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Noted in passing

Wednesday, April 27, 2011

The Supreme Court legalizes fraud.

I sorta predicted this one.

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Greetings from Charleston

Tuesday, April 26, 2011

Paul Simon was wrong. Nashville is not the cradle of the civil war. This is the place. Charleston, SC.

We are staying at the Vendue Hotel, which is a stone’s throw from the water. They give you free wine and cheese at 4:00 PM. We were talking to the lady who was serving the wine and she told us something or other had been done to the hotel before the war. When I hear that phrase I always think WW II, but when I asked her “which war”, she jokingly said it was before “the war of Northern Agression”. It’s still a reality down here I guess, though the city itself seems fine, and all the people we’ve met have been very friendly. My guess is that it’s the folks in the hinterland that send people like Jim DeMint to the United States Senate.

Anyway, the place reeks history. These pictures are of St. Philip’s Episcopal Church, where several Pinckney’s are buried.


They’re in here somewhere, but I didn’t have the time to find them.


There’s another cemetery across the street. My brother in law read that John Calhoun was buried there, but his body was removed to stop the Yankees from taking it as Sherman marched North. Apparently the work was done too well, since no one is quite sure where his earthly remains were taken.

This is the Custom House, which puts New London’s to shame, but I still give Salem’s the palm.


A few other shots. It is regrettable but true that it is hard to take good photos in a city because of the ubiquitous automobile and the signs required by its existence, both of which mar the scenery to an unacceptable extent. Still, one must do what one must do.


This is a section of the Market, which consists of at least four such buildings, each of which is a city block long. It is a mystery to me why more cities don’t have such markets.


This is the Exchange, in which, I believe the sign said, South Carolina ratified the Constitution, after which it spent four score and 5 years threatening to back out.


Tomorrow we go to Fort Sumter, the very nursery of the Civil War.

I must say a word about the restaurant where we ate tonight, the Cafe Cru. The food is billed as quality American comfort food, which indeed it was. I had Poblano Fried Chicken with Mozzarella, which was yummy indeed. But, not only was the food comfort food, so was the music, a non stop diet of Beatles. You can’t beat that.

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A Hellishly bad column

Monday, April 25, 2011

I have never before read a column by Russ Douthat, the columnist presently occupying the conservative slot at the Times. But I decided to do so today, since my wife told me that one of the people she follows on Twitter said his column today was the stupidest column he’d ever read. I couldn’t resist.

He was right. The column is called The Case for Hell, which right away tells you that we’re entering into a delusional state of mind.

Apparently, fewer people than ever, even the religious, are able to believe that a just God consigns the vast majority of people to eternal torment for disobeying some arbitrary rules, or for failing to accept the Lord Jesus into their heathen hearts.

Some of us might consider this a sign of progress, even if we put aside the larger questions raised by evidence-free religious faith. Not Mr. Douthat. He is, after all, a conservative.

Of course, he does not appear to be overly concerned with whether there is, in fact, a Hell. He does, however, argue that people should believe in Hell, apparently whether it exists or not.

Why?

Doing away with hell, then, is a natural way for pastors and theologians to make their God seem more humane. The problem is that this move also threatens to make human life less fully human.

Atheists have license to scoff at damnation, but to believe in God and not in hell is ultimately to disbelieve in the reality of human choices. If there’s no possibility of saying no to paradise then none of our no’s have any real meaning either. They’re like home runs or strikeouts in a children’s game where nobody’s keeping score.

If your having trouble following this argument, read the rest of the column. It only gets more incoherent from there. It appears, from what I can glean from Mr. Douthat’s muddled theological musings, that he is making the rather old and ultimately debasing argument that our moral choices are meaningless unless there is some otherworldly reward or punishment awaiting us. Why that makes such choices more, rather than less, meaningful is unclear. If I perform an act in hopes of a reward or in fear of punishment, why am I any different than a trained seal?

To the extent he is arguing that there must be a Hell, his argument is so intellectually flimsy that it boggles the mind. Hell must exist because we face moral choices, and there must be consequences to us for the choices we make. The earthly consequences we experience are simply not sufficient, for some reason he does not explain. It follows, therefore, as the night the day, that an after life of eternal torment must, or at least, should await us, so whether it exists or not, we should believe in it, or at least encourage our inferiors to do so. This is philosophy that makes Paul Ryan’s economics look rigorous.

Now Mr. Douthat has every right to try to match Scott Adam’s level of religious insight. But the New York Times, I thought, does not run cartoons, and I actually spend good money to buy it. I deserve better than this, even from the obligatory conservative. I know they’re in short supply, but there must be a conservative out there who is capable of some sort of rational thought. This may not be the stupidest column ever, but If there’s a hell for bad columnists, Douthat is bound for the center ring.

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Heading South

Saturday, April 23, 2011

We’re sitting in our hotel room in Washington. As I said yesterday, no tome to write, but I figure I’ll post some pictures.

We left New London during a cold wet rain. But since the trip must be fully documented, I took a snot of New London’s truly beautiful train station from the new, incredibly sterile New London parade.

In was in the 70s when we arrived, with a virtually cloudless sky.

This sculpture is newly installed in front of the DC train station.


Our hotel is near the Capitol. I decided to take some shots using my telephoto lens.


Pictorial cliches, I know, but we had no time to go anywhere else.

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Good Friday Night Music

Friday, April 22, 2011

Last year we went down South to visit my brother in law, arriving on Easter Sunday, which was, last year, on the 4th of April. It was brutally hot when we got there. This year we’re repeating the trip, and will again arrive on Easter, which this year, by my calculations, is on the latest date on which it can possibly fall. Predictions for the Fayetteville area are for temperatures in the 90s, which we are anticipating with mixed feelings. On the one hand, it will be nice to be warm. On the other hand we will, if the predictions hold, be passing right through warm without stopping or collecting $200.00, straight into the inferno.

This year we’ll be leaving the exciting Fayetteville area for two days in Charleston, where we will be taking in the sights, and boarding a boat for Fort Sumter, where 7 score and 10 years ago the first shots of the Civil War were fired.

This is all by way of saying that political blogging will be even sparser than it has been. On the other hand, if you check back in, you will be regaled with pictures of that portion of our country that should be given a second chance to secede, this time by common consent.

And now for something completely different. This being Good Friday, and therefore be definition a Music Night, I present what has become a Good Friday tradition at this outpost of secularism: the final scene from what may be the funniest movie ever made.


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But someone’s got to do it

Friday, April 22, 2011

The Pinheads step in

The probably go home to a dinner of arugula and Valvoline


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Say it ain’t so, Steve

Wednesday, April 20, 2011

Yoicks:

A pair of programmers has discovered that iOS 4 devices are regularly recording their positions to hidden files, which reside on the devices and are transferred to any computer the devices are synced with during backup. Alasdair Allan and Pete Warden report for O’Reilly that while working on data visualization projects, they discovered a file “consolidated.db” that contains latitude-longitude coordinates along with a timestamp, and while the coordinates aren’t always accurate, they are rather detailed. According to the report, it appears that the location collection started with iOS 4, and thus the file could potentially contain tens of thousands of data points, or an entire year’s worth of movements. The pair note that the file is unencrypted and unprotected, and have contacted Apple’s Product Security team, but have yet to hear back.

Are no verities eternal? Time was when we Apple fans could feel like we were buying from the good guys. Why, Al Gore is on the board. Remember that girl bringing down the Evil Empire in that long ago Super Bowl? Must we face a world in which Microsoft is Number Two and the Good Guy? Someone on Twitter has already speculated that divorce lawyers will be subpoenaing Iphones before you can blink, and, of course, the government won’t be far behind.

Still, Apple does still lead the way in certain respects. For instance, as these Onion Today Now panelists (or at least the informed among them) demonstrate, Apple holds the key to solving the unemployment crisis. But, how about the woman spouting a load of nonsense about liquidity crises?

Still, even though Apple does hold the key to solving the financial problem, the 1984ish spy capability of the Iphone does give me pause. I’m going to have to give some serious thought to breaking away from the new Evil Empire. I’ll definitely get around to it sometime after my new Ipad arrives, unless of course, Apple comes up with yet another new gizmo without which no life could be complete.


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The Greatest Grifter of Them All

Tuesday, April 19, 2011

I wanted to write about something serious tonight, but the woman is just too much fun.

It has been announced that Sarah Palin will appear in the tiny town of Point Clear, Alabama to give a speech at a fundraiser for the “Exceptional Foundation.” The Exceptional Foundation of Baldwin Country Alabama advertises itself as a 501 (c) 3, non-profit organization, dedicated to: “meeting the social and recreational needs of mentally and/or physically challenged individuals in Baldwin and Mobile counties.

…

2. The Exceptional Foundation had approached Sarah Palin with four different proposals for appearing to help the foundation, each of which was rejected.

3. It wasn’t until the Exceptional Foundation agreed to pay her fee of $100,000.00 that the Empress agreed to come.

The blogger who wrote the above, one Malia Litman (who writes an anti-Palin blog- dreary work, but someone has to do it), believes that Sarah is victimizing the “Exceptional Foundation”, and maybe she is. If so, one can’t help but think that anyone who thinks Sarah Palin is an appropriate speaker at a charitable fundraiser deserves to get scammed. Litman makes much of Palin’s hypocrisy, but is there any older news? Cynic that I am, I can’t help thinking that a newly formed group with no prior history and no money to speak of, that lands Sarah Palin as a speaker, is at least a candidate for grifter status itself.

Assuming the Exceptional Foundation is on the up and up, this story illustrates something else about this great, glorious and clinically insane land in which we live. There are places where Sarah Palin is so universally popular that a charitable organization can invite her to speak without the risk of alienating a huge portion of its potential donor base. This is a sobering thought, made only slightly less sobering by the fact that the place in question is Alabama, where, to balance Lake Wobegon, everyone is below average.


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TPM gives the Tea Party too much credit for ideological coherence.

Monday, April 18, 2011

A luckless staffer named Jillian Rayfield over at Talking Points must have drawn the short straw, for it fell to her to review Atlas Shrugged, Part One, which made its debut over the weekend. That’s right, the producers of this flick apparently think it’s the next Star Wars, for they project parts Two and Three, making, if the sequels are ever made, what will surely be the longest right wing wet dream in human history.

Oddly enough, for no one could have predicted it, the movie has garnered universally bad reviews, which enables its right wing backers to play the victim. It’s all a liberal plot, don’t you know, that people are not lining up to see this steaming pile of… Well, this is a family blog, as least for today.

But I take issue with Ms. Rayfield’s premise that the movie pushes the Tea Party ideology. It may push the ideology of those that pull the teabaggers strings, but not that of the teabaggers themselves, because it is giving them too much credit to say that they have any ideology at all. They are a group of people who are insecure in the present and fear the future, and who have found a convenient target for their deluded fears in the person of a middle of the road president who happens to be black. Does anyone really believe, for instance, that they are really against big government? Ask them if they’re willing to give up their Social Security checks or their Medicare, or, for that matter, any government program from which they benefit. Why is it that, now that the feces has hit the fan, attendance at teabagger rallies, even those headlined by the greatest grifter of them all, has fallen so low that the media has to strain to pretend they matter? A group of people that don’t have the capacity for thought, even of the barely rational variety, cannot be expected to articulate a coherent philosophy, unless you consider Groucho Marx’s philosophy intellectually coherent.


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Friday Night Music

Friday, April 15, 2011

Seminal


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