Friday, January 27, 2012

“Collective Emotional Spasm” Explained

Brian Micklethwait reads through the intro to a BBC Radio Times program titled My Child the Rioter and his attention is drawn to the phrase “Caught up in ...”, which, as the phrase is used in that intro, is intentionally meant to be understood as being caught up in an event, for example an ocean’s wave as it crests and thunders ashore, due to no fault of an individual’s own actions except for the fact that said individual is standing in the ocean.  Brian’s response.

But the phrase that really caught my eye in this was where it says that son Liam got “caught up in” the unrest. You hear this phrase a lot these days, to describe what someone did, in a way that suggests that what he did was really done to him, by a malign outside force. The Unrest, you see, forced him to go out looting. The Unrest called round, knocked on his door, dragged him out into the street and there compelled him to misbehave. Liam didn’t do rioting. The rioting “involved” him. There the Unrest was, catching Liam up in itself. How could Liam himself be held responsible for what Unrest did to him?

Truly, we do live in a Wonderland.

This explains the power of a “collective emotional spasm,” which, evidently, all are powerless to resist, I guess.

Posted by John Venlet on 01/27 at 08:07 AM
(2) Comments • (0) Trackbacks • Permalink

Thursday, January 26, 2012

Welcome, Finlay Anne

Well, it’s official.  The Lovely Melis and I are Grandma and Grandpa.  After 24 hours of non-productive labor, Finlay came into this world at 1:30 a.m. this morning via c-section, all 8 pounds and 15 ounces of her.  What a blessing.

image

UPDATE:  I thought Finlay deserved to be seen without Grandpa’s face hovering over her.

image

Posted by John Venlet on 01/26 at 02:20 PM
(17) Comments • (0) Trackbacks • Permalink

Wednesday, January 25, 2012

Sparrow Mourning

An article at the American Daily Herald is headlined as follows.

Sparrow Populations Crashing in Japan.

To which I say good, as the sparrow population which is crashing in Japan is the English or House Sparrow, at least that is what the photo indicates which accompanies the article, so they don’t belong there anyway.  Nor do these sparrows belong in my backyard.

Posted by John Venlet on 01/25 at 11:27 AM
(2) Comments • (0) Trackbacks • Permalink

Typhoid Mary Tracking

If the U.S. government, utilizing research being funded by the U.S. Navy, considers the spread of “revolutionary” ideas as infectious, then I want to be just like Typhoid Mary.

With funding from the Office of Naval Research, a team at Aptima, Inc. is developing software that’d do more than just scan Twitter for trending topics. Instead, it’d mine the web, including news stories, social networks and blogs, to extract topics and phrases that are gaining traction online. Then, the software would keep tabs on how the conversations proliferate, both geographically and over time.

The software would use epidemiological modeling to chart the discussions and their trajectory…

Applied to online discourse, epidemiological models would essentially treat uprisings like illnesses. They’d pull apart a web conversation (the author of the post, the site where it was published, the comments that ensued) and try to figure out which parts contributed most readily to the spread of a revolutionary message.

Cairo Contagion: Military Tracks Uprising’s ‘Infectious’ Ideas

Linked via Fred Lapides.

Posted by John Venlet on 01/25 at 10:43 AM
(0) Comments • (0) Trackbacks • Permalink

Same Ol’ Same Ol’

Unlike Chance, I don’t much like to watch, at least SOTU addresses.

Did Last Night’s Speech Sound Familiar?

Posted by John Venlet on 01/25 at 10:38 AM
(0) Comments • (0) Trackbacks • Permalink

Tuesday, January 24, 2012

Splendor Found

An old friend, Greg Swann, has a blog called SplendorQuest, and on his “About” page one of the ways he describes splendor is as follows.

...untainted, fully-conscious jubilation…

Here’s a piece from The New York Times which I think fits the bill.  It is titled Uneasy Rider, a story of troubled pasts, the consequences of those pasts, and rising above.

Linked via Vanderleun’s Sidelines.

Posted by John Venlet on 01/24 at 04:35 PM
(2) Comments • (0) Trackbacks • Permalink

Playbooks, Espionage and Collusion

Yesterday, Glenn Reynolds linked to a James Pethokoukis post at The American titled 11 stunning revelations from Larry Summers’s secret economics memo to Barack Obama, which Pethokoukis was compelled to write after reading a piece written by Ryan Lizza for The New Yorker titled The Obama Memos, and the actual Larry Summers penned 57-page, “Sensitive & Confidential” memo (pdf of 57 pgs.) meant for Obama’s use, but in all likelihood not meant to be seen by the American public.

Glenn stated the following in regards to Pethokoukis’ post.

A stunning portrait of duplicity and irresponsibility, even for those who have been paying attention.

And indeed, Summers’ memo is a “stunning portrait of duplicity and irresponsibility,” but evidently the portrait is not so stunning as to warrant much interest by the mainstream media, or the general voting American public.

As I considered why this may be, I thought of a loose analogy.

In the National Football League, playbooks are all important.  Every NFL team develops their own playbook for each game, and every opposing NFL team desires to get some type of intelligence on just what plays are in their opponent’s playbook.  Espionage is not unheard of.  But even if NFL espionage is succesful, when it comes right down to it, every NFL team is running the same type of plays; pass, run, screen, quarterback sneak, etc.; though the formations may be different for each individual team as they prepare to run the called play.  The plays and players in government are really no different.

Does anyone really believe that if John McCain would have been elected POTUS he and Congress would have taken actions much different than Obama’s?  Certainly, the form of the “stimulus” may have been different, but the play(s) would have been taken from the same playbook, whether it was put together by Larry Summers, or some other economic wank unable to keep their playbook under wraps.  Only the formation of the congressional and senate colluders would have been different.

Posted by John Venlet on 01/24 at 01:52 PM
(2) Comments • (0) Trackbacks • Permalink

Molokai Now, and Then

The last time I was in Molokai was 1982, when I was stationed at Pearl.  That last visit was just an overnight trip with a few of my shipmates, Matt, Nevo and Joe, prior to departing on WestPac for six months.  It was a memorable overnight, and not just because we almost missed movement waiting for the plane which was supposed to take us back to Honolulu on the morning we were mustering to head out to sea for six months.

After reading a GoNomad.com piece titled Molokai: Hawaii’s Almost Empty Island, it appears that Molokai has not changed considerably since my last visit.  Still no traffic light in Kaunakakai, still not much night life, and still no real development.

Looking at the photos included as part of the article also seems to indicate that things have not changed considerably since my last visit, which I confirmed by digging out some of the photos I took and saved from other visits to Molokai prior to that night in 1982.  My old photos could be substituted for the author’s photos with nary a difference noted.

Here’s one photo that the author of the article should have considered getting a shot of in his story on Molokai, taken from the cliffs above Molokai’s leper colony, which rise 1700 feet above the ocean.  They really are quite spectacular.

image

Molokai now, is not much different from then.

Linked via Fred Lapides.

Posted by John Venlet on 01/24 at 08:44 AM
(2) Comments • (0) Trackbacks • Permalink

Monday, January 23, 2012

It’s More Mainstream Than You Think

I finally got around to reading a Reuters piece, penned by Jim Forsyth, titled Subculture of Americans prepares for civilization’s collapse, which Drudge first linked to on Saturday.

One could think, based on that headline, that the number of Americans who are preppers, as the terminology is utilized, is rather small, a true subculture, with just a hint of criminality, as subculture is often defined and mis-understood.  But they would be wrong.

Forsyth describes preppers this way.

They are following in the footsteps of hippies in the 1960s who set up communes to separate themselves from what they saw as a materialistic society, and the survivalists in the 1990s who were hoping to escape the dictates of what they perceived as an increasingly secular and oppressive government.

Forsyth’s description displays not only his lack of knowledge of history; does he not know that the early Christians were considered preppers? (the ancients were not familiar with the terms hippies, survivalists, or preppers) voicing some of the same concerns today’s preppers are; but his lack of being in touch with the concerns of everyday Americans.

I think of my old neighbor Wally, an everyday American, who passed away a couple of years ago at the age of 92.  I knew Wally for 16 years, and chatted with him almost everyday when he was strolling through the neighborhood, and one of the first subjects we ever discussed was the subject of secular and oppressive government and free and easy credit.  Without fail, in these conversations, Wally would say to me, “You think the Great Depression was bad?  When the next one hits, the Great Depression is going to look like a picnic, so be prepared.,” and he wasn’t a prepper.

Or how about my mother?  She’s an everyday American, 81 years old, who still retains a semblance of faith in government, even she articulates to me a grave concern for the world due to the machinations of politics and advises being prepared, and she’s far from being a prepper (that’s okay, she’s got six (6) sons who will take care of her).

Or how about some of my neighbors, everyday Americans once again, who in conversations regarding the current state of the world casually refer to where they would go in the event of an economic and societal collapse, which is commonly known in “prepper” parlance as their bug out spots.  These neighbors of mine are not “subculture” individuals, they are red blooded, mainstream Americans, attempting to live freely, though they realize the yoke of slavery is already chaffing their necks.

Individuals desiring to be prepared for possible economic and societal collapse are not members of a subculture.  They are mainstream.  It is those individuals who are not aware and who are unprepared who are subculture today.

UPDATE:  Forgot that this came up in conversation Saturday night.  Costco sells a survival pack.  Though it’s only good for two (2) weeks, if Costco is selling survival packs, prepping is not a subculture.

Posted by John Venlet on 01/23 at 01:20 PM
(2) Comments • (0) Trackbacks • Permalink

Articles of Confederation Anyone?

The phrase “too big to fail” has become a well known part of the American lexicon since Obama took office, and this ill-informed and destructive concept has been readily embraced by corporate entities and politicians alike, resulting in stunning failures and calls for bigger government, sort of as the ultimate poster boy for the “too big to fail” mentality.

Steven Yates casts his eye on the subject of too big to fail in a piece at the American Daily Herald titled Who Was Leopold Kohr?, which he was spurred to write after reading a Guardian article last September titled This economic collapse is a ‘crisis of bigness’ which also notes Leopold Kohr, the author of Breakdown of Nations.

Kohr, who I am not really familiar with, allegedly “warned 50 years ago that the gigantist global system would grow until it imploded,” and, indeed, the current “gigantist global system” does give the appearance of impending implosion.  Even though I am unfamiliar with Kohr, Yates, in concluding his informative piece on Kohr, succinctly paraphrases why “too big to fail” is a fatal mentality.

Read Breakdown of Nations today, and we come to see why we have a largely unresponsive political system, and why so many of our institutions seem mismanaged—private corporations as well as government agencies. They are too big! Bigness begets alienation and faceless bureaucracy, but more importantly, it begets more bigness: organizations grow larger through desperate attempts to correct for, or at least manage, the dysfunction their present level of bigness has generated. This is as true of leviathan corporations as it is of overextended, expansionist governments. (bold by ed.)

Articles of Confederation anyone?

Posted by John Venlet on 01/23 at 10:06 AM
(1) Comments • (0) Trackbacks • Permalink

SOPA and A Variation on “Don Henley Must Die”

I’ve mentioned Mojo Nixon’s song Don Henley Must Die previously in these pages (lyrics here).

Paul Graham offers a variation on the theme of Don Henley Must Die, titled by Business Insider as Hollywood Must Die, which advocates for the death of Hollywood because of its support of SOPA.

Hollywood appears to have peaked. If it were an ordinary industry (film cameras, say, or typewriters), it could look forward to a couple decades of peaceful decline. But this is not an ordinary industry. The people who run it are so mean and so politically connected that they could do a lot of damage to civil liberties and the world economy on the way down. It would therefore be a good thing if competitors hastened their demise.

I would add that Hollywood should die because the majority of movies that come out of Hollywood are crap.

Link to Business Insider story via Claire Wolfe.

Posted by John Venlet on 01/23 at 09:27 AM
(1) Comments • (0) Trackbacks • Permalink

Sunday, January 22, 2012

2012 Vote Shilly-shallying

For all the reasons which can be enumerated to withhold a vote for one particular political candidate or another, this one has to rank right up there with the most feeble.

Regarding Romney’s loss, one thing I have not seen mentioned is the robo calls.  All this week, the Romney campaign flooded republicans with robo calls.  From Monday through Friday we would get literally four to five calls a night.  They would come sometimes ten minutes apart.  If you did not answer them, they left long messages on your answering machine.  I turned off our phone on Weds, but when I turned it back on, on Friday, they were still calling so I turned it off again.  This REALLY pissed off a lot of people I talked to, me included–our son works at night a lot and we try to keep in touch via that line so I was especially unhappy.

Via a Jonah Goldberg Corner post titled Robooverkill?.

Posted by John Venlet on 01/22 at 01:52 PM
(2) Comments • (0) Trackbacks • Permalink

Questioning the Hobgoblin Conjurers

Joel, at The Ultimate Answer to Kings…Is Not a Bullet But a Belly Laugh, points readers to an AP article posted by The Alaska Journal under the headline Police chiefs meet at WH on homegrown terror fight wherein the following is stated.

It’s a delicate balance, as the violent extremism that has erupted across the U.S. in the past few years has been motivated by an ideology, whether a violent interpretation of Islam or white supremacist beliefs.

Joel responds as follows.

And I got to wondering - where’s all this violent extremism going on? Are you people sneaking out and committing acts of violent extremism after I’ve gone to bed, or what? Because, seriously, I’m trying to think of stories I’ve read lately, y’know, of mayhem and bloodshed spread by Muslims and “white supremacists”, and while I can think of a few it’s not exactly what I’d call an “eruption.” Or even much of a trickle. So wherefore all the official panic?

Good question(s).  My neck of the woods seems to be quite lacking in violent extremism too.  How about yours?

Posted by John Venlet on 01/22 at 10:27 AM
(3) Comments • (0) Trackbacks • Permalink

Wood Stove

Via Curmudgeonly & Skeptical, a link to the Finnish Fire Stove.  Make one yourself in 12 easy to follow photos.

I’m gonna try this myself out in the woods.

Posted by John Venlet on 01/22 at 09:40 AM
(3) Comments • (0) Trackbacks • Permalink

It’s Not Really A Secret

Via Claire Wolfe’s Some happy news for a change, a link to a Forbe’s op-ed penned by Jim Powell titled The Most Important Secret Of A Prosperous Economy.

Economies prosper when multitudes of ordinary people are motivated to make improvements. This is because information and insights needed to make an economy prosper are widely dispersed. There’s far more than could ever be centralized, validated and updated in a place like the federal government. The most reliable way to motivate people? Harness their self-interest: let them try making a profit by starting a business based on their information and insights.

This isn’t really a secret.  Powell provides some interesting examples of innovation and improvements which resulted in huge successes.

Posted by John Venlet on 01/22 at 09:34 AM
(0) Comments • (0) Trackbacks • Permalink
Page 2 of 285 pages  <  1 2 3 4 >  Last »