Wednesday, May 12, 2004

When Having a "Can Do" Attitude Meant Something More

On May 12th, 1949, the Soviets lifted the blockade of Berlin, though America kept airlifting supplies until the end of September 1949.  The Soviets’ blockade of Berlin, instead of stymieing America, spurred it on.  Here’s a link to the Berlin Airlift website. Here’s an interesting factoid about the airlift as compared to a more modern endeavor.

"A comparison with the recent multinational airlift into Sarajevo suggests how intense an effort the Berlin Airlift was.  From July 1992 to January 1996, 179,910 tons of cargo was airlifted into Sarajevo.  The Berlin Airlift delivered more than that in March 1949 alone, and did it again in each of the four months that followed."

Posted by John Venlet on 05/12 at 10:04 AM
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Going Commando

I remember the first time I heard the phrase, and its meaning, used as the title to this post.  I laughed my keister off, with my underwear on.  The phrase came to mind, a moment ago, when I read an article in the Bowling Green Daily News titled “Congressional forum studies ‘Campbellsville Comeback’." The story details how the town of Campbellsville handled Fruit of the Loom’s offshore outsourcing of about 3,200 jobs.  As evidenced by the following, from the article, Campbellsville didn’t get their panties in a knot, they went commando.

"Instead of giving up, the city pulled together. The town has since added 13 new employers, including Amazon.com. More than 3,700 jobs have been created from those employers and expansions from others."

Via Daniel Drezner.

Posted by John Venlet on 05/12 at 09:25 AM
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I Think I Could Like This Guy

"In the ideal logotopia, every person would possess his own library and add at least weekly if not daily to it. The walls of each home would seem made of books; wherever one looked one would only see spines; because every real book (as opposed to dictionaries, almanacs, and other compilations) is a mind, an imagination, a consciousness. Together they compose a civilization, or even several."

William H. Gass, “In Defense of the Book: On the Enduring Pleasures of Paper, Type, Page, and Ink,” Harper’s Magazine 299 [November 1999]: 45-51, at 47)

I’d love to have a home with walls covered with books.

Via the Anal Philosopher.

Posted by John Venlet on 05/12 at 07:22 AM
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Dumb and Dumber

The headline reads “Dog shot at condo complex after ‘threat’ by sniper."

Why did the sniper shoot the dog?  Because its Master didn’t pick up the dog’s business after the dog completed depositing its business on the lawn.  Does that justify the sniper’s shooting the dog?  Far from it, though it does justify my labeling the sniper a despicable dumbass.  Especially when you consider that in a warning note, which the sniper left on car windshields, the sniper stated dogs would be shot if their Masters didn’t police the business deposited by dogs on lawns.  Rather than resorting to the despicable act of shooting the dogs, which the sniper lays in wait for, why doesn’t the sniper be a man and just politely confront the Masters who don’t police the dog doo doo their dogs leave behind?  Granted, picking up dog shit isn’t one of my favorite things to do, but I do it.  Not because there is a law that states I have to, but because I do not want my dog’s business left in some other individual’s yard, and because I would hope that other dog owners would respect my yard.

Which leads me to the dumber portion.  Reading the article, I could not find one reference to a Master’s responsibiliy for picking up after their dog deposits their business on another individuals lawn or property.  The article is all woe is me, poor Master, bad sniper (and the sniper is bad, and a dumbass), and I don’t feel safe.

Though the sniper is a despicable dumbass, the Masters who let their dogs shit willy nilly on property that is not their own, and then leave their dogs calling card as evidence of their passing by, are dumber, but not quite as despicable.

Link via The Picket Line.

Posted by John Venlet on 05/12 at 06:29 AM
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Global Warming, Bad or Good?

“Wetter World Counters Greenhouse Gases -Scientists."

"Australian scientists have found the Earth may be more resilient to global warming than first thought, and they say a warmer world means a wetter planet, encouraging more plants to grow and soak up greenhouse gases."

Via Yahoo News.

Posted by John Venlet on 05/12 at 05:51 AM
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A Passage I Enjoyed

I’m currently reading Basic Writings of Nietzsche. Specifically, I am reading The Birth of Tragedy, Nietzsche’s first published book, which is included in the volume.  When I read the following passage, I thought of the many “the sky is falling” warnings with which individuals are bombarded by learned men.  Earth destroying meteors and the need for protective measures, devasting earthquake predictions for California by September, the West Nile Virus crisis, the silly posing around the movie The Day After Tomorrow, etcetera, etcetera.

“It is certainly the sign of the “breach” of which everyone speaks as the fundamental malady of modern culture, that the theoretical man, alarmed and dissatisfied at his own consequences, no longer dares entrust himself to the terrible icy current of existence: he runs timidly up and down the bank.  So thoroughly has he been pampered by his optimistic views that he no longer wants to have anything whole, with all nature’s cruelty attaching to it.  Besides, he feels that a culture based on the principles of science must be destroyed when it begins to grow illogical, that is, to retreat before its own consequences.”

Friedrich Nietzsche, Basic Writings of Nietzsche, Translated and Edited, with Commentaries by Walter Kaufmann, 1968, The Birth of Tragedy, Section 18, pg. 113

Posted by John Venlet on 05/12 at 05:25 AM
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An Old Tree

There’s an old tree that leans ponderously southward in my postage stamp sized backyard in West Michigan.  How do I know the tree is old?  I know the tree is old because its bark is as diamond cross-hatched as the back of an old man’s neck.  The tree is properly known as an Ash Leaf Maple, but I prefer its common name Box Elder, because they actually did make boxes and cheap furniture from the trees in the past.

Box Elders are what I would call junk trees and this one is no exception.  The tree itself is bent, gnarled and scarred.  Like arthritis damaged hands.  The tree’s most prominent scar, a gift of nature’s capricious pruning, is a jagged, gaping tear six feet long and two feet wide.  The pruning, a 3 A.M. event, dropped a limb, its girth two-thirds the diameter of the trunk, on my small one stall.  The limb crushed the garage like a matchstick between your fingers, and the scar is the only remaining evidence of this early morning pruning. 

Although the tree’s appearance is almost sinister, its dead limbs scratching at the sky begging for life, like trees in old black and white horror films, it has not yielded to death.  Suckers, sprouting like hairs from an old man’s ears, proclaim its vitality, from both its living, and, what appear to be, dead limbs and scars.  A Boston Ivy clings tenaciously twelve feet up the trunk.  Sending it roots, running like veins to the earth, sucking life to its aerie home.  The Boston Ivy is not the tree’s only tenant.  A gray fox squirrel and her brood also call the tree home.  Woodpeckers, nuthatches and other feathered creatures also flitter through daily.  Free meals are often pried from the tree’s living, and dead limbs.

The tree’s unkempt appearance belies its venerability.  Its scars and lifeless limbs are mocked by the vitality of life springing from it.  The Box Elder will not win any awards for beauty, but it will inspire by its audacity for life.

Posted by John Venlet on 05/12 at 04:10 AM
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"Don't Spank the Messenger"

Steve, of freshly waxed ankles, donut casseroles, and other culinary delights, has a few things to say about Abu Gharib, Rush Limbaugh’s comments on Abu Gharib, and the herd instinct after reading a post by Michele of A Small Victory on the same subject.  An excerpt from the Hog on Ice post.

"I have always had problems with the herd instinct. I am not a joiner. I don’t like discarding my own judgment when someone less intelligent than I tells me to do something I think is wrong or stupid. To a certain extent, that makes me defective, and in other ways, it’s a virtue. On the whole, I’m glad. At least I don’t have to live with the memory of staring up another guy’s rear end in order to be accepted socially."

Posted by John Venlet on 05/12 at 03:47 AM
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An Accurate Title for an Op-ed

From The New York Times.

“Lie, and the Voters Will Believe."

I would amend that to “Voters Will Believe Anything."

Posted by John Venlet on 05/12 at 03:03 AM
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I Would've Failed Each and Every Student for this Answer

"It is now, as the spring semester draws to a close and final exams lie graded on my desk, that I face the fruits of my long labors in Fundamentals of Economics. Despite my extensive dwelling on the basically cooperative nature of the market and the signal characteristic of government as being the legitimated possession and use of coercive power, the majority of my two sections of Fundamentals answered INCORRECTLY the question “How does the text distinguish between government and the market?” Their most preferred answer was “The government is based on cooperation; the market is based on competition.” And we wonder why corporate managers go to jail for “obstruction of justice” while war criminals govern this nation."

Those words were written by Sam Bostaph and posted at the Mises Economics Blog. I’d review my own teaching methods, also.

Posted by John Venlet on 05/12 at 02:55 AM
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Short Attention Spans

” In the midst of our own deserved self-criticism, we are suddenly reminded of the larger stakes, the wider war, why we are in Iraq in the first place."

That’s Andrew Sullivan in a post titled “How dumb is Al Qaeda?"

What I find troubling, is the supposed need to be “suddenly reminded of the larger stakes,...” If that is the case, how dumb are we?

Posted by John Venlet on 05/12 at 02:49 AM
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