Look at Obama's own family. He (with his dear wife Michelle) named his younger daughter Malia, or "bad girl" in Latin. There is no accident that two Ivy League lawyers should choose this name. Any LSAT prep class teaches how to figure out the meaning of Latin words from their structure. I'm not talking Freudean analysis here, just the kind of relationship a lawyer ought to have with the English language. And yeah, I know, Malia is a fairly common African American name, but parents of Malias don't graduate from Harward Law.
Also of interest is Obama's oldest daughter's Russian name. Whenever non-Russians give their kids Russian names I suspect a commie.
It seems like Israel is really going for it this time. They probably know that it's their last chance in 4, maybe 8 years to eradicate terrorism in Gaza, even if the terrorists are hiding in mosques, hospitals and schools. Anyhow, I hope they accomplish what needs to be done by January 19.
In this vain, Susan Gregory Thomas opines on the current mortgage crisis. You'd never guess, but the financial meltdown is all about generation X. Don't search for any economic insight in this feature -- what are economics next to a meditation on the unique role of upper middle class 30-something urbanites in America? Thomas (Gregory Thomas?) starts with a short biographical sketch of Xers. She starts out bitching about her parents, and then:
According to marketing research, nearly thirty percent of Generation X parents volunteer at their children's schools or extracurricular activities. Again, according to marketers, we panic about child-care and preschool, spending more money on them than any other household necessities. We leave the workforce if no decent child-care is available. We sneered at Yuppies' conspicuous consumption, but credit card market research reveals that we spend twenty percent more on luxury goods than Yuppies ever did — especially if it has anything to do with home. We yearn for home. We'll spend whatever we have to get it.
...Thomas did come up with some statistic that home ownership among those who fall under gen X is whooping 5% higher then among people of Obama's age. Now, that's a generational difference! What she didn't do, she didn't look into who exactly was owning those homes. It can't possibly be that all that real estate was purchased by people who freak out about child-care and install expensive gadgets. In fact, minority home ownership went up over the past decade.
* And btw, I have no idea what proper punctuation would be here.
Soren Kierkgaard
Turns out, they banned rock'n'roll in Cuba, and of course, they did the same in USSR. But how ironic!
Also, I'd like one of those "Butcher of La Cabana" onesies.
His relationship with Klaus Kinski notwithstanding, Werner Herzog is insane, but there is certain sanity to his worldview. Unlike most of our cultural elites, Herzog understands nature. He doesn't believe that nature is benign and fragile. Instead the forces of nature are cruel and all-powerful. I credit Herzog's Grizzly Man
with saving us from the cult of Timothy Treadwell, the bear sitter. Had Treadwell's relatives commissioned the film to any other filmmaker, we'd had a laudatory tale of a brave young man protecting grizzly bears from the rest of us. Instead, we got an honest conversation about nature and civilization. Grizzly man was easily the best documentary of 2005, (it wasn’t even nominated for an Oscar in this category!).
Encounters
is a continuation of the same conversation, and it does not disappoint. At times spooky, at times spectacular and not without a sense of humor, the movie is definitely worth seeing. But boy, why does Herzog need to be so German and so Gothic? My husband jokes that the filmmaker still can't sleep at night thinking about why one penguin wandered off away from food and camp and headed to the mountains.
Then yesterday I had a conversation with a different individual about how we are in a recession now. Apparently we are because even the President says so. I asked what is a recession. Well, that's when the economy is not doing well. But how do the economists measure that? Surely, there is a definition. Or, a recession is what comes before a depression.
I'm not saying that a half a year from now we won't have two consecutive quarters of negative economic growth measured -- actually I'm sure we will. I am simply complaining that I get to vote only once.
- Location:Alameda
ust months after riding an incredible high, the recycling market has tanked almost in lockstep with the global economic meltdown. As consumer demand for autos, appliances and new homes dropped, so did the steel and pulp mills' demand for scrap, paper and other recyclables.
Cardboard that sold for about $135 a ton in September is now going for $35 a ton. Plastic bottles have fallen from 25 cents to 2 cents a pound. Aluminum cans dropped nearly half to about 40 cents a pound, and scrap metal tumbled from $525 a gross ton to about $100.
It's getting more difficult to find buyers in some markets, Steenstra said.
While few across the country appear to be taking such drastic measures as Steenstra, the recycling market has gotten so bad that haulers in Oregon and Nevada who were once paid for recyclables are now getting nothing or in some cases are having to pay to unload their wares.
In Washington state, what was once a multimillion-dollar revenue source for the city of Seattle may become a liability next year as the city may have to start paying companies to take their materials.
Some in the business are describing the downturn as the worst and fastest ever.
"It's never gone from so good to so bad so fast," said Marty Davis, president of Midland Davis Corp. in Pekin, Ill., who has been in the recycling business since 1975.
Joanne Davidson shares her parenting wisdom, but not before she gives us her short history of time-outs:
“Time Out” has become an icon for parenting, care-giving and supervising children. Most homes, daycares, church nurseries and other established places for children have an area designated for the often-used Time Out.
[...]
Because Time Out was developed and is implemented as an alternative to spanking, it’s used primarily as a replacement punishment.
Where she gets her ideas that time out "was developed" as an "alternative" to physical punishment is also unclear. Where I come from most parents use both. My best guess (and it's only a guess) is that time outs were always a bourgeois form of punishment. And, yes, time out is a punishment, not replacement for it.
Davidson then makes an assertion that time outs don't always work. This I will give her. No disciplining tool will always work with all kids. However, the idea of discipline, that is punishing bed behavior and rewarding good behavior is a sound one. There are bad and good ways of going about it, but this is an entirely different topic.
Back to time out, Davidson says it's no good because:
(1) Time Out is typically thrown at a child in the absence of actual teaching. A child who seems to need a Time Out more likely needs some instruction, guidance, role playing or re-direction.
(2) Time Out usually involves isolation, causing a child to experience stress and discomfort. Isolation teaches nothing of value and does not impart knowledge or experience.
(3) Time Out is rarely related to the issue of concern, and a child is unable to relate the discipline to the event that precipitated it.
(2) Because the second paragraph is typed in a different font and there is no problems with the language, I suspect Davidson stole it from some other source without attribution. Regardless, temporary isolation is a good way to solve a disciplinary problem because the child can calm down and learn to control himself.
(3) Huh? Parents do time outs for kicks?
Perhaps Davidson was just that kind of parent because, she laments, time outs didn't work, so she had to come up with an alternative called "cuddle corner":
Instead of a Time Out chair, the “Cuddle Corner” is a designated area in your home that is to be used for rejuvenation, reflection, lowering of intensity, regrouping and child-directed [I don't get child-directed families -- ed.] down time. It’s a place where comfort is available, and company, too, if requested.
A child isn’t sent to Time In, they are invited [what if a child refuses the invitation? -- ed.] to go. Unlike Time Out, the child isn’t sent alone; he/she can have company. He doesn’t need to sit and wait; he can engage in comforting, soothing and appropriate play.
When we created our first Cuddle Corner, I talked to my (then) 2 kids and told them what we were doing. In simple terms, I explained that “we are making an area of our home, near everyone, where we can go when our behavior is less than acceptable. [Unacceptable? -- ed.] It’s a place for us to learn to make ourselves feel better so we can join the family again. It’s to be used by children and adults.” I had the kids gather some of their favorite stuffed animals, blankets and books. We put them near a special and comfortable chair in the family room, and then we sat in the Cuddle Corner and talked. I told them how we would be using these items and that I would be with them whenever they felt they needed me there. [I'm not going to lie to my children and tell them that I will always be there. I won't, and they'd better grow up. --ed.]
Cuddle Corner works like this: a child would get upset and the usual re-direction wouldn’t work [perhaps the problem here is "usual redirection" -- ed.], or, they would have a series [series!? -- ed.] of unacceptable behaviors. I would suggest the Cuddle Corner and offer to go with them. We would sit and cuddle, read, and hold our stuffed animals. When they felt ready, they could rejoin the family. Since we had already talked about the problem (as in “you are having trouble not hurting your sister, and I think the Cuddle Corner might help”), I do not talk about it again.
I used it consistently for a long time, and then stopped. [Did the child grow out of the age when this particular kind of misbehavior was interesting? -- ed.] When my third child turned 2 and exhibited certain aggressive behaviors, I realized we were in need of it again. We went through a similar process and, because the kids were a little older, renamed it Comfort Corner. We added meditation books, Bibles, a candle. We also do our family devotion and prayer there.
Oh, and check out how Davidson described herself:
I have 2 college degrees – one in English and one in Business. I learned early on that neither prepared me in the least for the challenges of being a parent.
No shit.
It turns out that Orff, who was born in Bavaria in 1895, had a Jewish grandmother [OK, that's not what I mean by despicable - ed.] – a fact that, extraordinarily, he managed to conceal from the painstaking research of the National Socialists. "Once you tell one lie to cover up a lethal situation – one Jewish grandparent was enough to condemn you to death – it's a slippery slope," comments Tony Palmer. "Ever more must be done to maintain the deception."
The lies went on. Orff later claimed that the Nazis had banned Carmina Burana. Nothing could have been further from the truth – they adored it, and no wonder. Its simplicity, accessibility and primal force exemplified the opposite of the atonal or serialist works that the regime deemed "decadent" (entartete musik). Indeed, the work – premiered for the Nazi party in 1937 – helped to draw Orff to their attention and won him support from the Reich. Nor was he above writing new incidental music to A Midsummer Night's Dream when the much-loved work by the Jewish Mendelssohn was banned.
Orff, however, was never a card-carrying member of the Nazi party and privately despised them for their crudity and philistinism. "He wasn't interested in politics," his second wife, Gertrud, recalls in the film. She adds that the war was "not our fault", but that they did not protest because it "wasn't safe".
It is telling that one of the works closest to Orff's heart was a Märchenopera (fairy-tale opera) that he wrote in 1939: Der Mond, telling of a world plunged into darkness when fiends steal the moon. It contains some of his most appealing music, but proved unstageable except by a puppet theatre. Many artists, comments the historian Michael H Kater, felt that "the regime had stolen the light" from them. Still, it was not difficult for the previously penniless and struggling Orff to see that the Reich had high hopes for him. By 1943, his name was on a special list of favoured artists; he was not to be conscripted, he received a 2,000-mark prize from the Cultural Chamber in 1942 and he was placed on an elite payroll that gave him 1,000 marks per month. Germany's two senior composers, Richard Strauss and Hans Pfitzner were ageing and would soon die; it was clear that if Germany were to win the war, Orff would quickly become the Reich's leading composer.
One can argue that, like so many living under insane and tyrannical regimes, Orff merely did what was necessary in order to survive. And perhaps it was his good fortune that when he found himself facing the "de-Nazification" process after Germany's defeat, his interrogator was a musically educated admirer. This American intelligence officer, keen to help him, asked him simply to provide something, anything, that could show he had spoken out against Hitler.
Orff's invented response at this moment would never cease to haunt the composer.
Kurt Huber, professor of philosophy at Munich University, had provided Orff with the medieval Latin texts that he set in Carmina Burana; the two had also worked together on Der Mond. In 1942, Huber and a core group of students formed the White Rose resistance movement which distributed pamphlets calling for active opposition to the Third Reich. Huber authored the sixth and final leaflet. Huber's widow, Clara, relates on camera that Orff was a close friend and used to visit them every Sunday. Yet, she adds, he had no part in the movement and never said a word against Hitler.
On the contrary, the day after Huber's arrest by the Nazis, when she told Orff what had happened, his response was: "I am ruined! Ruined!" She hoped he would use his influence to intervene on her husband's behalf; but Orff did nothing. "He thought only of himself," she recalls. She never saw him again.
Put on the spot by the de-Nazification interrogator, Orff falsely claimed that he had co-founded the White Rose movement with Huber. The group's members, including Huber, had been executed in 1943. Nobody was left alive to dispute his words and he walked out with a clear name. He only had to answer to his conscience.
An epidural is a safe and effective procedure that alleviates pain in lower part of the body. Epidurals were successfully used for decades around the world. But apparently not in a first world country like Netherlands. Why? Ideology, that's why:
Netherlands in particular is heavily invested in "natural" childbirth. Dutch women with healthy pregnancies are encouraged to birth at home. Because no test can reliably predict potential labor complications, and surgical help is not available at home (duh!) perinatal death rate in Netherlands is higher then in the US, for instance. But why worry about dead babies when you have an ideology?
Besides ideology there are health care costs to consider. In the US with our private sector-driven health care a laboring woman is a customer. Medical professional try to keep her happy. In Europe laboring woman is an expense. Why not get her out of the hospital and deny pain relief?
So, yes, it's 2008, and for a quarter of the century the Dutch were considered champions of women's rights. Only how does their feminism serves the interests of women if the Dutch women were denied readily accessible technology to offer comfort them in an hour of need? And does this denial has anything to do with the morbidly low birth rate?
via Dr. Amy
Being an early-mid 20th century writer Marshak put a bit of creative destruction in the picture: children with scissors. Considering that the theme is destruction of books, the quote is almost Nazi-like... except that it's about children who don't know any better. So, yes, if children are into the book, they will memorize the words and destroy it, but this idea makes me cringe. If children are old enough to hold scissors, they are old enough to be disciplined, and it's my duty as a parent to explain that books are to be treasured.
On one hand, my opinion of Livni is as high as it ever was. On the other, it look like we, the United States are poised for four years of international humiliation.
Actually I was supposed to post about the mysteries of Russian children's lit, but that will take time.
...At least it happens for one nap only...
He cited Adlai Stevenson, the suave and debonair governor of Illinois, who twice ran for president against Eisenhower in the 1950s, as an example of an intellectual in politics.
Intellectuals, according to Mr. Kristof, are people who are “interested in ideas and comfortable with complexity,” people who “read the classics.”
It is hard to know whether to laugh or cry.
Adlai Stevenson was certainly regarded as an intellectual by intellectuals in the 1950s. But, half a century later, facts paint a very different picture.
Historian Michael Beschloss, among others, has noted that Stevenson “could go quite happily for months or years without picking up a book.” But Stevenson had the airs of an intellectual — the form, rather than the substance.
What is more telling, form was enough to impress the intellectuals, not only then but even now, years after the facts have been revealed, though apparently not to Mr. Kristof.
That is one of many reasons why intellectuals are not taken as seriously by others as they take themselves.
As for reading the classics, President Harry Truman, whom no one thought of as an intellectual, was a voracious reader of heavyweight stuff like Thucydides and read Cicero in the original Latin. When Chief Justice Carl Vinson quoted in Latin, Truman was able to correct him.
Yet intellectuals tended to think of the unpretentious and plain-spoken Truman as little more than a country bumpkin.
I'm not sure Obama read anything other then Saul Alinsky, a couple of screeds by Edward Said and The New York Times. I doubt he read The Capital or even Franz Fanon whom he claims he discussed with his imaginary freinds at Occidental. Obama doesn't speak any foreign languages (dunce Bush is fluent in Spanish). He is certainly no original thinker.
Anyhow, Thomas Sowell explains about intellectuals in politics:
During the 1930s, some of the leading intellectuals in America condemned our economic system and pointed to the centrally planned Soviet economy as a model — all this at a time when literally millions of people were starving to death in the Soviet Union, from a famine in a country with some of the richest farmland in Europe and historically a large exporter of food.
New York Times Moscow correspondent Walter Duranty won a Pulitzer Prize for telling the intelligentsia what they wanted to hear — that claims of starvation in the Ukraine were false.
Orwell too comes to mind. He said that some ideas are so stupid only intellectuals can believe in them.
What I find most disturbing about Obama as philosopher-king line of thought is smug superiority of American academics and apparatchiks and the tense grip they have on language and political discourse. It's either you are with us, or you are stupid. When I was in grad school, I brought up a comment an undergrad made to one of my fellow classmates. The undergrad mused how come all professors think alike. "Why, -- said graduate student. -- That's because they are smart!" People like that grad student just won an election, and they are gutsier and more self-important then ever.
My parents bought an Ikea crib, and I chose the cutest bedding for it -- little hippos! They also have circus bedding, and more hippos. We got a hand-me-down crib from my in-laws, and the bedding was from Ross. Not nearly as appealing! Awhile ago we bought playmats at Ikea -- only $15 a piece! At that time they only had one type of playmats, but now it looks like they got 10! I want to redecorate entire nursery!
Apparently Gene studied Theology in college. It all makes sense, I guess.
Gene showed up with his entourage of fans and his common law wife who appears with him on his reality TV show. Who let them on a G-rated show?!?!?! His blond girlfriend who you'd think would be a mega-bimbo know that K stands for potassium in the periodic table of elements. I'm not blond, and I'm not a bimbo, but I didn't know that.
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