tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-166469922024-03-07T13:00:59.566-10:00Reflecting LightSpirituality. Psychical research. Politics. And the way we live now.<br><br>
<big><b><center>" ... Olympos, where the abode of the gods stands firm and unmoving forever, they say, and is not shaken with winds nor spattered with rains, nor does snow pile ever there, but the shining bright air stretches cloudless away, and the white light glances upon it."</center></b></big><br><br>
<b>Homer, <i>The Odyssey</i>, Book VI (Richmond Lattimore translation)</b>Rick Darbyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02371910140619422820noreply@blogger.comBlogger1197125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16646992.post-13946383711518121522015-10-05T07:28:00.000-10:002015-10-06T02:33:28.845-10:00Good-bye<br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><b>Reflecting Light </b>has been reflecting lightly for 10 years, since September 2005. I'm suspending it now -- I say "suspending" because I don't know, sometime I might want to revive it, but it's only fair to readers to acknowledge that the thrill is gone, the amusement is gone, and there's no point keeping the blog on a drip feed of occasional posts.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">I've decided on this course for various reasons, but I suppose the main one is that it no longer serves any purpose. Quite a bit of what I wrote some years ago was satire on then-current events, often political. But today's reality is so twisted that it's beyond my ability to satirize. I am hardly alone in thinking Western civilization is in existential peril: we will be lucky to escape being saturated by government control, including of speech and self-expression, or subjugation to the forces of jihad, including jihad by migrant invasion and massive birth rates among the migrants. I can't laugh at such prospects and poking fun at rampant madness seems now like a futile gesture.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">Of course there are other subjects besides the geopolitical, and maybe I will (after a suitable respite) take them up as I often have in <b>Reflecting Light</b>, maybe in a new blog. Right now I don't feel up to it.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">Is any hope left? Of course: God, love, wisdom. May you experience one or all.</span><br />
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Rick Darbyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02371910140619422820noreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16646992.post-85556458289811950762015-08-26T09:39:00.000-10:002015-09-07T13:35:39.273-10:00Next week's headlines -- today!9.7.15: Okay, the first headline is wrong. The Triple Crown Winner in the Vatican would never get as close to practical reality as to suggest new taxes, or anything else, to implement His Holiness's desire to help Africans/Muslims outbreed relatively sane populations. Our political and "spiritual" moral exhibitionists don't live in the same world we do. Their world is all about <i>symbolism</i>, you dig? So Il Papa is going to allow, what is it, two "migrants" to live in the Vatican State? Yeah, big flipping deal, Pope, you stupid asshole.<br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><b>Pope Francis </b></span><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><b>Says </b></span><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><b>All Mankind Responsible for </b></span><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><b>Feeding Africa: "New Taxes Needed"</b></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><b>Fences Can't Stop Migrants</b></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><b>Merkel Reaffirms "No Border Controls" Essential for European Unity</b></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><b>David Cameron Says Calais Crisis "Unacceptable," Proposes More Resettlement Aid for Migrants in U.K. </b>[</span><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">"David Cameron confirms Britain will act with its 'head and its heart' and accept thousands of refugees" -- <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/11843588/Cameron-confirms-Britain-will-act-with-its-head-and-its-heart-and-accept-thousands-of-refugees.html" target="_blank"><i>The Telegraph</i>, 9/4/15</a>] </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><b>Indigenous Population of France to Dwindle to 20 Percent by 2025</b></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><b>GOP Can't Win Without Hispanic Votes, Jeb Bush Says</b></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><b>28,000 Migrants Rescued at Sea, Greek Govt Requisitions All Cruise, Freighter Ships to House Them</b></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><b>Family Values Don't Stop at the Mediterranean: Jeb Bush </b></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><b>Germany Must Welcome 2 Billion Africans, Merkel Says: "Otherwise We're Just Like the Nazis" </b>["No Limit to Refugees Germany Can Take In" -- <a href="http://www.thelocal.de/20150831/there-is-no-limit-to-the-refugees-germany-can-take-in" target="_blank"><i>The Local</i>, 8/31/15</a>]</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><b>Professors Sign Manifesto Calling <i>Camp of the Saints</i> "Racist Book," Demand All Copies Be Destroyed</b></span><br />
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<span id="goog_1576784684"></span><span id="goog_1576784685"></span><br />Rick Darbyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02371910140619422820noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16646992.post-60780626687160051672015-08-20T12:24:00.000-10:002015-08-20T15:00:42.155-10:00Hold the applause<br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">This isn't, actually, another post about music except incidentally. It's about audiences.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">The other day I was listening to<i> Bill Evans Trio at Shelly's Manne-Hole</i>, recorded at a club performance in 1963. Bill Evans hardly needs a plug from me. Aside from the playing, one thing that struck me about the recording was ... the audience. </span>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><a href="http://i232.photobucket.com/albums/ee227/vechzl/Bill%20Evans%20Trio%20at%20Shelleys%20Mann-Hole%20001_zps5e5rzflh.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://i232.photobucket.com/albums/ee227/vechzl/Bill%20Evans%20Trio%20at%20Shelleys%20Mann-Hole%20001_zps5e5rzflh.jpg" height="197" width="200" /></a>At the end of each number, they applauded. That's all: they applauded. No shouting. No whistling. No "Yeah!"s. No foot stomping.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">The bassist, Chuck Israels, did a fine extended solo on "All the Things You Are." (This was a different trio from the one with which Evans had become famous. That earlier line-up had ended with the tragic death in a car accident of the bassist Scott LaFaro.) There were only two or three seconds of mild applause for the solo, which today would have sent the crowd wild.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">You might argue that the audience wasn't sophisticated enough to understand what now passes for correct receptivity. I say ish kabibble to that. A trio date in a Los Angeles club would not have had a bunch of rubes for customers. They were more likely some of the keenest listeners around. They expressed their appreciation through treating Evans and his crew as artists, not circus performers.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">So they didn't ecstatically applaud Israels's solo. Could it have been because they understood it was a component of the song as a whole, not a personal exhibition?</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">The behavior of audiences has worsened considerably in my lifetime. Rock music started the breakthrough, or breakdown. ("More! More!") I've been to some great rock concerts, but almost always felt distaste for the shrieks and "participation" of the listeners, if they really were listening that is.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">What's going on? I think at the most primitive level concerts are one of the few occasions now where people feel they can express themselves without fear of getting into trouble. In everyday life, they must pre-censor every word. Better to stick to sports and weather. You never know who might be <i>offended</i>. Heavens, they might innocently utter a politically incorrect formulation that would cause some identity freak to screech, "That's racist! Xenophobic! Homophobic! Patriarchal!" etc., etc. But who can criticize you for going over the moon about musicians? </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">And it's not just rock or jazz performances anymore. Classical concert audiences have their own buffoons. While only a small portion -- so far -- applaud between movements, once the piece is over they go ape. Always, <i>always </i>a standing ovation for a concerto or symphony. A standing ovation used to <i>mean </i>something, that this wasn't just a good performance, but something truly extraordinary. Now the standing is routine.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">Classical audiences like to imagine how deeply they appreciate what they heard. Oh, do they appreciate it. They desperately show the world their "sensitivity": "Yeah!" "<i>Bravo!</i>" (They're too ignorant to know that if you must use this word, it should be "<i>Brava!</i>" when directed at a woman.) "Woh!!!!" What dolts they are.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">But that's not enough for a writer in Britain's <i>The Telegraph</i>, within living memory a conservative paper, now a mouthpiece for that sad country's cultural Marxist Establishment.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">"Are young people scared of the Proms [the annual Promenade concert series] -- or the audience?" asks the headline. Jonathan McAloon <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/music/classical-music/are-young-people-scared-of-the-proms/" target="_blank">writes</a>:</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="color: #38761d;"><b><span class="m_first-letter">T</span>he classical music establishment
has never been more desperate to shake its elitist image. The Proms is
especially conscious of making space for fresh musical combinations to
entice people who might feel alienated by the repertoire: Gabriel
Prokofiev’s Concerto for Turntables and Orchestra saw traditional
instruments remixed live by DJ Switch in 2011. This year, the late
slot opened its arms to dance icon Pete Tong and grime duo Krept &
Konan. No one could fault the on-message Proms programmers for their
inclusivity. But it isn’t the repertoire that’s forbidding to
newcomers: it is the audience.</b></span></span><br />
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While on the surface there is a pressure to modernise, there is also
a deep-seated coldness and snootiness in the attitude of many – though
of course by no means all – hardened Prom-goers. </b></span></span></blockquote>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">He doesn't give many examples of the alleged "snootiness" except for some traditionalists glaring at audience members applauding inappropriately and making too much noise.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="color: #38761d;"><b>There needs to be an incentive for new audience members to take
seats in the stalls. Perhaps a limited number of seats could be
reserved for those who have never attended before. Or there could be a
special offer for Proms regulars who bring first-timers, thus
encouraging the passing on of tradition and knowledge </b><span style="color: black;">[Huh? Tradition and knowledge are exactly what McAloon despises]</span><b>: in this way,
newcomers could quickly learn how best to avoid annoying the
unforgiving killjoys. </b></span></span></blockquote>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">Of course, the first timers might need to learn something about manners. But that would mean they'd have to, my God, <i>restrain </i>themselves. Oh, the poor dears. Imagine some ancient mossback looking askance at them for whooping, dancing in the aisle, or maybe taking their clothes off and doing cartwheels. If classical music is to have any future (according to this McAloon character) the audience must feel comfortable expressing itself, any time, any way. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">I, an unforgiving killjoy, hope McAloon's attitude is mainly limited to degenerate London. But I wouldn't bet on it. Waive, Britannia! Britannia, waive the rules! Those are for snooty old people. Why don't they just f-f-f-ade away?</span><br />
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<br />Rick Darbyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02371910140619422820noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16646992.post-54985168702500919742015-08-09T04:01:00.001-10:002015-08-09T12:59:10.167-10:00Karajan's Bruckner 8th on video<br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">I have long praised Herbert von Karajan's performance of the Bruckner 8th with the Vienna Philharmonic as one of the most sublime recordings ever. Until recently, I had not watched the DVD of him in charge of the same music (made a few years earlier than the studio CD). The DVD was taped at St. Florian in Linz, Austria, with an audience present.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">Is there a reason to acquire, or at least watch, the DVD? I am not expert enough to comment on any interpretative differences between the performances, and am not even sure whether they are quite the same version of the symphony (all Bruckner's symphonies except the 6th were revised by the composer and later editors). Musically, I hear no cause to choose one over the other. The sound is surprisingly good on both video and audio discs, though not up to the best to be had today.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">At the very least -- yes, the DVD is worth viewing and hearing. Part of the reason is the venue. St. Florian monastery is, like so many Austrian churches and cathedrals, a Baroque visual knockout.</span><br />
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An explosion of color and ornament, yet restrained and balanced. You don't get a lot of close-ups of the performing space in the video disc, but it's there in the background adding beautiful atmosphere. In this monastery Bruckner studied and taught before his date with immortality in Vienna. His human remains are buried here.<br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">Karajan is the most controversial conductor of all time. To over-generalize a bit, listeners love his performances, critics hate them and him. In the U.K. especially, to get your Critics Union card, you must demonstrate a longtime history of Karajan bashing. Their den mother is the noted loon Norman Lebrecht.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">The maestro doesn't go in for histrionics on the podium. No making faces à la Bernstein. No jumping and arms raised to the skies. He doesn't jab a finger or his stick at the orchestral section about to make a big statement.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">Karajan does use his hands, albeit with restraint. But his face is mask-like, unsmiling. As usual in his later years, he conducts with eyes closed. Watching Karajan in this DVD would probably drive Lebrecht and his colleagues to new heights of loathing. "Look at him, he must be angry at the orchestra! Self-centered impudent snob!"</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">On the contrary, I think he is telling the orchestra members something like this (and from the evidence, they get the message):</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><i><b>While you are playing this symphony, nothing else on earth matters. Not me, not the audience, not the decor of the hall. Every cell of your being will concentrate on the music until we get to the final note. Every phrase you draw from your instrument will be a prayer directly to Heaven. You are privileged to be expressing one of the great works of the human soul. In it, Anton Bruckner was striving to reach God. I don't care what you believe or don't believe when you get home; for now, you will do whatever is in your power to realize God in sound. A musician can have no higher calling.</b></i></span><br />
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<br />Rick Darbyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02371910140619422820noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16646992.post-56457400201913803312015-08-01T08:24:00.000-10:002015-08-01T11:24:11.640-10:00The Fires of Vesuvius<br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">This is how a history book should be written -- to inform, to encourage the reader to think, and to entertain. Anyone planning to visit Pompeii who wants to get beyond the standard guidebook clichés should read <i>The Fires of Vesuvius </i>beforehand, taking it along on the trip as well. It will be equally riveting for anyone with a serious interest in the world's most famous historical ruins.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">The coach tours instruct their captive audiences that Pompeii is an ancient Roman town "frozen in time," a step back into A.D. 79 when it was buried by ashes from the eruption of Mount Vesuvius. Obviously there is some truth in that, but as author Mary Beard shows in various ways, it is by no means entirely true.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">For one thing, even motor coach lecturers point out that most of the murals and other artwork decorating the Pompeiian villas are no longer in the ruins, but on display in the Naples archaeological museum. And a damn good thing that is. Few would have survived had they been left <i>in situ</i>. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">Beard includes reproductions of several old drawings of ancient wall paintings and sculptures. The originals are now gone or severely faded. Archaeologists, historians, and art lovers mourn them.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">When first excavated in the 18th century the buildings were in considerably worse shape than they are now, after much restoration. Damage from an earthquake in 62 had not been completely fixed when Vesuvius erupted, and the volcanic ash collapsed roofs, which in turn destroyed many interior furnishings. Frozen in time, but a time when a lot of the city had been trashed.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">We don't know how much of the evidence uncovered was looted or lost after seeing the light for the first time after some 1,800 years. As if that weren't enough, the city was literally bombed by Allied aircraft in 1943! Why? Beard doesn't say. Of course many sites of historic importance were also blown up in the world wars, the most famous being the abbey Monte Cassino (founded by St. Benedict in 529) in the campaign to take Rome. But at least Monte Cassino was a military target, believed occupied by the German army -- although there has been controversy about whether that was so at the time of the destruction. Were there German units touring the temples and brothels of Pompeii?</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">But such considerations make up only a small part of <i>The Fires of Vesuvius</i>. The author concentrates on what is still available to see now, with a historically informed enthusiasm. She seems to have read everything ever written about Pompeian history by ancient and modern authors, although she says her lists of sources are "inevitably selective"; the impressive bibliography includes works in several languages.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">Beard wears her learning lightly. Although writing with enough detail to satisfy the curious non-specialist reader, she's no show-off. Her style avoids academic jargon, using ordinary but evocative language. Here's a sample:</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="color: #38761d;"><b>One of the hardest things to recapture [for the modern visitor] is the combination of gaudy brightness and dingy gloom that characterised Pompeian houses of this type. The vast majority were originally painted in vivid colours, which have in many cases now faded to, literally, pale imitations of what they once were: deep reds to washed-out pinks, bright yellows to creamy pastel. </b></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="color: #38761d;"><b><br /></b></span></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="color: #38761d;"><b>And it was not just a matter of coloured walls. Though the original ceilings rarely survive, where they have been reconstructed (by piecing together the fallen plasterwork found on the floor) they also are sometimes ornately decorated and coloured in rich hues. ... Like the Pompeian street, many a Pompeian house would have been, in our terms, an assault on the visual senses.</b></span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="color: #38761d;"><b>The assault was perhaps mitigated by the general darkness. For while the sunlight would have streamed into the atrium through the open roof, and into the peristyle garden, many other rooms had little or no access to light -- except what they could borrow from those internal sources.</b></span></span></blockquote>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">External windows, she says, were generally few and small. No wonder we have found so many once-hanging oil lamps.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><i>The Fires of Vesuvius</i> examines Pompeii, and a few nearby areas, from many angles -- streets, shops, residences, religious rites, fun and games, politics (even managing to make the last more interesting than you might think). The famous houses of ill repute (probably not scandalous at the time, although sited in their own "red light district" so to speak) and the gladiatorial games are given their due but not emphasized for the sake of sensationalism. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">Graffiti seem to have been scrawled all over town, including on the internal pillars of the Basilica in the Forum. Some were electioneering "posters," some sexual boasting, some silly jokes, pretty much like what might appear today on billboards or rest room walls.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">Mary Beard is a professor (or whatever the proper term may be) at Newnham College, Cambridge. Newnham, incidentally, is where one of the distinguished early leaders of the Society for Psychical Research, Eleanor Sidgwick, taught.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">Beard is a media celebrity in the U.K., where she has written and presented the BBC TV series <i>Meet the Romans</i>.</span><br />
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Rick Darbyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02371910140619422820noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16646992.post-71755708353898786132015-07-24T11:34:00.001-10:002015-07-29T23:56:32.050-10:00Asterisks<br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">I was planning to continue my sabbatical from blogging for a while, but I feel like I ought to elaborate a little on a note I have placed on the blogroll. Specifically, there are now asterisks following the links to <b>Sultan Knish</b> (Daniel Greenfield) and <b>Gates of Vienna</b>. Here is the note they refer to:</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><b><span style="color: #274e13;">*Courageous on Islam. But also cowardly PC liberals who refuse to print
comments about other threats to civilization (e.g., genocide of whites). </span></b></span></blockquote>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">The hosts of both those sites would sooner go on a permanent halal diet than hint at the <a href="http://anepigone.blogspot.com/2015/07/blacks-crush-blacks.html" target="_blank">highly disproportionate black crime rate</a>. (Tip o' the lid to Steve Sailer)</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">Sultan Knish has two topics that he recycles endlessly with variations: Islam and support for Israel. Fine. Lots of bloggers have their specialties. One might wish, however, that he would at least recognize that the worldwide jihad is not an isolated phenomenon. It is one facet of an all-encompassing movement, the Hard Left's drive to make whites ashamed and guilty, the better to subjugate them as quickly as what remains of the rule of law allows. The militant advance of Islam that so disturbs Mr. Knish would not gain the slightest foothold if Western today's white people had the self-confidence and pride of earlier days. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">But Mr. Knish will have no parley with the heathens. In my experience, he allows no comments <i>from readers</i> that fail to track his party line and obsessions. Presumably he believes that if only Israel's enemies were wiped out we would have heaven on earth.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">Just try sending him a comment about another <i>intifada </i>-- of black criminals preying on whites in huge numbers and the mainstream media blackout (pun intended, as usual) that tries to prevent the word from getting out. Has he ever, <i>ever </i>uttered a peep about white farmers in South Africa tortured, killed, and driven off their land? About the <a href="http://nicholasstixuncensored.blogspot.com/2014/09/the-wichita-massacre.html" target="_blank">Wichita massacre</a>? About the <a href="http://worth-reading-blog.blogspot.com/2010/08/knoxville-horror-channon-christian.html" target="_blank">Knoxville torture-killings</a> of Channon Christian and Christopher Newsom? Not to my knowledge, and I've read him for years. Too bad the villains weren't Muslims and the victims Jews; descriptions of the events would be part of his standard repertory.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">Mr. Knish will remain in the "Worth Your Time" category, because he is worth your time. He writes decently and sometimes better than that. It takes guts to call out Muslim outrages in our politically correct, suicidally tolerant culture, especially with Buraq and his mob in power. Too bad his compassion boundaries don't extend past Jews and Israelis. And heaven forbid offending any blacks (or immigrants, unless they're Muslims)! </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">He's a New Yorker, after all.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">Baron Bodissey and his consort, Dymphna, have created in <b>Gates of Vienna</b> a network of essayists and links about many followers of The Prophet (pbuh) leaving a trail of intolerance and slaughter. Baron and Dymphna are brave, too, living out in the sticks somewhere in Virginia where I doubt they can expect much protection. Their anti-jihad activities put them at great risk, and not only from Buraq's U.S. government forces. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">But "the Baron," as Dymphna likes to style him, is quite overt about squelching comments that don't fit <i>his </i>agenda. Does that remind you of any other media?</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">The Baron doesn't just hold comments for approval; he stops them cold with a firewall called Securi WebSite. </span><br />
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<h4>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="color: #274e13;">What is going on?</span></span></h4>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="color: #274e13;"><b>You are not allowed to access the requested page. If you are the site owner, please open a ticket in our support page if you think it was caused by an error: <a href="https://support.sucuri.net/">https://support.sucuri.net</a>.
If you are not the owner of the web site, you can contact us at
soc@sucuri.net. Also make sure to include the block details (displayed
below), so we can better troubleshoot the error.</b></span></span><br />
<ul>
<li><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="color: #274e13;"><b>Block reason: SPAM request was blocked.</b></span></span></li>
</ul>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">He doesn't even know what I was going to say in my comment -- doesn't even know I was trying to send one -- and it's blocked because it's supposed to be spam!</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">I'll admit I have a grudge against the Baron. Some years ago, before he started hiding behind a firewall, one of my comments temporarily got through. It included a (reportedly true) story about Bozo, or Bono, or whatever pretentious name the U2 guy travels under.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">Bono stood on the stage in front of an audience, doing what I have come to learn is his standard holier-than-thou poseur's act. The lights were dimmed for dramatic effect. Amid dead silence Bono repeatedly slapped his hands together. "Every time I clap my hands, a child in Africa dies," he said solemnly. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">Voice from the audience: "Well, then, stop fuckin' doin' it!"</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">Now I don't normally use or approve of that kind of language. In context, I thought it sounded realistic and made the anecdote funnier.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">The Baron did not agree. In an offensively condescending manner, he explained to your poor ignorant writer-editor-blogger than the proper way to have quoted the line would be to have used dashes in the bad word. I should have written "f-----". Home schooled children might have read the spelled-out obscenity! He deleted my comment.</span><br />
<b><span style="color: #274e13;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"></span><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"></span></span></b><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">Thank you, sir, I needed that slap! (Hollywood Mummy Museum, circa 1935) Naturally, the Baron's site with its gruesome accounts of beheading, shooting, bombing, crucifying, burying alive, and other imaginative ways of killing infidels must be kept family friendly. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">The Baron's latest rules for commenting run to five long paragraphs. This is typical:</span><br />
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<b><span style="color: #274e13;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">Characteristics of unacceptable responses include, but are not limited
to: hostility of tone, reliance on insinuation, the employment of heavy
sarcasm, condescension, or hectoring. The determination of the presence
of any of these traits in a comment is at the sole discretion of this
blog’s owners, as is the presence of logical fallacies. ...</span></span></b></blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<b><span style="color: #274e13;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">The most important thing to remember about the rules is this: <i>The determination of whether any comment is in compliance is at the sole discretion of this blog’s owners.</i></span><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"></span><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"> This may seem unfair, but there is a good reason for the tightening
of our standards. We are now under close scrutiny by hostile observers
who are eager to find a pretext for shutting this blog down.</span></span></b></blockquote>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">Oh, come off it, Baron. "Include, but are not limited to ... ." "At the sole discretion ... ." Maybe you should study to get a job as a junior law clerk. You seem to have a talent for fine-print contract language. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">Why not admit you are afraid (for which no one would criticize you) instead of writing rubbish about how it could get you shut down by "hostile observers"? Do you think Steve Sailer doesn't have "hostile observers"? He says he moderates comments "at whim." That's his total policy for vetting them. But then, Steve doesn't demand a submissive, cultish following, unlike you and a certain politico-religious system.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><i>You </i>can say anything you like, short of libel, in the comments on <i>my </i>blog. I promise not to teach you a lesson about proper decorum, even if I sense a "hostility of tone."</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">I admire a lot of what you and Dymphna are doing with <b>Gates of Vienna</b>, and respect your willingness to live in some danger for your cause. Even if <b>Gates </b>has had zero success in changing anything so far, it's not your fault. But you too have a one-track mind, and it's a pretty narrow-gauge one. The campaign to make whites feel guilty for breathing aids and abets the jihad and helps destroy civilized life. But no, no, on your turf we mustn't notice. Might bother some of your hostile observers.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">Oh, by the way, Baron, in family friendly terms suitable for the home schoolers you imagine are part of your audience: f--- you.</span><br />
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Rick Darbyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02371910140619422820noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16646992.post-35321005914089290552015-06-18T11:32:00.002-10:002015-06-19T15:19:58.998-10:00What I saw (and heard) at the trance mediumship demonstration<br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">I recently attended a four-day conference of the <a href="http://ascsi.org/" target="_blank">Academy for Spiritual and Consciousness Studies </a>(of which I am a member), held at Chapel Hill, North Carolina. There were so many presenters that some time slots had to be triple-booked, based on loosely defined subject categories. The common denominator was that all involved paranormal phenomena related to spiritual growth, healing, or a mixture of the two.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">It would be futile to summarize the whole conference, and even capsule accounts of several presentations would make this post way too long. So I'll concentrate on a single event that made quite an impression, very likely, on just about everyone who witnessed it.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">The session -- added to the schedule almost just before the conference and taking place late in the evening of the first full day -- was a demonstration of trance mediumship.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">You know what that means, right? A medium is a person who acts as a link between spirits not physically present on earth and a group of observers, often called sitters in a small group or séance. This was not a small assembly, however, but nearly everyone present for the conference. Some mediums transmit messages from spirits while in an otherwise normal state of consciousness; some under hypnosis or self-induced trance; a few while unconscious and oblivious to the here-and-now world.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">Since the medium at the ASCS demo is completely open about her ability and has written books about what she does and related topics, there is no reason to conceal her identity. Her name is Suzanne Giesemann.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">For a medium, her background is as unlikely as you could make up. Her previous career was in the U.S. Navy, where she held the rank of commander, and was at one time an aide de camp to the Joint Chiefs of Staff. She is married to the captain of a destroyer. It can safely be assumed that she did not go through a Flower Child or New Age unicorns-and-butterflies period. Suzanne acknowledges that if anyone had predicted, years ago, that she would be doing what she is doing these days, she would have thought the idea mad.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">Before sitting down to begin the mediumistic segment, she spoke as her normal self about what those of us (including myself) who had never been at one of her inter-world transmissions might expect. The entity she would "bring through" is a guiding spirit known as Sanaya. Actually, Sanaya is said to be a collective consciousness rather than an individual spirit. Adopting a single name for a discarnate crew may be to keep embodied audiences from being distracted by seemingly different entities. Also, we are told, spirits don't attach much importance to names, since they know one another intimately by thought.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">Suzanne's manner during her introduction was lively and vivacious, but content aside, no different from many practiced speakers on any subject. She seated herself; some recorded inspirational music (which I thought cloyingly awful, but <i>chacun à son goût</i>) was played; and she then sat quietly for about two minutes, almost motionless except for some deep breaths.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">Then Suzanne was no longer there. Someone else had taken her place.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">Now that sounds extravagant, maybe ridiculous. Of course I don't mean that her body disappeared and a completely different one inhabited the space. But a new <i>personality </i>took over. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">I can't honestly say how much the actual tone of her voice, its timbre, differed from that she'd been using before going into a trance; I was too focused on the transformation of her speech pattern and gestures.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">First, in place of the animated manner Suzanne had displayed when "herself," she now spoke slowly and solemnly. Okay, no big deal. Anyone could do that, and I mention it only to fill out the account that follows.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">She -- might as well call her Sanaya -- spoke English, but in an extraordinary accent. It was not hard to understand her words, but the accent was unlike anything I've ever heard. It comes as near as matters to being indescribable, but here's a very rough idea. Try to imagine a cross between the pronunciation of an Irish person and an East Indian, with a few additional odd twists.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">I don't think there could be any such blend in our world. Even if a person grew up in India and moved to Ireland at a young age, I doubt that a similar pattern would emerge. For one thing, accents are strongly shaped by the first influence. People raised in the U.S. deep South still talk like southerners even if they've lived in Boston for 40 years, and if the original accent is modified it is only partly so -- you don't get a 50-50 balance.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">Mark you, I'm not saying Sanaya spoke in a mixture of Irish and Indian, with some other flavoring rounding it out, just trying to suggest its utter strangeness. So strange that any person in the audience might give a different description.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">Beyond the way Sanaya shaped her vowels and consonants, the syllables emphasized were often different from those of someone speaking any variety of English (and often, it seemed, the stress was on the final syllable). I didn't write down any particulars (or take notes at all, being too absorbed in what was happening). But, for a made-up example, the word <i>undoubtedly </i>might have sounded like "und-out-ed<i>-ly</i>."</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">She spoke with great dignity.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">Suzanne's gestures while speaking were large, dramatic, extraverted. Sanaya moved her hands slowly and gracefully, like a ballerina. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">Why all this description? What about the content of Sanaya's "talk" and the answers to questions put to her by audience members?</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">As you can gather, I was too caught up in studying the style to fully pay attention to the content. The meaning I did take in was warm and elevated, but perhaps offered no particular evidence that it came from a disembodied source. In a printed transcript, it might not be unlike much you've already read.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">Sanaya replied to audience questions. Suzanne in her warm-up talk had urged us to limit ourselves to inquiries of importance to everyone, not about personal issues, and everyone honored the request. So there was no possibility of "cold reading," or fishing for clues from the questioner. Following the question period, the transformation from Suzanne to Sonaya was reversed, and Suzanne was back with us, indistinguishable from herself earlier in the evening.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">If I seem to have attached more importance to style than substance, it was because of looking for clues to establish Sanaya's reality as distinct from Suzanne's.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">Skeptics of mediumship often ascribe the phenomenon to a secondary, unconscious part of the medium's own mind that is released in the trance state. That is probably true in some cases. As a general explanation of mediumship, the theory has a number of problems, which I won't go into here because of the lengthy discussion they would need.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">With Sanaya, I could not take seriously the idea that Suzanne was putting on an act unconsciously, let alone consciously.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">I give a lot of weight to Sanaya's speech mannerisms. Accents are hard even for some good actors to pull off, and as far as I know Suzanne had no theatrical training. A few actors (Meryl Streep for instance) are well known for their ability to put a different background on their tongue. With a couple of hours of practice, I'm sure Laurence Olivier could have convinced you he had spent his life in Brooklyn. John Gielgud, I don't think so.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">But there we're talking about "normal" accents, which people actually speak, and that can be studied via recordings and with the aid of voice coaches. It's hard to conceive of anyone inventing an accent and using it consistently for even the 10 or 15 minutes Sanaya was "onstage." (There were no slips into conventional pronunciation, and I was listening carefully for them.)</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">Even given the highly unlikely possibility that someone could memorize an exotic speech with exotic gestures, the fact that Sanaya was responsive -- answering questions she could not have anticipated, and in the same mode -- puts paid to any suspicion of fakery, in my view.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">So what to conclude from this demonstration? Well, it doesn't <i>prove </i>that dematerialized spirits can communicate with us on the earth plane through certain people with specialized abilities. But the history of science shows that nothing can be finally proven outside the realm of mathematics. For psychical research questions, only the preponderance of evidence as a whole offers tentative answers. For me,</span><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"> Sanaya counts strongly in aid of the spirit hypothesis.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">Anyway, I'm glad to have "met" Sanaya. And thank you, Suzanne Giesemann, for generously lending your time to enable us to see a little beyond the veil.</span><br />
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Rick Darbyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02371910140619422820noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16646992.post-82999710349457876102015-06-03T11:25:00.000-10:002015-07-26T10:03:58.435-10:00Classical beauty, edition 3 <div style="text-align: center;">
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">I was under the impression that I had written more on this subject, but maybe its importance in my scheme of things had magnified it. Anyway, previous takes are <a href="http://reflight.blogspot.com/2008/02/classical-beauty.html" target="_blank">here </a>and <a href="http://reflight.blogspot.com/2008/02/classical-beauty.html" target="_blank">here</a>.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">You understand, in my appreciation of these lasses my point is that beauty is beauty, whether in performance or the performer's looks, and especially inspiring when the two are combined. It's probably quixotic to imagine, but maybe someone of Generation Y or Generation Z or whatever we're up to will look at this and note that classical musicians can be glamourous, more even than the latest hyped pop stars.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">Argentine pianist Ingrid Fliter (above). I have an album in which she plays Chopin, including the Sonata no. 3, Ballade no. 4, and other works of the Romantic master. There is no doubt that she commands the keyboard. Moments of exaltation can be found here. Still, there is something slightly distant and objective that seems wrong for the album's repertory. This is Chopin: what happened to the poetry?</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">Violinist Janine Jansen. Words will not assemble themselves. Here she is in concert:</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; font-size: normal;">Moving right along, next up is Alina Ibragimova, another cracking violinist. I have one of the recordings she made with her frequent musical partner, </span><span style="font-size: normal;">pianist Cédric Tiberghien. It's a live performance from London's Wigmore Hall, on the Hall's own label.</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">The violinist par excellence, Chloë Hanslip, has introduced some of us to obscure composers such as Antonio Bazzini and Benjamin Godard:</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">Pianist Simone Dinnerstein returns for another curtain call. She and cellist Zuill Bailey have collaborated on a complete set of Beethoven's sonatas. Lots of first-class musicians (e.g., Richter and Rostropovich) have had a go at these; Dinnerstein and Bailey are among the most compelling I've heard. And they're recorded in truthful Telarc sound.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">It's a tradition by now to close these Classical Beauty posts with Hilary Hahn. In her recent photos, she has lost some of the earlier sensuous pixie look; in her mid-30s, she is very much the woman, and still exceptional.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">* * * * *</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">I will include no new pictures of Yuja Wang. She is starting to annoy me. Not musically -- I treasure her Rachmaninov disc with the Mahler Chamber Orchestra luminously conducted by the late Claudio Abbado. But those short, tight skirts and plunging necklines border on bad taste. Yes, with so many excellent musicians around, a young player is tempted to go to extremes to stand out from the crowd. But Wang is a recognized star these days. If she wants to pose for cheesecake shots as a "civilian," outside the classical milieu, that would perhaps add to the sum of human happiness. On the stage of a concert hall, the tart look is unbecoming.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><i>Disclaimer: All opinions expressed are solely those of the author and for entertainment purposes only. He is not a Certified Classical Beauty Adviser (CCBA™). Please do your own due diligence and consult your qualified adviser before any appreciation of the persons mentioned. This post has not been approved by the Anti-Sexism Unit of the Federal Speech Control Department. </i></span></div>
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Rick Darbyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02371910140619422820noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16646992.post-82410885704455994522015-05-17T09:54:00.002-10:002015-05-18T14:32:43.555-10:00All along the Apple Watchtower<br />
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<span style="color: #274e13;"><b>I<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">'ve got a mind to give up living<br />
And go shopping instead<br />
I've got a mind to give up living<br />
And go shopping instead<br />
Pick me up a tombstone<br />
And be pronounced dead</span></b></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="color: #274e13;"><b>— Variously attributed; performed by the Paul Butterfield
Blues Band</b></span></span>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">Living is uncool. What matters now, for <a href="http://seekingalpha.com/article/3064066-the-american-consumer-will-never-be-back" target="_blank">those who can or imagine they can afford it</a>, is showing your up-to-the-second personal technology.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">Steve Jobs's last words were said to be, "Oh wow! Oh wow! Oh wow!" Not quite as elegant as Goethe's "More light," but perhaps his first glimpse into the life following death. I don't think he was looking down the tunnel to the Apple Watch.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">No doubt, the Apple Watch <span style="color: #274e13;"><span style="color: black;">— which has the world gaga </span></span><span style="color: #274e13;"><span style="color: black;">— is capable of wonders, practical and pointless. I haven't bothered to learn all about it. Yours truly (as people used to sign letters), but I won't be yours in Apple blossom time. There seem to be three basic models, keyed to your socio-economic class, and loads of designs. Doubtless there are a billion aps, and it can do everything but spit nickels. Watch <i>Ben-Hur</i> on your wrist!</span></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="color: #274e13;"><span style="color: black;">Throw in a Tesla to your instrumentarium and you're in the Elysian Fields without even bothering to cross over like Steve Jobs.</span></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; font-size: normal;"><span style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: normal;"><span itemprop="headline">"The Apple Watch Will Create Its Own Market Based On Emotional Needs," <a href="http://seekingalpha.com/article/3187976-the-apple-watch-will-create-its-own-market-based-on-emotional-needs" target="_blank">writes a commentator </a>who styles himself Clinically Sound Investor on Seeking Alpha. He's right.</span></span></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><b><span style="color: #274e13;"><span style="font-size: normal;">The Apple Watch pre-orders totaled over $600 million. One thing people
can take for granted and Apple doesn't have a problem with is heightened
public awareness. The TV spots, the live demos at Apple Stores since
April 24, as well as Guided Tours online, all have people thinking about
the Watch even before they develop an interest. Once the Watch is out
on the street and people see them on others, if there was thought of a
"lack" before, it will feel more real. ...</span></span></b></span></blockquote>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><b><span style="color: #274e13;">The ability to send virtual taps, heartbeats, and drawings through
Digital Touch actively reminds owners, "Great, I have the Watch," for
staying connected to their community. ... For younger users, who grew up in an age where online contact with their
social network is as pervasive as face-to-face time with their friends,
the demand for the Watch may be even greater. The best way to stay
connected is through instant sharing of emotions and ideas, which is
more conveniently done with the Watch's texting and iMessage
capabilities than finding your phone.</span></b> </span></blockquote>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">In other words, "the Watch" enables people (especially the young, whom many from older generations now emulate) to find virtual meaning in their lives, often without interacting in "meat space."</span>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">You can argue that in principle there's nothing about wearing an Apple Watch that differs from the jewelry and decorative clothes that women and men have worn since the beginning of history (and probably before): it's a high-tech version of an aborigine's bone necklace. Right enough, it's human to want to be stylish, and if a gyroscopic sundial could have been made small enough, Egyptians of the XVIII Dynasty might have worn them or endowed their animal-headed gods with them.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">I myself used to collect watches of eccentric or unusual appearance. They included a Sekonda whose face noted in microscopic letters, "Made in the U.S.S.R." My timepieces were <span style="color: #274e13;"><span style="color: black;">— </span></span>admittedly <span style="color: #274e13;"><span style="color: black;">— </span></span>intended to attract attention and show how hip I was. I still have them but no longer wear a watch, except occasionally on trips, because there are readouts all around on computers, car dashboards, TV screens, even electric ranges. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">My watches were cheap, though, and nobody would have assumed that I'd paid any more for one than for a Timex. Style aside, all they did was tell the hour and minute. You even had to adjust them if you went to a different time zone.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">There's a different and, to me, distasteful vibe about the Apple Watch. To judge from photos, some of the variations might be visually attractive, but the bragging rights they give the owner cross a line that ought not to be crossed. It's impossible to define where that line is exactly, but it has something to do with the biblical admonition that <span class="st" data-hveid="45">where your treasure is, there your heart will be also. </span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span class="st" data-hveid="45">Traditional Christianity doesn't much appeal to me, but it deserves credit for ceaseless analysis of human motives and the inner drives that can seize the soul and turn it away from the moral and spiritual. The Seven Deadly Sins are deadly precisely because they are tempting and often pleasurable. If we must derive and then satisfy an "emotional need" from a fancy science-fiction watch, we will deserve what we get.</span></span><br />
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Rick Darbyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02371910140619422820noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16646992.post-90020715293726584202015-05-10T11:08:00.003-10:002015-05-11T01:54:37.832-10:00It's only sleeping<br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">... I think.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">It's getting on for a month since the last post. Partly your blogger has been overtaxed (and not only by the gangsters in Washington) and under-energized. <b>Reflecting Light </b>hasn't been reflecting much light or anything else lately. It is going through something of an identity crisis.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">In its nearly decade-long existence, the blog has devoted a lot of electrons to lampooning politicians and politically correct lunacy. Mostly that's been fun for me and, I hope, for readers. But it implicitly assumed that in some small way, such posts might warn of a road washed out ahead. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">But my efforts -- and those of hundreds of bloggers more knowledgeable and influential than I -- have had, as far as I can see, zero payoff. Let's be honest with ourselves. The Left has won the political game not only in the U.S. but every major country in what was once called, with some validity, the Free World. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">You've read about the two Muslim assassins who tried to put bullets through who knows how many people for daring to attend an event satirizing The Prophet. Half the commentariat blames the trouble on Pamela Geller, its organizer, not the would-be killers or their ideology. We read that before the recent election in the U.K., the candidate of the Labour Party said that if the voters in their wisdom installed him at 10 Downing, his government would <a href="http://www.muslimnews.co.uk/newspaper/top-stories/labour-to-outlaw-islamophobia-says-miliband-in-an-exclusive-interview/" target="_blank">outlaw Islamophobia</a>.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><b><span style="color: #274e13;">"We are going to make it an aggravated crime. We are going to make
sure it is marked on people’s records with the police to make sure they
root out Islamophobia as a hate crime,” </span></b><span style="color: #274e13;">[Labour leader] </span><b><span style="color: #274e13;">Miliband told the Editor of The Muslim News, Ahmed J Versi in a wide ranging exclusive interview.</span></b></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><b><span style="color: #274e13;">“We are going to change the law on this so we make it absolutely
clear of our abhorrence of hate crime and Islamophobia. It will be the
first time that the police will record Islamophobic attacks right across
the country,” he said. </span></b></span></blockquote>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">While they're at it, the Labour Party would "strengthen the law on disability, homophobic, and transphobic hate crime." That is, thought crimes and speech crimes by anyone who offends a protected group or member thereof.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">I have no doubt the empty vessel occupying the White House would love to do the same. Maybe he'll give it a shot via executive order between now and when he can fully devote himself to speechmaking and golf in January 2017. It matters not if lots of people criticize or complain; they are powerless versus the strange oligarchy of cultural Marxists and big corporations that actually do the heavy lifting.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">Anybody who still belongs to The Resistance has my blessing, but to me it's a lost cause and I'm too old to waste time on lost causes. There are other important (or at least interesting) things, some maybe even more important than politics. When and if <b>Reflecting Light </b>wakes up, those are what it will mainly reflect on.</span><br />
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Rick Darbyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02371910140619422820noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16646992.post-70373503063507519472015-04-15T15:46:00.002-10:002015-04-15T15:59:45.690-10:00L'Avventura<br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">Of the two Italian filmmakers who came to prominence in the '60s -- Federico Fellini and Michelangelo Antonioni -- the former seems to be today's popular and critical favorite. Antonioni has mostly been relegated to the status of "important" (a kiss of death) or the product of his time.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">Criterion, the company that does superb restorations of older films, has worked their magic on Antonioni's <i>L'Avventura</i> (1961). The movie is now on Blu-ray disc in a dazzling transfer. The image is crisper than you would have experienced it in most theaters when it was initially released, and the sound has probably been upgraded as well. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">If you've only seen <i>L'Avventura</i> in ill-focused, scratchy prints but found it worthwhile, you owe it to yourself to watch the Criterion Blu-ray version. The musical score doesn't strike me as particularly important in this work, but the black-and-white photography is a celebration of tones. And you get a good impression of Sicily more than half a century ago.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">The knock on <i>L'Avventura</i> is that it's too long and under-dramatized. Long it is, about two-and-a-half hours, but except for a scene or two I found it captivating. The editing is more leisurely than is the norm nowadays, but the film is dramatic in its own idiosyncratic way. (And at least you can follow the story, which is more than can be said for many contemporary movies.)</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">The external action isn't particularly complicated, although what is going on beneath the surface is sometimes hard to fathom. A group of rich Romans go on a yacht trip in the sea off Sicily. Among them are Sandro (Gabriele Ferzetti); his maybe-fiancée Anna (Lea Massari); and Anna's close friend, Claudia (Monica Vitti). They explore a volcanic island. When it's time to leave, Anna has gone missing. After calling in the coast guard to no avail, all except Sandro and Claudia return to Sicily, and they soon follow.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">The rest of the picture focuses almost exclusively on Sandro and Claudia. He seems unconcerned about Anna, but strongly attracted to Claudia. At first Claudia resists Sandro's attentions, then discovers a passion for her missing friend's suitor.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">The movie is somewhat disjointed, like a puzzle where certain pieces don't fit. For instance, the transition between Claudia's rejection and acceptance of Sandro is abrupt. Maybe she has fancied him all along, but I didn't notice any signs of it. Whatever isn't entirely clear, though, this is a movie about grown-ups with grown-up emotions, not the adolescents of all ages that predominate in American films today.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">Antonioni at this point in his cinematic career had his own style, far from that of the visionary Fellini. Antonioni was more subtle, but most of his film is beautifully composed without calling undue attention its its director. <i>L'Avventura</i> is replete with knowingly framed shots and backgrounds that offer value added.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">(I suspect this artist envied the greater attention given to Fellini, and later let himself be "influenced," partly successfully in <i>Blow-Up</i>, disastrously in <i>Zabriskie Point</i>. His last major film, <i>The Passenger</i>, was a recovery that played to his strengths.)</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">The central characters are strongly acted. And Monica Vitti -- oh, my. An almond-eyed Byzantine Madonna with wild locks of golden hair.</span></div>
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Rick Darbyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02371910140619422820noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16646992.post-33331172298915660812015-04-12T11:30:00.003-10:002015-04-12T11:30:32.102-10:00Constant non-comment<br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">My counter doesn't indicate any notable drop-off in readership.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">How come hardly any comments anymore? Have I become too uncontroversial? I'm not trying to stir up argument, but it would be nice to get a few reactions.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">Regular programming will resume shortly.</span><br />
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Rick Darbyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02371910140619422820noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16646992.post-49490601641949341202015-04-04T07:31:00.001-10:002015-04-04T07:31:13.238-10:00The Zephyr<br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">Tomorrow, Easter Sunday, I will not go to church. But this past week, I went to <i>a </i>church.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">The azure sky and warm breeze (known to the ancients as Zephyr) hinted at springtime, still shy in these parts, but with signs developing day by day. On impulse, I stopped at the Salem Church, near my home, scene of one of the many battles in this part of Spotsylvania County during Lincoln's War.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">On May 3, 1863 -- a few months after the more famous Battle of Fredericksburg -- it was a center of carnage.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">I was the sole visitor. The church can only be viewed from outside, the interior through a lower-story window. It is a simple building. The mid-19th century congregation consisted mostly of people from widely scattered farms, who no doubt couldn't afford a highly qualified architect or artistic decor.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">As all the guidebooks note, small craters in the outside walls and broken brickwork are still visible. They are a little shocking, as they must have come strictly from rifle rounds; this was an ad hoc engagement by two armies moving fast, and there would have been no artillery.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">If rifle fire could shatter brick walls like this, imagine what it could do to your skull, your throat, your intestines. Many a soldier on both sides didn't have to imagine it; they found out by experience.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">Following the battle (which stopped the Union army advance) the church became a field hospital. According to an eyewitness:</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="color: #274e13;"><b>Hundreds upon hundreds of wounded were gathered up and brought for
surgical attention. . . . After the house was filled the spacious
churchyard was literally covered with wounded and dying.</b></span></span><br />
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The sight inside the building, for horror, was perhaps, never equaled
within so limited a space, every available foot of space was crowded
with wounded and bleeding soldiers. The floors, the benches, even the
chancel and pulpit were packed almost to suffocation with them.</b></span></span><br />
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The amputated limbs were piled up in every corner almost as high as a
man could reach; blood flowed in streams along the aisles and the open
doors.</b></span></span></blockquote>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">The surroundings today are calm, except for the traffic downhill on Plank Road (Route 3), which follows the path via which Robert E. Lee brought a detachment of soldiers from Chancellorsville during the fight. There must be suffering spirits of dead combatants around, but I didn't feel anything creepy. The atmosphere just had that "seriousness" I <a href="http://www.reflight.blogspot.com/2015/03/the-burg.html" target="_blank">mentioned earlier</a>.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">After the war the worshipers repaired the building, apparently with no architectural changes. (Interestingly, there were -- still to be seen -- separate entrances for men and women, and a third for slaves.) Regardless of how anyone feels about Christianity, preaching, praying and all that, there is something touching about how the worshipers restored their house of God to much the same condition as it had been before the savagery of war engulfed it. (Eventually, as the Fredericksburg suburbs overtook the area, the congregation built a new and larger church nearby and donated the old one to the National Park Service.)</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">I listened to the moaning of cars and trucks on Plank Road. I listened to the Zephyr's whistle. The past was quiet.</span><br />
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Rick Darbyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02371910140619422820noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16646992.post-53994809001044297702015-03-28T07:52:00.001-10:002015-04-02T04:49:05.077-10:00When the Depression comes before the Crash<br />
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<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">The, er, "suspect" poses in front of Suicide Bridge between<br />San Francisco and Marin County</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">There is little doubt that the crash of Germanwings 9525 was a case of suicide/murder on the part of the co-pilot (what we call first officer) Andreas Lubitz. It has been established that he in the past suffered from depression, although based on the articles I've read his mental state on his last flight is a matter of speculation. Nevertheless, depression seems a reasonable guess.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">This, however, is not primarily about Flight 9525. (Does Germanwings have so many flights that they must label them with four-digit numbers?) It's about the inevitable storm over whether antidepressant medicines -- which it's not clear Lubitz was taking -- do more harm than good, or if they do any good.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; font-size: normal;">Consider a posting from <a href="http://www.naturalnews.com/049137_Germanwings_depression_antidepressant_drugs.html" target="_blank">Natural News</a>. The site's owner calls himself the Health Ranger and is described as a food science researcher. If you like, you can scroll past the subhead "<span style="font-weight: normal;">It's not unusual for pilots to fly planes into terrain in flight simulators" (something I never heard of in more than a dozen years in the aviation safety field) to the next subhead, "</span><span style="font-weight: normal;">FAA bans pilots from flying while on antidepressant drugs" (wrong). You will then read a distressing list of "</span>other mass murderers who were taking antidepressant drugs."</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">Well, that settles it, what? </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">No it doesn't.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">The 510 comments on the article, which suggest that antidepressant effects are one hot topic, are mostly anti-antidepressant. A sizable bunch of dissenters, however, point out a principle known to anyone who has taken a class in experimental science, and possibly to most educated people: "Correlation is not causation."</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">That's why researchers, including those who have had apparent success in well-designed (randomized, double-blind, etc.) tests, are careful how they word their conclusions, e.g., "The results <i>suggest </i>that X is <i>associated with </i>favorable outcomes in the treatment of ... ." </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><br />Depressed killers and suicides might have been given antidepressants in the first place because they were ill, in some cases already displaying suicidal and/or homicidal ideation. The medical establishment prescribes antidepressants too casually and does not monitor patients well enough, using observation and common sense. But I cannot think of any kind of experiment that would demonstrate a cause-effect relationship between antidepressants and dangerous behavior. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">Even if someone came up with an ingenious protocol to check the hypothesis, it would be unethical. Potential cures or alleviations are tried on patients suffering from a disorder. Any researcher who gave antidepressants to presumably non-ill patients to see if it would mess their minds up would be, quite rightly, kicked out of the profession and probably be looking at criminal charges.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">This debate will go on and on because most of what we know about meds and the mind is hypothetical. If there were any way to demonstrate the effects by statistical analysis of large populations treated, it would have been done already. But it can't be, because there is no benchmark against which to evaluate results.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">For what it's worth, my own view, based on both personal experience and a reasonable amount of study, is this: <i>Some </i>meds help <i>some</i> depressed people <i>some </i>of the time. That is obviously not a ringing endorsement. The inverse may also be true -- <i>some </i>meds hurt <i>some </i>depressed people <i>some </i>of the time.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">What about the raging greed of Big Pharma? Sending cute-dolly sales reps to visit male doctors and the equivalent for female doctors, giving out free samples to prime the prescription pump? Point taken. But that doesn't mean the Health Ranger runs his site strictly <i>pro bono</i>. He has to make a living, too. Check out the ads from what the Ranger, to his credit, calls sponsors. ("Pain in the Butt? Hemroid [sic] Harry.")</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">Perhaps the best treatment for depressed patients -- if they're clinically depressed, not just unhappy -- is a combination of drug therapy and individual or group "talking" therapy. Under today's conditions that's pretty hard to arrange and it's hard to imagine who's going to pay the bills.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><br />Here's a suggestion for the anti-antidepressant crusaders, however.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">While Martin Luther King never said such a thing, and possibly never heard of antidepressants, make up a quote from him: "Antidepressants are racist! Bull Connor gives them to his attack dogs!"</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">The mainstream media will gobble it up. Within days, it will be unchallengeable. You're done, Big Pharma.</span></div>
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Rick Darbyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02371910140619422820noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16646992.post-30997497317459154122015-03-26T15:11:00.001-10:002015-03-26T15:11:36.590-10:00Hillary-ous<br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">Attention, members of the media (and perhaps anyone else). Hillary is keeping a dossier on you. You are in deep trouble if you use <a href="http://news.investors.com/blogs-capital-hill/032615-745260-clinton-supports-play-the-sexism-card.htm" target="_blank">certain forbidden words</a> in connection with her.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="color: #274e13;"><b><span class="drop-initial">W</span>hat do you call a polarizing,
calculating, disingenuous, insincere, ambitious, entitled,
overconfident, secretive politician who will do anything to win and
thinks she's inevitable even though she's out of touch and represents
the past?</b></span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="color: #274e13;"><b>Not "Hillary Clinton," because, you know, that would be sexist.</b></span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="color: #274e13;"><b>The
list of verboten words and phrases above came in the form of an email
warning to a New York Times reporter from "Super Volunteers" for Hillary
Clinton.</b></span></span></blockquote>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">Hillary, my dear future Empress, I would not dream of describing you as polarizing, calculating, disingenuous, insincere, ambitious, entitled, overconfident, and secretive. Far be it from me to commit, quote, coded sexism, unquote. Perish the thought!</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">But provided you approved the message from whatever brain-damaged Super Volunteers your enforcers rounded up -- and because you are brilliant and shrewd, I'm sure no such message would have been released into the aether without your sign-off -- I simply call you a fool.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">Fools come in all sizes, shapes, and sexes. </span><br />
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<br />Rick Darbyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02371910140619422820noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16646992.post-35142658359710026352015-03-22T06:56:00.001-10:002015-04-09T13:30:59.076-10:00Piero di Cosimo at the National Gallery<br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">Piero di Cosimo's reputation as a Florentine Renaissance painter has suffered for the notion, going back as far as Vasari and as recently as a <a href="http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/02/09/change-artist" target="_blank">New Yorker article</a> about the current exhibition at the Smithsonian's National Gallery, that he was a little touched in the head. Because of his eccentricity, he was not to be taken quite as seriously as the Great Names. But I left the exhibit feeling that there was much more to Piero than that.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">Oh, his cup ran over with imagination at times, and the show leaves no doubt he had a sense of humor. The painting of Perseus rescuing Andromeda has been widely reproduced in </span><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">media articles and </span><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">the museum's own promotion. He obviously had fun with the mythical animal who served as Andromeda's prison guard. The curatorial commentary itself next to the picture aptly suggests the beast is more likely to inspire sympathy for the wacky creature than to scare the viewer. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">And then there's the Madonna and Child -- as conventional a subject as any at the time it was put on canvas -- with one delightful detail: a dove with a halo. The Holy Ghost is usually shown as part of the Trinity, up in the sky above the biblical figures, or descending straight down from Heaven as if lowered on an invisible wire. <i>This </i>halo-crowned bird is just off in a corner of the picture. You can almost see the twinkle in Piero's eye as he added that touch.</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;"><i><span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">The Finding of Vulcan on Lemnos. </span></i></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; font-size: small;">A larger version is shown in the <i>New Yorker</i> article,</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; font-size: small;"> although the colors are curiously washed out </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif; font-size: small;">compared with the original.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">My favorite among the lighthearted paintings is a playful scene from mythology, in which the young Vulcan has just been tossed out of Mount Olympus by his parents, Jupiter and Juno. He has landed on the island of Lemnos, without a stitch of clothing, which seems pleasing to the flower-gathering nymphs who have found him. The nymphs show a nice bit of leg, and the one at the far right, dressed in the height of Renaissance finery, smiles charmingly with amusement and a touch of desire. There's a hole in the cloud where Vulcan tumbled through.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">But the exhibit demonstrates that Piero was much more than a producer of <i>jeux d'esprit</i>. His able mind and hand were capable of richly colored, moving religious scenes.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">Some of Piero's madonnas can be mentioned in the same breath as those of the great Giovanni Bellini. (For better or worse, Bellini's are mostly in Venice, which unfortunately I don't get to often.) The Venetian managed the impossible: showing Mary and Jesus, a look of unearthly beauty in Mary's face, and at the same time an infinite sadness. It is as if she knows the terrible death that will befall her son as well as, according to Christian doctrine, the end of death.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">No, Pierro's works on the same theme (at least those shown at the Smithsonian) aren't as masterful as Bellini's, but in their own way are compellingly dramatic. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">Piero seems to have understood what his miserableist contemporary, the monk Savonarola, did not: that joyous tones, a tickling wit, and sincere piety can coexist in love.</span><br />
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<br />Rick Darbyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02371910140619422820noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16646992.post-21098971888601630272015-03-14T06:48:00.004-10:002015-03-15T04:20:46.080-10:00The Burg<br />
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Fredericksburg, Virginia, is well known to historians -- academic and amateur -- of Lincoln's War. It's where I live now, after a long stretch in Falls Church, a District of Columbia suburb.<br />
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Moving to Fredericksburg has been like moving to a different country. (Locals usually shorten the town's name to "the Burg" or even "Burg" in speech, as they contract Spotsylvania County to "Spotsy." The early settlers had more time for multi-syllabic names than we do.)<br />
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A fairly small but historically and architecturally interesting historic district nudges the Rappahannock River (a name which, curiously, always seems to be fully pronounced, which is good, as the only likely short form would be "The Rap").<br />
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Contrary to what you might expect, only a few houses and churches predate the War. In its siege and occupation, the Union army tore up most of Fredericksburg. The wreckage inflicted by Sherman's army, still cursed by many southerners, at least was under orders and for a strategic purpose. In the Burg it was simply undisciplined looting.<br />
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The main battle, Marye's Heights (December 1862) was a deadly defeat for the Northern army and, at least in 20/20 hindsight, a spectacular example of foolish tactics on the part of the Union commander, General Burnside. But various other battles swept through the area for the next two years. One of them, Salem Church, took place a mile from where I live.<br />
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Fredericksburg looks like it quickly regained material prosperity after the War. The residential part of the historic district includes grand Victorian houses, many restored to fine condition. This is the area of the Burg I'd like to live in, but it must be priced well out of my range. I'm looking forward to giving myself a walking tour in the springtime.<br />
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The town suburbs of course now stretch way beyond the Burg's original dimensions, west past the Great Wall of Interstate 95 and far to the south. The houses of Spotsy County aren't ugly, but they're bland, variations on three or four basic styles. Huge shopping centers offer all the standard national chains, except Trader Joe's. We have driven to Richmond several times just to go to Joe's.<br />
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This is where the Old South begins. To the north are ugly Washington spillover districts and the Marine base at Quantico, plus a few dreary historic Dogpatches. Maybe I should say an island of the Old South, since from what I hear northerners have colonized coastal cities farther south such as Wilmington, North Carolina, and metropolitan Charleston.<br />
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The local accents are still remarkable to me, especially the musical Virginia Tidewater speech, unlike anything I heard around Washington. <br />
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Manners are important here. Everyday transactions tend to be preceded by, or include, a little chit-chat. I have never lived in a place where pleasantries and warmth are so much a common element of interaction. Even black-white relations seem relatively smooth, but that might be only on the surface.<br />
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My only intermittent psychic ability is perceiving the atmosphere of places. When we were looking at houses for rent, we must have been in at least a dozen. One was good enough by every objective standard, but it didn't feel right to me. It had been the site of something unpleasant -- not necessarily haunted or the scene of a murder, but <i>something</i>. Maybe just a very dysfunctional family.<br />
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It might sound natural that the Burg, with its gory past, would have dark and heavy vibes. I don't experience that. It's hard to describe, but rather than negative, the ambiance is, for want of a better word, serious. Not overtly -- people don't walk around frowning -- but in some subtle way, Longfellow's "life is real, life is earnest" applies.<br />
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There's a large drawback for me living in The Burg: it's a cultural desert. There's a good regional library, where my wife works, but no concerts with big-name talent, no theater, one chain bookstore, one secondhand bookstore in the back of a tourist shop, no CD exchange, no art museum, no metaphysical churches. The small local college, Mary Washington, has a jazz festival with student performers. The festival lasts one hour.<br />
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It's like being in Lesser Podunk, Arkansas. To get any sense of the larger world, you have to go to DC, Richmond, or beyond.<br />
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As the cliché has it, there's good and bad everywhere. But the proportions differ, and differ for each person. We'll see.<br />
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<br />Rick Darbyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02371910140619422820noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16646992.post-52145154119159759422015-03-01T13:29:00.001-10:002015-03-03T04:54:37.451-10:00Crime scenes<br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">There's a crime wave on television. Detective series are all the rage. Sometimes it seems they're cranked out like sausages, and inevitably they struggle -- or don't bother to -- against a load of clichés: The surly unsympathetic boss; the mismatched, hostile partners; the public and media baying for an arrest; the obvious suspect who turns out to be innocent (especially if said subject belongs to an ethnic or sexual minority); "What've we got here?" from the detective arriving at the murder scene; etc.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">The viewer who has seen and heard it too many times is tempted to jack the whole genre, especially after such duds as <i>George Gently</i> and the hash made out of the novels based on Ian Rankin's Inspector Rebus and Ruth Rendell's Inspector Wexford. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">But a lot of us, obviously, are drawn to detective series. I confess, without even consulting a lawyer, that I am one. With each new program I nurse the hope for something special.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><i>Broadchurch </i>has been a big-time ratings success in the U.K., maybe the hottest show since <i>Downton Abbey</i>. It's available in the States via Netflix DVDs. <i>Broadchurch </i>is above the baseline, though not especially because of the script. Screenwriting is virtually a lost art, most of all in well-trodden fields like police dramas. But Britain has a seemingly bottomless store of acting talent to call on, and it's evident here.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">The thing is set in a small seaside town in Dorset, in southwestern England. The odd-couple detectives are Ellie Miller (Olivia Colman) and Alec Hardy (David Tennant); in the first episode we learn that Hardy, who has been transferred from outside the local cop shop, has taken the lead position Ellie was expecting. Thank goodness, though, the series doesn't make a meal out of her resentment or a conflict between the two -- for the most part, they work together smoothly despite various procedural disagreements.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">Tennant speaks in a Scottish accent you need a pickax to get through (unless you're Scottish). He's a bear with a permanent sore paw, who looks like he sleeps in his suit (the tie always knotted below the top shirt button) and would still wear a scowl if he were being massaged with a peacock feather. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">This actor is, I understand, the most recent Doctor Who. I don't watch <i>Doctor Who</i>, but my wife does, and she says he was excellent. Tennant makes a strong impression, more by his portrayed unpleasant temperament as any attempt to win the audience's favor.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">But it's Olivia Colman who steals scene after scene. She appears to be wrapped up in her police work to hide, especially from herself, some deep sadness. Colman has the gift of being able to express several moods at once.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">The supporting roles, especially the parents of the murdered young boy who is the subject of the investigation, ably hold up their end.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">We are told that the series was shot in the sequence of the episodes, with the writer and director keeping the cast in the dark about who the guilty party was until the final revelation. Supposedly this was to keep them from unconsciously signaling anything to viewers in advance. That sounds like public relations bunk, to give the media something to write about. Actors of this caliber aren't going to drop any hints by mistake. Whatever, <i>Broadchurch </i>is well worth a look for fans of this kind of entertainment.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">Let me tell you about something even better.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">A while back I wrote about the<a href="http://reflight.blogspot.com/2011/07/wallander.html" target="_blank"> British TV series</a> based on Swedish writer Henning Mankell's inspector Wallander, with Kenneth Branagh in the lead role. Other than the compulsively watchable Branagh, I didn't find a great deal to cheer about.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">There had also been <i>two </i>Swedish-made series centered on Wallander: The first, which ran between 1994 and 2007, starred Rolf Lassgärd. I don't think it's ever been available in the U.S. or U.K.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">I was aware of a second Wallander production, first shown in 2005, but either Netflix hadn't distributed it yet or I was tired of the character and setting. Recently, though, when three seasons of the second series were offered on Netflix, curiosity drove me to check them out.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><i>Wham</i>. This production beats that with Branagh all hollow. For one thing, it pays attention to the rest of the cast in the investigations, not just Wallander. These are genuine ensemble pieces, not just settings for the central character.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">The mood isn't exactly light -- these are murder investigations, after all -- but this Kurt Wallander doesn't wear a rain cloud for a hat like Branagh. He's troubled, but the troubles are not so much individual as the kind that aging people have to contend with: health problems, upcoming retirement, isolation. The director keeps the tension up, without periodic interruptions for picture postcard countryside scenes.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">And what a great choice for the Wallander role! Krister Henricksson amazes me every time I see him (I'm about halfway through the second season). No subtlety seems beyond him, but he can be thrillingly forceful when he needs to be. Watch the last 15 minutes or so of season two's opener, "The Revenge" (not that I'm suggesting you view it out of context) to see a top-class actor at work.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">As with <i>Broadchurch</i>, the rest of the cast is firmly in charge of their part of the stories.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">Netflix has dropped the ball, unfortunately. Before I could watch the whole first season, it took discs 5, 6, and 7 out of circulation or streaming. So you must miss about six episodes and then start with the second season, where one prominent cast member is missing and several new ones have appeared.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">Johanna Sällström, who played (very well) the important role of Linda, Wallander's daughter and a uniformed policewoman in his outfit, committed suicide in real life. It's just incomprehensible. I am not against assisted suicide for the very old who have incurable illnesses and are in constant pain, but what could drive a beautiful young woman, who had already reached a high level of achievement in her profession, presumably had plenty of money, and was in good health, to peg out by her own choice? The human mind is an insoluble mystery. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">Anyway, Linda had to be written out of the script, but I would have liked to see how it was handled as well as to have the pleasure of watching Henricksson more. (Off topic: I am guessing that Swedish names by now are conventional, and that Krister Henricksson didn't have a father named Henrick.)</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">Netflix customers are now writing to complain that season three is only in Swedish, with no subtitles.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">Whatever frustrations it entails, I can easily recommend this series.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">It's not a detective story, but I'll mention the 2000 German production (with a strong Turkish component) <i>In</i> <i>July. </i>I found it<i> </i>so appealing I've seen it twice. The story is too lightweight to take time describing, but it's a romance balanced with just the right degree of tough-mindedness to temper the sweetness. There's something about astrological sun and moon signs that makes no sense to me, but adds a little metaphysical note to the mix.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">The woman lead, Christiane Paul, is the world's most beautiful actress (or was in 2000), even with her corn-row hairstyle.</span><br />
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Rick Darbyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02371910140619422820noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16646992.post-67521042648576579462015-02-22T12:28:00.002-10:002015-02-22T12:41:22.685-10:00Industrious lunatics<br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">It is almost impossible to parody the daily breaches of common sense that constitute our political life. I used to have fun in these pages lampooning the imbecility of governments and their enablers. Now they take the piss out of themselves with no need for outside assistance. Who needs a blogger to enjoy a laugh at the voluntary inmates at the asylum when the asylum is the corridors of power?</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">For months now, we have been told about the sickening atrocities committed by the Islamic State and various other excitable subgroups of the religion of the Prophet. Unless a new chapter has been opened today, the latest farce is Imam Obama's calling together a group of professional meeting-goers for something called The White House Summit to Counter Violent Extremism.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">Since 2012, we've actually had an undersummit on the same theme (supported by the U.S. State Department and your tax money, headquartered in Abu Dhabi) -- the <a href="http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/sns-wp-blm-news-bc-terror-summit-comment18-20150218-story.html" target="_blank">International Center for Excellence on Countering Violent Extremism</a>. "Excellence" is a nice touch; remember the 1990s management fad of Excellence? Remember Total Quality Management (TQM)? ISO 9000?</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">We can perhaps expect the White House Summit to establish a new certification, CVE 45,000. CVE is combating violent extremism. What does the 45,000 mean? Who knows, but it sounds impressive.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">The first award will go to a Green company, subsidized by the U.S. government, that turns Libyan sand into biofuel. Or says it will. That will aptly fulfill the suggestion of State Department Marie Harf that ultimately extremism must be counteracted by a jobs program, which would (for instance) recruit jihadis as heads of departments rather than head hunters.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">As everybody has heard by now, the Sheikh of Washington has seen to it that the White House Conference on Violent Extremism tiptoes around any mention of the Islamic State and similar. Maybe they're not considered violent enough to win a Best Killing Oscar.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">G.K. Chesterton wrote that "going mad is the slowest and dullest business in the world." He explained that it happens without anyone noticing that it's going on, especially the person going mad. Countries, too, can lose their minds with smooth-flowing efficiency.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">"Madness is a passive as well as an active state: it is a paralysis, a refusal of the nerves to respond to the normal stimuli," Chesterton adds.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><b><span style="color: #274e13;">There are commonwealths, plainly to be distinguished here and there in history, which pass from prosperity to squalor, or from glory to insignificance, or from freedom to slavery, not only in silence, but with serenity. The face still smiles while the limbs, literally and loathsomely, are dropping from the body. These are peoples that have lost the power of astonishment at their own actions.</span></b></span></blockquote>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">Take a look at that White House Summit logo again. In no particular order, as they form a circle, the "Solution" includes Engage, Mentor, Support, Communicate, Partner, and Educate. Just the stuff for community organization of bloodthirsty tribes. The symbolism is hard to make out, though. I get the little red schoolhouse for Educate, and the monitor for Communicate, but what is the house with a heart over the door meant to say about support? An Adopt-a-Soldier-of-Allah program? The weirdest of all is the symbol for Partner, which resembles if anything a filing cabinet.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">Well, Imam Obama probably had a brainstorm for the White House Summit and wanted to announce it the next day. Some poor sod in the federal bureaucracy, normally occupied with devising wavy lines to indicate water and fish outlines to indicate fish in brochures for the Department of Wildlife, got the call to come up with a design for the Violent Extremism summit in the next eight hours. That didn't leave much time for refinement, or for imagination to set in.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">When nations that have "lost the power of astonishment at their own actions," Chesterton says,</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><b><span style="color: #274e13;">... give birth to a fantastic fashion or a foolish law, they do not start or stare at the monster they have brought forth. They have grown used to their own unreason; chaos is their cosmos; and the whirlwind is the breath of their nostrils. These nations are really in danger of going off their heads <i>en masse</i>; of becoming one vast vision of imbecility, with toppling cities and crazy country-sides, all dotted with industrious lunatics.</span></b></span></blockquote>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">Come, let us unreason together.</span><br />
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Rick Darbyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02371910140619422820noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16646992.post-70902902753805060902015-02-18T13:33:00.000-10:002015-02-19T05:00:15.990-10:00We're all Warren Buffett now<br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">Every day brings more disasters and threats, actual and potential. I have no cure to suggest. (I know you were counting on me; sorry about that.) So let me take up a subject many of us are familiar with: money.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">That's the neat thing about this topic: it's easy to relate to. And, it seems, easy to advise about. Amid winter's gloom (if you're anywhere north of Florida or Scottsdale), it's natural to dream of turning a dolor into into a dollar. And there is no shortage of blogs and web sites, not to mention financial publications -- all right, so I just did mention them -- to plant a word to the wise in your brain. We're all Warren Buffett now, just waiting our turn to say the magic word that will make the duck with the cigar drop in. (For those of you under 50 or outside the U.S., that was a running gag on Groucho Marx's TV quiz show many a year ago.)</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">The heck of it is, while some of the advice is mainly self-promotion, a lot of it is valid, at least if you accept its premises.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">If these pundits are so smart, why aren't we rich? (No offense meant if you <i>are </i>rich.)</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">Part of the trouble is that so much of what they say is reasonable, but impracticable. Let's take as an example a post from <a href="http://www.cleareyesinvesting.com/2013/06/5-ways-to-avoid-permanent-losses.html" target="_blank">Clear Eyes Investing</a>, headed "5 Ways to Avoid Permanent Losses." The writer, Todd Wenning, CFA, is an equity analyst currently with Morningstar.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">He first makes clear what is meant by a permanent loss.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><b><span style="color: #274e13;">... A permanent loss of capital differs from a temporary loss of capital
that's due to market volatility and it occurs when an investment's value
has declined so much that getting back to break-even within a few years
is unlikely. Effectively, an unrecoverable loss.</span></b></span></blockquote>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">As most people who've been in the investment game for a while know, a loss of x percent means you will have to make <i>more than</i> x percent just to return to where the dip began. For instance, as Wenning shows in a table, if you own a stock that sinks 30 percent, you can tell yourself it's only a "paper loss," but for you to be made whole the stock must climb 43 percent. Possible, but the odds are against it. Even if it does recover 43 percent or more, chances are it won't happen quickly.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">I won't paraphrase his five ways of avoiding permanent losses; please just click the link and read them for yourself. In principle, they all sound sensible. So what's the problem?</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">Mostly they are procedures that only a professional financial analyst could love. They are enough to make us amateurs run screaming from the room. Let's take one as an example:</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="color: #274e13;"><b><span style="line-height: 1.15; white-space: pre-wrap;">4. </span><span style="line-height: 1.15; white-space: pre-wrap;">Focus on trends in competitive advantages. </span><span style="line-height: 1.15; white-space: pre-wrap;">The market has become incredibly focused on the short-term. For example, the average stock mutual fund turnover rate have </span></b><span style="line-height: 1.15; white-space: pre-wrap;">[he means has] </span><b><span style="line-height: 1.15; white-space: pre-wrap;">jumped from an average of 17% between 1945 and 1965 (implying an average holding period of about five years) closer to 100% today (implying an average holding period of about one year). Naturally, then, market participants seek short-term information advantages -- e.g. "Will this company beat next quarter's consensus estimates?" -- at the expense of gathering helpful long-term information. ...</span></b></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="color: #274e13;"><b><br /></b></span></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="color: #274e13;"><b><span style="line-height: 1.15; white-space: pre-wrap;">Spend more time in your research process thinking about where this company might be three- to five-years from now. A simple way to get started is with a "SWOT" analysis -- listing the company's strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats. Then ask how the company might enhance its current strengths, reduce its weaknesses, capitalize on opportunities, and respond to competitive threats. </span></b></span></span>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">Who can say aught against long-term thinking? With all respect to Wenning, who is undoubtedly far more sophisticated than I am about security analysis, I don't believe anyone (especially outside the company being analyzed) can acquire more than a general idea of its "strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats."</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">Still less relevant is how the company "might" enhance its current strengths, reduce its weaknesses, capitalize on opportunities, and respond to competitive threats. Even if anyone could divine how the company might do all those things, it's anyone's guess whether it will. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">And say the company looks from here to be on the right track. Think of all the things that could cause it to pack up in the next three to five years: technological changes, a smart new competitor arriving like a lightning bolt from a blue sky, a change of management, a law suit, a huge increase in the cost of raw materials, international crisis ... and on and on. All possible, none predictable.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">Short-term trading gets a bad name in the financial media commentariat. We're all supposed to assure ourselves with deep research before we splash out on a stock, and then stay the course. Warren Buffett groupies like to quote him: "My favorite holding period is forever." Well, Mr. Buffett can lose a few million dollars and not bother to look for it under the sofa cushions. Others aren't so blasé about parting with money on a mistaken buy, especially if it's a permanent loss.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">Maybe at least some of those short-term thinkers aren't so dumb after all.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">Me, I do trades now and again, but mainly I've come to (a) avoid individual stocks and (b) hedge by allocating my modest stash among exchange-traded funds. That doesn't guarantee I won't lose on any of them, but asset classes as a whole are more likely to recover than single companies that go haywire. And it takes a lot less time than trying to figure out the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats of particular names. Time is an asset class, too.</span><br />
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<br />Rick Darbyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02371910140619422820noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16646992.post-81258066226847880602015-02-13T10:47:00.001-10:002015-02-13T15:17:03.176-10:00Turn, turn, turn ... turn again?<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">I am dubious about cyclical theories of history, such as those ginned up by Hegel, Marx, Toynbee, and Spengler. The latest here-it-comes-again carousel is known as the <a href="http://www.amazon.com/dp/0767900464?tag=thebur01-20&camp=0&creative=0&linkCode=as1&creativeASIN=0767900464&adid=0VTFPQQFCAV7FYWEMDZT&" target="_blank">Fourth Turning</a>, and Jim Quinn of The Burning Platform has a go at using it to extrapolate our future. Actually, long-winded as it is, his piece is the only the third of four parts. It's a little easier to read on <a href="http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2015-02-12/fourth-turning-shadow-crisis-has-not-passed-part-3" target="_blank">Zero Hedge</a>, which republished it without all those click-bait teasers in the margin.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">Early on in his screed, Quinn supplies a sensible look at the background and overview of the current state of play.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span class="adlogged" id="ic-ads-808704846191364"></span><span style="color: #274e13;"><b>The seeds of the next crisis are always planted during the
climax of the previous crisis, when the new social order is established.
The American Revolution Crisis created a new nation, but left
unresolved the issue of slavery. This seed grew to become the catalyst
for the Civil War Crisis. The resolution of the Civil War Crisis greatly
enhanced the power of the central government, while reducing the
influence of the States. </b></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="color: #274e13;"><b>The rise of central authority led to
the creation of the Federal Reserve, the implementation of income taxes
to fund a vastly larger Federal government and the belief among the
political class that America should intervene militarily in the affairs
of other countries. The Great Depression was created by the
monetary policies of the Federal Reserve; the New Deal programs were a
further expansion of Federal government; FDR outlawed the ownership of
gold; and America’s subsequent involvement in World War II created a
military and economic superpower. </b></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="color: #274e13;"><b>After sixty-two years of ever increasing debt; ever
increasing taxes to support an ever growing governmental bureaucracy;
ever expanding laws, regulations, and rules; currency debasement by the
Federal Reserve; complete abandonment of the gold standard; and never
ending wars of choice around the world, the next Crisis grew and
blossomed from the seeds planted during the previous Crisis.
The New Deal social programs, along with the extension of the welfare
state by LBJ and subsequent administrations, have swelled to
unprecedented unsustainable levels with unfunded liabilities exceeding
$200 trillion. </b></span></span></blockquote>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="color: #274e13;"><b>The promises cannot be fulfilled. The $18 trillion
national debt increases by $2.3 billion per day; $96 million per hour;
$1.6 million per minute; $27,000 per second. Does that sound
sustainable? The legacy media sycophants cheer when consumer debt
outstanding surges past $3.3 trillion, as their warped worldview
applauds spending versus saving, consuming versus investing, and living
for today rather than striving for a sustainable future.</b></span></span></blockquote>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">Whether all this followed a "turning" template written in the stars, or it just worked out that way, makes little practical difference. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">Quinn scores another palpable hit in describing the loss of individual freedom and growth of government control.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="color: #274e13;"><b>The overbearing, militarized, captured Federal government has treated citizens like suspects since 2001. ... What kind of government clandestinely spies on its citizens; militarizes
local police forces; conducts military training operations in major
cities; wires its streets and highways with surveillance cameras;
disperses peaceful protestors with water cannons, tear gas, pepper
spray, and rubber bullets; and treats the U.S. Constitution like toilet
paper? An authoritarian regime treats its people like this.
Authoritarian regimes treat everyone like a potential enemy. They trust
no one. </b></span></span></blockquote>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"> Besides that, he says:</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="color: #274e13;"><b>The American people have lost their ability to think, reason,
question, do math, control their urges, defer gratification, or realize
when they are being lied to by the people they elected to public office.
A culture of ignorance, celebration of the absurd, salutation of
stupidity, honoring of the inane, being mesmerized by electronic
gadgets, and satiating their egocentric shallow impulses on social
media, is a sure recipe for societal collapse. </b></span></span></blockquote>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">The paragraph makes admirable reading until the iron cell door slams -- "a sure recipe for societal collapse." There are no <i>sure </i>recipes, even for cooking dinner, much less for societal collapse.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">Societal, financial, political, any or all kinds of big-time collapse take more than a single causal factor. Quinn favors the "corporations are buying the government" explanation. "</span><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">I now believe the focus of this Fourth Turning will be the conflict between the government and its supporters,
and those who oppose the welfare/warfare surveillance state controlled
by Wall Street vested interests," he says. And so on. It's all down to a "ruling elite ... desperate to keep their despotic bacchanal empire
of debt from disintegrating in a catastrophic apocalypse of derivative
time bombs, bank failures, corporate bankruptcies, and denial of their
guilt."</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">That is, unfortunately, part of the story, but only part. Another force is the hegemony of the cultural Marxist Left over practically every American institution, which Quinn doesn't so much as mention. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">An empowered Left has already made sure what is taught in schools, from kindergarten through graduate school; what facts and ideas must and must not be transmitted through the mainstream media; expanded centralized power in Washington, aiming to reduce states and municipalities to functionaries of the Super State; and dissolved national borders, turning the U.S. into a prize for immigrants -- particularly the unskilled and uneducated from failed countries -- to vote themselves (whether citizens or not) a big portion of the debt-fueled largesse Quinn rails against.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">The system is unprecedented in history. Capitalist potentates work hand-in-hand with the Marxist Left for regulatory capture and a division of the spoils. The racial grievance industry kicks in with its own demands. Fourth Turning? More like an all-star team against a group recruited from the league basement. </span><br />
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Rick Darbyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02371910140619422820noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16646992.post-18537667526369015972015-01-29T11:14:00.001-10:002015-01-30T08:14:34.065-10:00American Sniper<br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">I'll keep this reasonably short, since by now you have (a) seen the film, or (b) read and heard enough about it that your brain is ready to crash, or (c) both.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">Let me get this out of the way: <i>American Sniper</i> is not a great movie. Some of it isn't even very good. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">But it is impressive, despite a few dead spots (most in the domestic scenes when Navy SEAL sniper Chris Kyle is between his four tours of duty in Iraq). I didn't think anything new could be done showing lethal street fighting after all the movies Iraq has spawned. But while Kyle (Bradley Cooper) works with various teams in the urban killing grounds, the focus is definitely on him. And this <i>is </i>different, because what we experience most intensely is one-on-one, not opposing armies tossed into a blender.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">"Experience" isn't too strong a word for the battle scenes. And one surprise for me was that director Clint Eastwood showed himself capable of imagination in supervising camera placement, cutting, and atmosphere in those scenes. The sound design is so extraordinary it adds a scary additional dimension. I was lucky enough to catch <i>American Sniper</i> in the Cinerama Dome at the Arclight Hollywood, with a state-of-the-art sound system. But in any reasonably up-to-date theater, the soundtrack should be startlingly effective.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">I wouldn't have thought Eastwood had it in him. He has been constantly hyped as a brilliant director, for reasons I could not understand; at most he seemed an efficient professional who avoided big mistakes. But in <i>American Sniper</i> he has stepped out of the conventional often enough.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">Another virtue of the film is that it seems to have no agenda. The anguish of war is convincingly demonstrated (although with no more gore than necessary), but nothing types it as an "anti-war" film. Yet Kyle has an outburst of patriotism when watching the 9/11 attack on television with his family.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">For a movie about a recent and ultra-controversial war, it's even-handed. It doesn't ask us to admire Kyle for defending the country. It doesn't make him out to be a sentimentally naive flag waver. It says, this is one man of our time, what he felt, what he did.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">People at various points of the political compass can argue about its political message, but I doubt it intends to have one, and is all the better for that. Still, <i>Sniper</i>'s overwhelming attendance figures suggest it connects with deep values and convictions that many moviegoers have been starved for. It is shaped by an outlook no movie has delivered in a long time. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">This isn't a story driven by plot points (the script is no great shakes) or acting (strong from Bradley Cooper, with the other players mostly reduced to scenery around Cooper). It's about the Code of Heroism that, for good or ill, dominated human values until the past century and for many continues to cast a spell. After 2,800 years, we read <i>The Iliad</i> for its poetry but also because we're drawn to characters whose lives are meaningless without heroism, risking all for honor. Achilles, Agamemnon, Hektor tell us about a way of life that exists today -- insofar as it exists at all -- mostly in the military. <i>The Iliad</i> also shows the tragic cost to others involved with heroes, like Hektor's wife, Andromache. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">It doesn't reach the heights of <i>The Iliad</i>, but if <i>American Sniper</i> has a "message," it's one that resonates with a long history.</span></div>
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Rick Darbyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02371910140619422820noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16646992.post-35317419084833050772015-01-25T08:41:00.001-10:002015-01-25T10:57:32.459-10:00Good to go<br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">Putting up this entry has been delayed. The jet lag from flying coast-to-coast is fierce. No, I'm kidding, of course. I managed to snag nonstop flights both directions. For all the boredom and sometimes discomforts of cattle class, they aren't a patch on traveling by stage coach in the 19th century.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">I've been on much longer flights (I think New York to Bucharest set personal record), but it still astonishes me that I can be in California looking at olive trees, date palms, and bougainvillea and a few hours later back in Virginia with its skeletal deciduous trees. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">Lots of people seem to find it weird to take a brief vacation in Los Angeles. But flying to summer south of the equator was unaffordable; I wouldn't go to Mexico to win a bet; and my wife and I wanted a break from the cold temperatures and 50 shades of gray skies.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">It helps if you know the area. I say area because, as many have remarked, LA isn't a city in the traditional sense but a conglomeration of vastly distinct districts. There are plenty of parts I don't want to know, but am familiar with most of the good ones. They can be quite enjoyable.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">We stayed on the affluent West Side. (The well-off have a few other enclaves, such as San Marino and parts of Pasadena.) Not out of snobbery but because it's relatively safe and pleasant. In fact, there is probably no lovelier residential area in the U.S. than around Sunset from the 405 freeway to the ocean. The landscaping and endless variations of housing styles, the hills and mountains in the background, can't help giving you a boost. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">Traffic (lots of Mercedes-Benzes, Lexuses, BMWs, etc.) can be a right bitch -- although it's no worse than in Washington and its burbs and probably many other cities. Parking is a form of abuse. Despite the widespread loathing of freeways, they are jammed mainly at rush hours; other times they are an efficient way to get around LA's galactic distances.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">Social class divisions, as evident in for instance West Hollywood versus eastern Hollywood (central Hollywood is a catchment area for tourists), are glaringly obvious. There are clear borders between haves and have-nots, although maybe no more so than in today's America generally. Ethnicity doesn't seem to have changed much since my last visit: Anglos, Hispanics, Asians are the dominant populations. There are more openly gay couples of both sexes than I remember.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">One perhaps trivial but striking trend: the bumper stickers that used to be almost ubiquitous are now rare. Maybe Los Angelenos have decided it's too tacky to decorate their vehicles with culturally Marxist messages. Or maybe they're confident that the media and school systems are fully up to the job.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">Even more trivial, but possibly signifying something, the huge billboards that used to pitch upcoming movies now seem mostly to tout television series.</span><br />
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<br />Rick Darbyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02371910140619422820noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16646992.post-30590465536266509812015-01-16T04:47:00.000-10:002015-01-16T17:30:47.570-10:00Don't fight Muslim terrorists<br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">Matthew Continetti <a href="http://freebeacon.com/columns/fight-them-over-there/" target="_blank">offers his thoughts</a> on defeating Muslim terrorism in the <i>Washington Free Beacon.</i> The gist of his wisdom: whack the jihadists on their turf, not ours (meaning Western countries, which some terrorists have the legal right to call "home").</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">He presents a reasonable history of the dopey responses that have been tried over the years. First there was the law enforcement method: treat them like Mafiosi or tax evaders. Various other strategies, from bombing to invasion to nation building, followed.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">Our president <i>in absentia</i> introduced the latest phase:</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="color: #274e13;"><b>With the election of President Obama, however, the conflict between
Islamism and America entered a third phase. Our troops were removed from
the battlefield in Iraq and Afghanistan, leaving Special Forces and
drone pilots to do most of the fighting. The defense budget was cut.
Harsh interrogation was curtailed, and Guantanamo Bay slowly emptied.
Surveillance practices were disrupted. The words “Islamic terrorism”
would not be uttered, <a href="http://freebeacon.com/columns/the-poison-tree/">for that somehow legitimized extremists</a>. As for the terrorists themselves, they were once again treated like criminals.</b></span></span></blockquote>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">This naughty-but-nice policy has been another dud.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><b><span style="color: #274e13;">What has resulted is a dramatic uptick in Islamic radicalism. In January 2014 <a href="http://www.rand.org/pubs/research_reports/RR637.html">the RAND Corporation found that</a>
“the number of Salafi-jihadist groups and fighters increased after
2010, as well as the number of attacks perpetrated by Al Qaeda and its
affiliates.” Attacks including the Ft. Hood massacre; the assault on the
U.S. consulate in Benghazi; the Boston Marathon bombing <a href="http://www.boston.com/news/local/massachusetts/specials/boston_marathon_bombing_victim_list/">whose victims included an 8-year-old boy</a>; and the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murder_of_Lee_Rigby">public beheading of British Fusilier Lee Rigby</a>.</span></b></span></blockquote>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">Continetti pitches a new strategy, which sounds suspiciously like one of the old ones:</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="color: #274e13;"><b>And there is really only one way America can respond to this challenge.
We need to kill them first. We need to kill them on a field of battle
whose contours are determined not by the terrorists but by us. We need
to kill them over there—in the Middle East—before they reach the West. ... </b></span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="color: #274e13;"><b>The number of U.S. ground forces in Iraq <a href="http://www.aei.org/publication/us-strategy-islamic-state-much-air-enough-boots/">must be dramatically increased</a>, and America seriously must work to remove the cause of the Syrian civil war: the mass murderer Bashar al-Assad, who <a href="http://www.israelhayom.com/site/newsletter_opinion.php?id=8829">continues to use chemical weapons</a>, has <a href="http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2014/07/the-isis-assad-alliance.php">entered into a de facto alliance with our terrorist adversary</a>, and is <a href="http://www.israelhayom.com/site/newsletter_article.php?id=22721">reconstituting his nuclear weapons program</a>.</b></span></span></blockquote>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">There "is really only one way America can respond" -- but it's not Iraq War 2.0. To eliminate, or at least marginalize, terror attacks we <i>shouldn't </i>fight IS, Al Qaeda, et al. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">We should keep them the hell out of our countries. No more Muslim immigration, period. If some of them feel a need to spray Americans and Europeans with automatic rifle rounds, they face an extra dimension of difficulty if they are busy swatting flies in Syria or Iraq.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">Encourage all Muslims to return to the failed states from which they came to enjoy the privileges of big-hearted tolerance in the United States, Europe, and Australia. If they want to play with AK-47s and explosives, they can do so against each other in the territories the Prophet dealt them.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">Of course such an idea violates our religion of multi-culturalism. But even religions change. I'd rather switch than fight.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">My wife and I are flying to Los Angeles tomorrow for a few days of -- we hope -- sunshine and warm temperatures. Even if the weather lets us down we will have plenty to do. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">Posting, if any, will be light for the next week. As always, thanks for stopping by.</span></div>
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<br />Rick Darbyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02371910140619422820noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-16646992.post-84210207412145408312015-01-11T10:30:00.000-10:002015-01-11T12:43:18.292-10:00"Je suis Charlie." Really?<div style="text-align: center;">
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">No doubt about it: seeing photos of large crowds with their "Je suis Charlie" signs brought emotions I never thought I'd feel again, especially hope for resistance to Islamization of the West. Whatever else you might say about these demos, they were for once active, not defensive and half-apologetic. Many people of all kinds were not prepared to understand or forgive cold-blooded murder on behalf of a vicious ideology hitched to a religion.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">For the moment at least, the pleas of the can't-we-all-get-along weenies were drowned out.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><a href="http://gatesofvienna.net/2015/01/douglas-murray-talks-about-charlie-hebdo/" target="_blank">Gates of Vienna</a> published an account of an interview with English journalist Douglas Murray. What Murray said wasn't bad, but Gates of Vienna publisher Baron Bodissey went further:</span></div>
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<b><span style="color: #274e13;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">In the aftermath of the Charlie Hebdo massacre, Mr. Murray was
discussing the sham nature of all the candle-lit vigils for “free
speech” that were then taking place. Well-meaning, well-heeled people
stood with pens held high and tears running down their cheeks, holding
signs that read “Je suis Charlie”. But in all likelihood none of them —
especially those associated with Big Media — will do what <i>Charlie Hebdo</i> did: lampoon Islam with unbridled ferocity. ...</span></span></b></div>
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<b><span style="color: #274e13;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">These heartfelt demonstrations are no more than beautiful lies. This is
all theater — public posturing that makes ordinary middle-class people
feel good about themselves. Full of sound and tear-drenched sentiment,
but signifying nothing.</span></span></b></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">I'm glad Bodissy wrote this, and it may be a fair point. But while I normally lead the parade of Cynics United, twirling my baton, it remains to be seen if most of the demonstrators are quite the moral exhibitionists he thinks. Of course it takes no courage to hold up a sign or a pencil in the midst of thousands of other protesters; it's about as risky as putting a "Coexist" bumper sticker on your car in Berkeley.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">Yet ... while individuals can sometimes convert seemingly in a flash because of views that have been slowly building unconsciously (William James has a striking chapter about the phenomenon in <i>The Varieties of Religious Experience</i>), societies don't work that way. Big turnarounds are accretive, tentative at first, then gathering strength and speed. People who wouldn't dare take an uncompromising stand against quasi-religious totalitarianism look around, see a huge gathering of people speaking out, and realize they have allies. It's not the end of the road toward reclaiming freedom of speech and thought, but it's an important step.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">Can the leopard change his spots? Can the <i>New York Times</i> change its template for every article about ethnic and religious divisions? I'm more certain of the answer to the second question. Here's the usual fill-in-the-blanks "backlash" <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/11/world/europe/french-muslims-worry-about-backlash-after-charlie-hebdo-attack.html?rref=world/europe&module=Ribbon&version=context&region=Header&action=click&contentCollection=Europe&pgtype=article&_r=0" target="_blank">story </a>from the <i>Times</i>:</span></div>
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<span style="color: #274e13;"><b><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">PARIS — Last week’s terrorist attacks without doubt set all of <a href="http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/international/countriesandterritories/france/index.html?inline=nyt-geo" title="More news and information about France.">France</a> on edge, but the sense of wariness, even siege, has grown increasingly profound among <a class="meta-loc" href="http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/international/countriesandterritories/france/index.html?inline=nyt-geo" title="More news and information about France.">France</a>’s Muslim population — the largest in Europe — which seems braced for a potential backlash, both political and personal.</span></b></span><br />
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<span style="color: #274e13;"><b><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">Since
the attack Wednesday on the offices of the satirical newspaper Charlie
Hebdo, several mosques across France have been hit by bullets or small
explosive devices. Many more have been tagged by racist graffiti. In
Corsica, a severed pig’s head was hung on the door of a prayer hall, the
police reported. </span></b></span></div>
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<span style="color: #274e13;"><b><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">Those actions followed weekly marches by tens of thousands in Germany,
demonstrating against what they call the Islamization of Europe, the
firebombing of a mosque in Sweden and warnings by British officials
about a rise in Islamophobia.</span></b></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">"Bullets or small explosive devices ... racist graffiti ... pig's head ... ." These things may be bad form, but you have to expect a few hotheads are going to get carried away after something like the Charlie Hebdo massacre. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">What else does this backlash involve? Peaceful marches in some German cities. The firebombing of a mosque (three, actually: inexcusable but not exactly <i>Kristallnacht</i>). Warnings <i>by British officials</i>, who are indoctrinated down to their toenails to cater to the Muslim population, about a rise in "Islamophobia." </span><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">Some backlash. </span></div>
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<span style="color: #274e13;"><b><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">Amid
the rising suspicions and animus, and louder calls from the French
right for stricter measures against Muslim radicals and immigration in
the wake of the attacks, a broader question is emerging as to how France
can close the breach. For
the time being, the answer may be a retreat to the corners by the
mainstream Muslim community, even as prominent voices urge moderation
from extremist imams and disenfranchised Muslim youth.</span></b></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">Okay, you extremist imams and youth. Cool it for now while we look for a way to outlaw the National Front and keep Marine Le Pen from speaking in public. </span><br />
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Rick Darbyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02371910140619422820noreply@blogger.com2