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Saturday, January 08, 2005Connecting Kittens, Alexander the Great and world unification... Here's a great book review by Natalie Solent explaining why Alexander the Great's failure to create a unified empire was a good thing.
posted by gbarto at 11:42 PM The Rainbow William Wordsworth My heart leaps up when I behold A rainbow in the sky: So was it when my life began, So it is now I am a man, So be it when I shall grow old, Or let me die! The child is father of the man; And I could wish my days to be Bound each to each by natural piety.
posted by gbarto at 11:08 PM Here's Instapundit yesterday on the Armstrong Williams bit. I think there are two issues here: 1) Williams' ethics 2) The Administration's ethics From what I know of Armstrong Williams, I doubt that he would have done anything differently on his shows, payola or not. I don't think you'd need to pay him to push NCLB, to hammer it and to have on government mucky mucks to drive home the point. I also don't think the Administration would have approached anyone who wasn't up for the deal. My objections: 1) Williams didn't say, "This segment brought to you by you, the American taxpayer." 2) Why are my taxes being used to push Administration policies? However, it should be pointed out that this is not such a big shocker. Planned Parenthood and countless other organizations that can't even provide their most basic services without Washington's assistance do manage to find the dough to run pretty strong campaigns for their backers. Alarming News wrote: taking money for publicizing [NCLB] without disclosing it seems very wrong to me. I agree with Jonah Goldberg that if the Clinton administration did this, conservatives would be outraged. This is no different.The Clinton Administration, for those who have forgotten, paid broadcasters off to up the anti-drug storylines and strew money left and right upon organizations whose PACs and mailing lists were converted into subsidiaries of the DNC. Conservatives should be outraged with the Bush Administration because they were outraged by the Clinton White House. I'm appalled, but too cynical to get too worked up. The other question is whether this was all within the Education Department or if geniuses with last names like Rove - or Bush - gave the go-ahead. One hopes they're smarter than that.
posted by gbarto at 10:39 PM One is heartened by the way people of all cultures come together to focus on a single problem when tragedy strikes:  Yup. Both the Merc and SingTaoUSA managed to get the Pitt-Aniston split on their front pages. Out of step not just with America, but with the world, the NYT let the event pass unmentioned on its front page (I lack the stomach to do more than glance at the front and rush to the arts pages so I don't know if it was inside). The SF Chronicle also didn't have it on the front, but they're on a funky publishing schedule so maybe it made yesterday's edition.
posted by gbarto at 10:27 PM Friday, January 07, 2005Here's Cicero, raising some useful questions about the new double standard: challenging Christianity is bold, en vogue, etc. But will anyone challenge the faith whose adherents are most vocal and violent in pushing their beliefs? But, you can't criticize Islam!While I get nervous about Cicero's meditations on the Jews, he is right on about the moral and intellectual bankruptcy of those who raise hell constantly against Christianity and celebrate its mocking but who lack the nerve to stand up to the truly militant and dangerous worldview expressed by the uglier elements of Islam. What's happened to the people standing up for Rushdie ten years ago? Most of them seem to have turned into Islamism's useful idiots, finding unable to find the murder and mayhem beneath their gauzy fantasies of multiculturalism.
posted by gbarto at 10:57 PM A Bad Day... UN accuses peacekeepers of exploitation Hillary's Finance Director indicted Bushies paid off commentator to push No Child Left Behind ... Wasn't a good day for the car either:  Ah well, tomorrow is another day...
posted by gbarto at 10:19 PM The Success PrincliplesI've been a fan of Jack Canfield's going way back to his CareerTrack days before anybody had heard of Chicken Soup for anything. So as I was wandering through Borders the other day, I stopped to take a gander at his new audiobook. Now, Jack is a guy who thinks you should slow yourself down enough to pay attention so you can get things right. But he also believes in letting the past be past and moving forward from where you are. Let's hope he's tending toward the second view if and when he sees how this run of the audiobook came out (look at the spines - first image).
posted by gbarto at 9:55 AM To Nature Samuel Taylor Coleridge It may indeed be fantasy, when I Essay to draw from all created things Deep, heartfelt, inward joy that closely clings, And trace in leaves and flowers that round me lie Lessons of love and earnest piety. So let it be! And if the wide world rings In mock of this belief, it brings Nor fear, nor grief, nor vain perplexity. So will I build my altar in the fields, And the blue sky my fretted dome shall be, And the sweet fragrance that the wild-flower yields Shall be the incense I will yield to thee- Thee only, God! and thou shall not despise Even me, the priest of this poor sacrifice.
posted by gbarto at 1:48 AM I've been reading Hewitt's Blog and think it's a pretty good book. The one problem I'm seeing as I go through it is that I'm the one reading it but not really the one who needs to. As a "tail-blogger" who has participated in a swarm or two, I'm well aware of what the blogosphere is. Getting this book into the hands of people who don't get it and won't unless they get burned is going to be trickier. The media is at the top of the list of the clueless in this regard, having watched Jayson Blair, Howell Raines and Dan Rather get taken out while still writing about blogs like the next hula hoop or slinky. There is one plug that Hewitt's book deserves big-time: Just as P.J. O'Rourke's Eat the Rich comes up as a top-notch econ primer, Hewitt's lessons about the evolution of text and about Luther and the Reformation ought be snuck into every decent civics and history textbook out there because they tell the stories so well whereas the typical textbook rends them so dully.
posted by gbarto at 1:38 AM Evan Coyne Maloney and Bill Hobbs have bits about Google's AdSense program. I've been running Google Ads on the multilingua.info site and so far I've seen enough good stuff to keep them running (since it's only costing me the bytes to ship 'em), but also enough doozies to keep me from actually putting my own money on the line. My favorites are when pages on finding a bathroom or ordering in a restaurant bring up ads for things like plumbing fixtures or cutlery. The long term solution, I think, is to click on any google ad that seems inappropriate to the page until advertisers start asking what they're getting for their money. Since right now, 1) it's experimental and 2) the people most sensitive to the program are site owners not getting click-throughs, Google needs added incentive to make this work for all parties. I'd think a simple meta-tag letting you tell Google what a page is about if its own filters are missing the boat should suffice. (via Instapundit)
posted by gbarto at 1:25 AM Thursday, January 06, 2005SongThomas Lovell Beddoes How many ways do I love thee dear? Tell me how many thoughts there be In the atmosphere Of a new fall'n year, Whose white and sable hours appear The latest flake of Eternity:- So many times do I love thee dear. How many times do I love again? Tell me how many beads there are In a silver chain Of evening rain, Unravelled from the tumbling main, And threading the eye of a yellow star:- So many times do I love again.
posted by gbarto at 11:45 PM Wednesday, January 05, 2005From bad to verse...Visitors to the blog will note a poem below. While there is a gbarto.com website devoted to Hugo's poetry and another with a small collection of English verse (selected by the marketing department of UBS), I thought it would be nice to offer some short, but interesting poems in another venue and since everything else goes up on the TurkeyBlog, I figured, why not? So for a little while (probably two months or so) there will be daily (or almost daily) poems. After that, we'll see how things are going. Enjoy, or scroll your mouse down, as the spirit moves you. Here, for the interested, is a page where the poems will be linked.
posted by gbarto at 9:12 PM The Divine ImageWilliam BlakeTo Mercy, Pity, Peace, and Love All pray in their distress; And to these virtues of delight Return their thankfulness. For Mercy, Pity, Peace, and Love Is God, our father dear, And Mercy, Pity, Peace, and Love Is Man, his child and care. For Mercy has a human heart, Pity a human face, And Love, the human form divine, And Peace, the human dress. Then every man, of every clime, That prays in his distress, Prays to the human form divine, Love, Mercy, Pity, Peace. And all must love the human form, In heathen, turk, or jew; Where Mercy, Love, & Pity dwell There God is dwelling too.
posted by gbarto at 9:10 PM Carpy Diem?I've been reading all over the place about how aid to Tsunami victims isn't being distributed as fast as it might, how this or that agency should be doing better and especially about how the United States government just really should have fixed everything by now.Anyone been to the Post Office lately? Our efforts, and those of many nations, are good and noble and worthy. But they're all being executed by governments and government-like institutions. That are "personed" by government employees and the sort of people who become government employees. Not that there's anything wrong with that. These are methodical people who do their work according to established procedures that one hopes, not always in vain, are rooted in a mix of common sense and unconventional wisdom about things that are much easier if you're not the one doing them. The distribution of aid is going to take time. As will its collection. There will be snafus like Canada's creation of a great disaster relief setup whose only flaw is they lack the necessary aircraft to take it outside Canada. Or the U.N. efforts that have all the essential components except people actually working where the disaster is. But there will also be many noble efforts like those being mounted by the Red Cross, WorldVision and too many countries and organizations to count. In the midst will be found bad eggs - lousy aid providers and the occasional fraud. Such is life. And when clean water is again flowing - and sewers!, when hospitals again have power, and so on, there will be plenty of time to bicker about what should have been. For now, let us salute the folks who have made it there and are on the ground, helping out, and the ones who are on the way. The news, folks, is not that humanity is again running up against the limitations of only being human. The wonder is that thousands of people have set up shop thousands of miles from home to help complete strangers in their hour of need. And tens of thousands more have reached for their checkbooks to help finance the effort. That, I'd say, is good news.
posted by gbarto at 2:26 AM Monday, January 03, 2005There is apparently talk about moving some of the Gitmo prisoners to prisons in their own countries that are built and monitored by the U.S. but run by the "host countries." Instapundit has doubts; this American fellow doesn't see so much of a problem. The problem? The likely host countries have such lousy track records on human rights that suddenly Gitmo is looking like Club Med.Instapundit calls the plan dodgy, and indeed it is. But sometimes a little dodginess is called for. Keeping a clear conscience is a good thing and one hopes that our leaders will stick to policies that do not leaving them tossing and turning at night in fear of perdition. Still, giving a fair shot to people who are intent upon killing us seems to me to be a little too evenhanded. The big mistake we seem to make is to confuse where human rights and government intersect. Government cannot give or grant universal human rights. It would be like granting sunshine and rain. They are, and that's that. All government can do is - in the affirmative - secure those rights and - in the negative - avoid infringing upon them. Our particular government was set up to secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and to our posterity. Resident aliens involved in the bombing of our cities were not mentioned as entitled to our protections. It's not that they don't merit the universal human rights we celebrate. They do, by definition. It's just not the job of the United States government to assure those rights. It is, on the other hand, very much the job of the United States government to provide for the common defense of the several states. It is strange that George W. Bush gets this while some of our courts do not. Perhaps it's too plainly written; were it flickering in the shadows of a subordinate clause in a later amendment rather than being stated outright in the introduction to the document it might draw their attention. As it stands, there are screeching advocates and goofy courts that sometimes think the president's first job in the war on terror is not to defend the land and secure the liberty of the citizenry, but rather to make sure that non-citizens hell-bent on destroying us are assured the full rights of U.S. citizens. It is not clear if this includes the right to be incinerated in your office by Arab Muslims who for reasons of sensitivity can't be asked why they're in flight school if they don't intend to become pilots. It seemingly does include everything else. At this point, if the State Department plan becomes reality the screeching advocates will have only themselves to blame. Guantanamo is the only prison on the island of Cuba where anything resembling human rights even gets a mention. But in spite of our efforts to establish relatively humane prisons for people committed to our murder, we only catch hell. Apologies if I've missed it, but I don't recall any big campaigns by Amnesty for the Saudis, Yemenis, Syrians or anyone else to look at Guantanamo as the minimum standard they ought to reach for. So what's the fuss about sending a Saudi to a Saudi prison? If it's good enough for a Saudi shoplifter, why isn't it good enough for someone committed to the mass murder of Americans? Bottom line: Being a fairminded fellow who believes in universal human rights as a goal, not just a position paper, I hope we can hold the prisoners in Guantanamo and keep them in a system where the stupid kids have a chance of being weeded out and dealt with rather than tossed in with the worst of the worst. Hope that we will be able to hold on to the prisoners to ensure that they are treated as prisoners, not animals, because if even 1% deserve the distinction a good society will try to make it. Hope that we hang on to them so that standards of law and justice, even if at lower benchmarks than we use for our citizenry, are applied in lieu of the arbitrary and fickle systems that pop up in the more barbaric nations. But if our society is to meet even the lower bar set at Guantanamo, it must first survive. If the human rights groups and sensational journalists want to take a breather and focus on how a democracy can reasonably deal with those committed to its destruction, respecting their humanity but not their cause, there's room for dialogue. Too often, though, these groups seem less concerned about the prisoners than about knocking Bush, the U.S. and the war on terror. Too often, their interest seems to lie not in finding a way to protect everyone's rights, including the rights of U.S. citizens to live in relative safety, but rather to scoring points off the only governments that take the trouble to listen to them, lest fundraising or readership trail off. I'm sure the Bush administration does not relish the thought of either the hassle or the expense of lifetime detentions whether here or elsewhere and would welcome reasonable alternatives. But it also does not relish a replay of 9/11, and we've learned that sufficiently determined people can do such things and worse if given the necessary time, money and freedom of movement. In such circumstances, Bush must first protect the citizens he serves while seeking the best means possible to keep serious threats to our lives and liberty at bay. If the advocacy groups make it untenable for him to do so under U.S. auspices, turning over the job to governments less committed to human rights than ours may look and feel bad, but it is his obligation to do so for the protection of our society.
posted by gbarto at 1:46 AM |
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