on excitement and de-emphasis on veracity.

However, the radio brobdingnagian (or "giant", if you must) has called out Francis I:
WND
http://www.wnd.com/2013/11/rush-limbaugh-scorches-pope-francis/?cat_orig=faith

Radio giant [or  brobdingnagian] Rush Limbaugh is scorching the leader of the Roman Catholic Church for criticizing unfettered capitalism, saying, “This is just pure Marxism coming out of the mouth of the pope.”

“You know the pope, Pope Francis has issued an official papal proclamation, and it’s sad,” Limbaugh said on his national broadcast Wednesday. “It’s actually unbelievable. It’s sad because this pope makes it very clear he doesn’t know what he’s talking about when it comes to capitalism and socialism and so forth.”

“I’m not Catholic,” Limbaugh added, “but up until this I admired the man.” ...

Everybody has their own form of worship. Rush has an economic deity. It is somewhat better than a golden calf, and far be it from me to criticize his belief-system.

Let me just point out that many years ago, I had begun a slow reconciliation with the Roman Catholic Church. My reason was that I intuited that the coming future was going to be a time of troubles, and I wanted to have a big organization on my side.
I'm quite serious about that statement.
And, surprise of surprises, just as the crisis is almost here (according to my intuitions around 2016 or thereabouts), here is a Pope who is a man of the common people, one who does not believe in trickle-down anything, economics nor God's grace, for just as grace flows to all men, so should the flow of wealth not be dammed nor impeded by constraints.

Now isn't that a coincidence!

A radio host by his very nature is more of a moral quisling than a support in times of stress and suffering.
Sorry. That's how I see it.


--
--
PS.

Just after the above excerpt, there is a line in the original:

Is Pope Francis the last pope to hold office before Jesus returns to Earth? See the DVD that has the Christian world abuzz.

and it appears to be an advertisement for something.
However, the juxtaposition of it next to the essay caused a momentary conflict as to whether there was some sort of contest in the article to make one odd-ball statement, then top it with another.

But it seems to be an advertisement.
What would Christians do without End-of-Times imagery? They would be quite at a loss to describe their discontents.
Everything becomes:
"I'm mad as heck! People are fools! There's volcanoes and floods and wars. It's the end of the world!"

Even the venerable elder Billy Graham is doing it. Reverend Camping has been doing it for years, honing his talents at prediction by issuing many false end-of-times warnings.

Just say you are not satisfied, and then work to make it better. Forget your self-centered arrogance which can only conceive of the Second Coming with you either in the front row seat alive, or raptured off to some heavenly realm while the wheat and chaff are threshed and harrowed.

Do not presume to know the mind of God.

--

An Adventure In Art (49)

 

Lost Bird

GreyMocassin

http://nightkn8.deviantart.com/art/Lost-Bird-295564294

--

Back From Ma's Place

 

"Do you know the ObamaCare website," Scrooge inquired.

"I should hope I did," replied the lad.

"An intelligent boy!" said Scrooge.  "A remarkable boy! Do you know whether they"ve sold the prize Health Care Plan that there -- Not the little one; the big one?"

"It's listed there now," replied the boy.

"Is it?" said Scrooge.  "Go and buy it."

I go to my mother's every Monday. Monday is the day, because Tuesday is garbage day, so the garbage and recycling bins must be set out Monday eve, and then retrieved Tuesday morning.
I tell people I shall be in Port Huron on Monday or Tuesday; Tuesday's garbage day, I say, and ofen leave it at that, giving the impression that somehow the garbage of a town on Lake Huron and the St Clair River is incredibly interesting to me.

She has no computer. I have no phone plan nor iPhone on which to access the Internet, and even if I did, there's a 50/50 chance I'd be picked up by Rogers, the Canadian system, and thereby incur a sultan's ransom in roaming charges. (Which brings to mind scenes from the Arabian Nights, and a princess sitting daintily on one side of a large balance. Various servile types fill the other side of the balance with tech gizmos and jewel-encrusted roaming charges.)

So I am incommunicado. 
I have found that lately when I use the term "incommunicado", people look at me and ask how the line of talk switched to football. I have found that they are mixed up with the term "incognito", a footballer by that name having been in the tabloids recently.
Was it "Ritchie Incognito" and the Miami Dolphins?
The team really should look for other muscular fellows with names like "Joey Incommunicado" and "Manny Ipso Facto" and "Eli Non Sequitur"
I have also found that sometimes I might as well just speak some sort of made-up, my-own-private-Idaho pidgin and people would understand just as well as they do now.

Anyway, so Tuesday past we put up my mother's Christmas tree, put the lights on it, argued about lights, bemoaned the fact that there are no design standards for Xmas lights: the electrical aspect has standards, but everything else is proprietary and idiosyncratic, which comes down to no bulb which you have saved from a bygone time as a spare to fill in for future burnt out lights has a chance of fitting into the socket.... no way, Padre del Niño!

We did the exterior lights (It was a cool, breezy, spitting-frozen-rain day in the higher 30's, which was pretty good for Port Huron at this time of year. I have done this exterior light bit in bitter cold winds with hands bleeding from barberry bush thorns, as I thought that Jesus' parents would never ask him to put up lights in the cold, but parents are parents everywhere and everywhen, so they probably did ask him.)

We did banking, grocery shopping, post office, a bit of cleaning, and chased down my brother twice to give him some Care packages my mother had done up.

We returned home and got the mail. One of the envelopes was not easy to open.
My mother began theorizing as to why a person who wished to send you information would chose to send it to you in an envelope that defied discovery of the contents.
She continued in this vein for about 45 seconds, instead of looking for a letter opener. It had become an inquiry into society in the 21st century, wherein the remnants of the Greatest Generation cast their judgmental and sour eyes over the hi-jinks of the following generations, and found them wanting.
(The Greatest Gens really should cut us some slack, even though - I must admit - that goings on in the present do more often than not resemble All Fools' Day riots staged in the precincts of Hogarth's engraved Bedlams; All Fools or Dies Irae... we are very bi-polar in these times.)

Stroke of the old genius hit me (and I wondered where it had disappeared to for so long).

"That must be an ObamaCare envelope," I said.

"An Obama-Lope," I added.

She agreed, and muttered some things limbaughian in re ObamaCare, but you could tell she was slightly off-kilter. She was used to setting me up as some devil's advocate for Mr. Obama, and then throwing offal at the opinions she imputed to me about the contemporary Fall from the Eden of the Greatest Gens, the most recent and atrocious example being ObamaCare.
Now here I was using the old sobriquet of ObamaCare to condemn faulty stationery.
She rambled a bit. She was beginning to lose focus. I took the envelope and ripped it open. It was, of course, some more polls for old folks to condemn the present state of affairs, and -  by the way - send us some dollars to keep up the good work!
So it was trashed. Even she does not send money to political goobers, even though she may watch and listen to them.

However, now I have it. Everything that goes awry will be an ObamaCare something-or-other.
I will positively focus on it.
And it must be "ObamaCare such-and-such", for that mocks the recent mad focus of the witless. If I were to say "Obama such-and-such", I would become a Palin, and that would be a cruel redundancy to inflict upon the world!

Later that evening, just before I left to drive home in the dark, I said the tree looked great, even though we had some burnt outs lights we could not replace... ObamaCare lights!

I will fill the air like a real Republican,  bereft of ideas and plans, but filled with a burning focus on a single issue.

I might even send out letters to particularly obnoxious conservative types who have annoyed me in the past. I might ask them to contribute to the fund to buy my new computer, 'cuz my old one works like... ObamaCare!!!... now!

That nice old lady picked the wrong "liberal" to mess with!

(Of course, this all depends on the continued good workings of the website, which at Tuesday seemed to be OK. If all goes to heck, I can be obnoxious and ironic at the same time, and just continue saying it.)

--

Florida

We are going to Florida again this year, having booked the bookables that one needs to book.
I wonder if we shall see Lizard Breath again and his sister, Gecko Eyes, again.
So I reprinted this for anyone who is not familiar with them.

There are a lot on geckos in Florida. The place is infested by them. They should be the state animal, if they are not already so designated. It was in a discussion of geckos that I first met Lizard Breath, a young man possessing that uncanny ability so well and truly depicted in Jurassic Park of being able to imprint and bond with the first person of advanced years who cannot stand kids.
I mean, it was Spring Break and I had just come down in a flying sardine can filled with the germ-laden X-Box generation, had I not? And who said the economy was in the tank, for had not all of them had some sort of iDevice upon which they were playing Angry Birds or a form of Quidditch; the less athletically inclined formed large flash texting mobs in corner of the aircraft, and threatened to unbalanced the wretched thing, forcing the flight attendants to chase them back to their seats, and wake up their blissfully sleeping parents.

We were staying with friends at Johns Island. It was one of those places where, as our friends drove us around, everyone smiled and waved. Even in the morning the scads of people going early morning walk-about smiled and waved.
When I went walking in the morning, no one smiled and waved to me. I guessed they knew that I was just passing through. Perhaps it was my demeanor. One day as I waited for my friends outside the Publix supermarket, some people asked me if I were on my way back to the marina, indicating I resembled a yacht owner... or a swabby; I did not ask, so I remain in the dark. All I do know is that I had a Tommy Bahama on over a Del Boca Vista T-shirt, and I thought I looked more like Jack Klompus, and an inquiry about the astronaut ball point pen might have been in order, rather than the maritime connection.

I was sitting behind the 19th Hole, the small cafe off the 18th green of the Johns Island Golf Club, sipping a cup of tea, and watching the egrets standing about like statues. So was a woman in dark glasses accompanied by three children. She belonged; I knew it at once. Even without make-up early in the morning, I could see she belonged. She had that air of being able to summon the spirits and faeries of make-up and fashion at a moment's notice, if need be; but there was no need, for she had already sized me up and tossed me into that trash receptacle reserved for tiresome pedants. I think it was my sneakers that gave me away.
The children were of various ages: the oldest girl sipped her orange juice and intermittently did her daily dozen of lip-push-ups, consisting of a series of sucking in the cheeks and compressing the lips outward in emphatic moues, followed by a shrug that seemed to signal it was not really worth the effort.
The younger two, a boy and girl, were a brace of pestilences in training.

There followed a lengthy interlude of muted giggles and Indian burns and almost spilled OJs, interspersed by half serious remonstrations by the mother. It was a lot like sitting in the midst of an elementary school production of Waiting for Godot, only not as thrilling as the original.

Then the egret moved! He was not ten feet from us, and he thrust his beak into the bush, spearing a gecko, and then throwing it down his gullet! It was electric... rather like being a thorough tool and sitting through Warhol's Empire and spilling one's fourth bag of popcorn when startled by the sudden appearance of a sea gull flying by the lofty pile of bricks.
The mother did not move, and the eldest daughter moued at it all, but I positively goggled, and the other two were breathless.
"Wow!" said the boy.
"Shit!" said the young girl.
"Madison...," admonished the mother, leaving unspoken the coda that one should not use the S-word in front of people who had not been properly introduced.
I considered, then spoke, "That egret just ate that gecko!"
Gecko of the infraorder Gekkota I immediately learned from the Science Whiz Kids sitting next to me.
"That was just like school!", I said.
The younger ones of the crowd sort of turned half way to look at me.
"I used to have a nun like that who taught me in fifth grade..." I thought this might be about their age. "... and she would come down the aisles, tall and silent, then suddenly whack people with a ruler!"
They giggled.
The egret struck again. He apparently loved to be the center of attention.
"Thwack! Don't play video games in class!" the boy said. All three of us laughed.

This game of personifying our freedom and play as reptiles and our oppressors as thin, unemotional, goggle-eyed birds went on for a while, and then for a couple mornings thereafter.
And the boy became Lizard Breath, the girl was Gecko Eyes, and I was Pygopod. If you must know, it comes from Pygopodidae, a family of Gekkota, and it is pronounced "PIG-opod", with all the possible emphasis on the  "pig..."   part with a barely muttered  "...opod"  at the end. It often degenerated - in our subversive creole - into something like "piggy-pod".
However, I counted this a real feather in my cap, because just as the nicknames were being dealt out (in the manner of "he who dealt it, smelt it!"), there had been a vigorous show-and-tell about gecko defences and about how some throw feces at aggressors. That was not a good discussion to be in when names were being discovered and assigned.

And that is how I met Lizard Breath.
--

The Great Recovery From The Great Recession

Mother Jones
http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2013/11/wall-street-buying-foreclosed-homes

In hindsight, it's clear that the Great Recession fueled a terrific wealth and asset transfer away from ordinary Americans and to financial institutions. During that crisis, Americans lost trillions of dollars of household wealth when housing prices crashed, while banks seized about five million homes. But what's just beginning to emerge is how, as in the recession years, the recovery itself continues to drive the process of transferring wealth and power from the bottom to the top.

From 2009-2012, the top 1% of Americans captured 95% of income gains. Now, as the housing market rebounds, billions of dollars in recovered housing wealth are flowing straight to Wall Street instead of to families and communities. Since spring 2012, just at the time when Blackstone began buying foreclosed homes in bulk, an estimated $88 billion of housing wealth accumulation has gone straight to banks or institutional investors as a result of their residential property holdings, according to an analysis by TomDispatch. And it's a number that's likely to just keep growing.

"Institutional investors are siphoning the wealth and the ability for wealth accumulation out of underserved communities," says Henry Wade, founder of the Arizona Association of Real Estate Brokers.

--
note

The Isadore Freleng credited in the cartoon is the same person as Fritz Freleng.

Let The Buyer Be Baited!

 Bear Baiting In The Middle Ages With Dogs And Rods

(No Special Discounts Were Used Back Then)

After the Thanksgiving Sales and Black Friday riots, I have decided that I will now look into where my purchases are made, and try to get some idea of the working conditions of the people who make them.

If I have to watch retailers play their annual "Consumer Baiting" games with the country, I will at least not buy anything made by wage slaves and people who are being oppressed by their employers, and whose products are brought over here for us to spar over like cocks in a fighting ring.

There is enough arrogance and disregard already. We should add no more.
We are approaching Peak Arroagnce And Peak Contempt. Let us end it now.

--

What Will We Do When Winter Comes?

 

Dead In Dakota

BBC
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-25154370

Nearly two months after devastating blizzards hit parts of South Dakota and Wyoming, farmers are still recovering from the loss of cattle and the effect on their businesses.

The week before the storm, it had been wet and mild and the prairies of the Great Plains were deep in mud.
Then, the first winter snow came early and unexpectedly in an icy blast from the north-west.
Trapped in the mud, 30,000 cattle suffocated and froze to death. They were buried in 20ft (6m) snow drifts, entombed in ice in what ranchers call the "breaks and draws" - the slopes and valleys - of the rolling prairie hills.
Larry Stomprud is a tall, thin cowboy wearing a black leather waistcoat and slim-cut blue jeans. Grey hair peeps from beneath his brown cowboy hat.

He is a tough rancher who has spent half a century herding cattle. But his voice falters and there are tears in his eyes as he describes the devastation on his ranch.
"I looked at my grandfather's records," he says quietly. "It was the worst storm for 150 years." His throat is strangled with anguish and with sadness as he says: "God entrusted us with the care of these animals and we failed them." ...

 and as a note from Agriculture.Com:

 "While total losses are still being determined, this major blizzard has killed huge numbers of livestock across western South Dakota," U.S. Senator Tim Johnson (D-SD) said Monday. "Exacerbating these losses is the fact that the government shutdown has shuttered USDA’s Farm Service Agency’s (FSA) offices across the state. As a result, producers don’t even have anyone to contact at USDA for assistance in documenting losses."

and from Here & Now on November 13
http://hereandnow.wbur.org/2013/11/13/ranchers-cattle-blizzard

GERLOCK: The government treats livestock differently than crops. While corn and soybean farmers are protected by crop insurance paid for in part by the government, there's no equivalent livestock insurance program. Instead, in 2008, Congress added a livestock indemnity program to the farm bill to help when disaster strikes.

Brad Lubben is an ag economist at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln.
BRAD LUBBEN: The livestock indemnity program pays a percentage of the market value of animals lost due to the disaster event. I believe that the rate is around 65, 70 percent of the value of the animal.

GERLOCK: But that's the program that expired. The House and Senate are negotiating a new farm bill which is expected to renew the livestock disaster program when it's finally passed.

ROB REID: That might be so far down the road that these guys will be buried by that time.

and 3 days ago from Mother Jones:

Dems Say Boehner Blocking Farm Bill, Wants More Food Stamp Cuts

And that sums it up. Just a year ago it was Hurricane Sandy and the Governor of New Jersey had to threaten Republican leaders of the House.

To prove their ideologies and to balance their budgets, some leaders will let us pay any price, bear any burden,and meet any hardship.

--

Kinky Boots On Parade

 Macy's Parade

The cast of Kinky Boots on Broadway did a few turns in the Macy's Thanksgiving Day parade, inflaming certain elements of the population, who were shocked that Macy's would have men dancing in drag on TV. One person wondered how, oh, how, he would explain such things to his children, who were sitting in front of the TV, taking it all in.

I seem to remember this. In the front room at my mother's where we were prepping the bird and starches and veggies, the TV was hugely plasmatic about 9:00, filled with the two parades: Detroit's and New York's.
I was getting the wires straightened about for the hot plates. I looked over and saw some figures moving in what seemed to be synchronicity - an event I deemed to be "dancing"... my sight is not all that great and I need new glasses - and heard the announcer yell "Blah, blah, blah, Kinky Boots cast, blah, blah!"


(Now this dancing and synchronicity thing had already been a crux of discussion twixt Moms and Self.
Thanksgiving eve my other had told me she was seeing double. This was the first instance of my accusing her of eating too much bourbon soaked fruit cake - a cake which she had dotted with bourbon that Monday afternoon.

I said that we should mention it to the doctor, and when was the next appointment, and maybe we should move it up a bit.
Now that I had the hook in my mouth, she sought to bury it deeply.
"I don't see everything double. There was a girl at the far end of the lawn. I think she was dancing. I saw two of her."
I asked if she had closed one eye.
"Oh, no. I did not see anything else double. I didn't see the light posts double. The bridge [over the St. Clair River] wasn't double. Just the girl. Now why would that be?"

I said that maybe there were two girls, and that they were dancing.
"I thought of that," she said. "But every movement was the exact same. If it was dancing, it wouldn't be synchronized."

I explained that all dancing was not like that of the Astaire siblings, wherein each partner has their own pattern to follow. There was indeed something - which, I confess, hitherto I had almost completely ignored - called synchronized dancing, synchronized swimming, synchronized swim-dancing... the list is unfortunately interminable.
And the point was, believe it or not, to move in a synchronized manner.

She was having none of it.
A recondite and arcane explanation, reached by some torturous and circuitous logic of the watches of the night, had already occurred to her, and she would give voice.

I realized we had reached a point when she was about to blindside me with science, some explanation which would strain the imagination of even those physicists that still believe in Dark Matter.
So I jumped in. "Well, do you think it was witchcraft, or perhaps some supernatural deal?"

She shook her head, amazed at the depth of my stupidity. How jejune it was, she must have thought, to split the world into your two categories of Sense and Nonsense! Poor schlemiels were her offspring, indeed!)


I just thought briefly that Kinky Boots might be an odd choice for the parade, but that thought was a brief candle extinguished by the hundred mile per hour winds of Hurricane Gobble-Diddly.

Anyway, that is a problem the great minds of the country will have to sort out. Personally, if my parents had mentioned off-hand one Thanksgiving morning that those men on the TV screen liked to dress up as women and dance, I would probably have thought of Halloween costumes, or of Ensign Parker and Tinker of McHale's Navy dressed up in hula skirts.

Of course, I was also devastated when I found out that the Synchronized Marching Lawyers With Briefcases were not really lawyers at all. I should have known.... when I had asked them for their autographs one year, not one had added "Esquire"!

Where was I?
Ah, Kinky Boots.
I actually was watching the 2005 film Kinky Boots this morning at 5:00 am, the punctuated type of watching one does when one is doing something else and needs the reassuring white noise of TV in the background.
I became interested in it. Even though the plot was extremely predictable, some of the characters in the shoe factory were very well done and interesting, and the cinematography by Eigil Bryld was arresting.
The scenes that featured boots and shoes were beautiful. I have never seen shoes that way before. It was as if Vermeer had painted them, and I got a distinct impression-memory of The Girl With The Pearl Earring. The footware did shine, just as does the pearl.

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