…that because I enjoyed “The Great Escape” I will also enjoy “Fiddler On the Roof.”
Netflix is nuts.
Netflix thinks that because I enjoyed “The Adventures of Baron Munchausen” I will also enjoy “The Madness of King George.” In this case, Netflix is probably not nuts, although King George most likely was.
Netlix thinks that because I enjoyed “In Treatment, Season 1” I will also enjoy “In Treatment, Season 2.” This seems eminently sensible. And yet I did not. Go figure.
Politely philosophical bot with an odd idea of what seems comforting:
good post, I enjoy reading it. I hope 1 time I may acquire identical. have a nice day time. – Interestingly, according to modern astronomers, space is finite. This is a very comforting thought.
If you’re ever seen “West Side Story,” this might hit the spot:
The news that Vladimir Nabokov, illustrious author and respected lepidopterist, came up with a theory of butterfly evolution that was poo-pooed in his time but which has now been vindicated by DNA research has made me unaccountably happy.
Nabokov speculated that the butterfly that was his specialty, known as the Polyommatus blue, had come over from Asia over many millions of years ago in five distinct waves. It was a theory few credited at the time. My guess is they chalked it up to his artistic nature, a flight of fancy for which he could be forgiven, just this once. But now a team has applied the newest technology involving DNA to his notion, and:
On Tuesday in the Proceedings of the Royal Society of London, they reported that Nabokov was absolutely right.
“It’s really quite a marvel,” said Naomi Pierce of Harvard, a co-author of the paper.
Quite.
Nabokov was a bona fide literary genius. Although I confess I’m not fond of the bulk of his work, what I like of it I like very much indeed: his memoir Speak, Memory, and some short stories.
The memoir is an atypical one, not really an autobiography but instead a series of vignettes, linked by the author’s elegant virtuosity and characteristic coolness, but with a warm and beating heart animating the work at its core. Nabokov’s tribute to his father, who was killed by an assassin in Berlin in 1922 under dramatic and heroic circumstances, is an exceptionally touching chapter.
Nabokov senior helped nurture his son’s passion for butterflies, which he shared. This interest of the younger Nabokov ultimately led him to the position of curator of lepidoptera at Harvard’s Museum of Comparative Zoology, and the publication of quite a bit of scientific writing as well.
An entire chapter of Speak, Memory is devoted to his fervor for collecting butterflies, which he developed as a young boy around the family estate. The following passage from the book describes one of those early efforts, and gives you an idea of the passion behind the brilliance of his later scientific pursuits:
Unmindful of the mosquitoes that furred my forearms, I stooped with a grunt of delight to snuff out the life of some silver-studded lepidopteron throbbing in the folds of my net. Through the smells of the bog, I caught the subtle perfume of butterfly wings on my fingers, a perfume which varies with the species—vanilla, lemon, or musk, or a musty, sweetish odor difficult to define. Still unsated, I pressed forward. At last I saw I had come to the end of the marsh. The rising ground beyond was a paradise of lupines, columbines, and pentstemons. Mariposa lilies bloomed under Ponderosa pines. In the distance, fleeting cloud shadows dappled the dull green of slopes above timber line, and the gray and white of Longs Peak.
I confess I do not believe in time. I like to fold my magic carpet, after use, in such a way as to superimpose one part of the pattern upon another. Let visitors trip. And the highest enjoyment of timelessness—in a landscape selected at random—is when I stand among rare butterflies and their food plants. This is ecstasy, and behind the ecstasy is something else, which is hard to explain. It is like a momentary vacuum into which rushes all I love. A sense of oneness with sun and stone. A thrill of gratitude to whom it may concern—to the contrapuntal genius of human fate or to tender ghosts humoring a lucky mortal.
Let us leave him there for now. We can visit whenever we want, by reading the prose he left behind.
I haven’t yet written about the demonstrations and turmoil in Egypt, because I keep trying to find a report that seems to have a handle on what is actually occurring there—and even more importantly, what might be about to happen there.
I’ve given up on the latter, though. Once such forces are unleashed, it’s very difficult to know who is in control and who will emerge victorious. That’s the reason that US realpolitikers have tended to support the status quo and the strongmen who represent it.
If you want a roundup of what’s happening in Egypt right now as best we can tell, see this, this, and this, as well as this on the internet ban.
This article has an ominous tone to me. I have been concerned from the start about the possible influence and popularity of the Muslim Brotherhood, a currently-banned Islamist fundamentalist group that has its roots in Egypt in the earlier part of the twentieth century. And here’s some background on the position of El Baradei, who might (accent on the “might”) be in a position to take charge in a while.
The Egyptian people are protesting in favor of democracy. As a person who remembers the turmoil of the Iranian revolution of 1979—the different groups temporarily united for the Shah’s overthrow and then jockeying for position (vainly) against the fundamentalist Islamists who quickly established their dominance—I have to say the situation makes me nervous. But as my moniker indicates, I’m strongly for democracy—if it goes hand in hand with liberty and is not merely a case of “one person, one vote, one time” and after that, tyranny and rigged elections.
Which will it be in Egypt? Or will it be something in-between? I don’t even pretend to know. Nor, I believe, does anyone else.
[ADDENDUM: El Baradei is now under house arrest.]
Yesterday I took on the chore of trying to tidy up and streamline my filing cabinets.
Not one of my favorite activities. But in a way it is—at least the fantasy I have regarding how the files will end up. Streamlined, color-coded, wonderfully organized so I can go there immediately, open the correct drawer, and find anything I’m looking for in an instant. All the extra stuff I don’t need gone, with only the essentials remaining.
Dream on.
In the meantime, I found myself stunned by what’s in there that I’d forgotten. Oh, I knew about the medical records and the old report cards and my passport and that sort of thing. But the rest!
The letters, for example. Notes from literary magazines rejecting my short stories (the more precious ones stating: “we liked this but,” and “please send us more of your work.”) The letter from the magazine that had accepted my story (for $3,000!) pending a few word changes, and then promptly altered its policy and stopped publishing fiction; no sale. Postcards from my husband-to-be when we were courting (quaint word, that). A copy of my father’s will, probated when he died in 1977, beginning with what must have been the standard subject heading whenever it was composed: “IN THE NAME OF GOD, AMEN.”
On and on and on it went. Lists and lists of projects I’d thought of starting—now I’m old enough to know I never will do most of this stuff. Things I hadn’t known I’d had in the first place, or that I’d forgotten I’d saved. And all of it made of paper.
It struck me how archaic all this was, and how very thoroughly the computer has taken over. Letters? Who gets them anymore? And yet they seemed so much more real than any email possibly could be. All these years later I can still hold them in my hand, and they partake of the essence of the people who wrote them. Time has not yet made them so fragile they’re in danger of disintegrating.
But till then, they will sit in my filing cabinets. Who’s to say what’s essential and what’s not?
…whether this agreement of McConnell’s is binding. Can he sign away his rights to amend the filibuster rules if he wins the Senate Majority Leader position in 2012? And what if the Republicans win control of the Senate in 2012, but then boot out McConnell and elect someone else as Leader? Would the Leader still be bound by McConnell’s agreement?
I don’t think the Republicans are contemplating ending the filibuster, anyway, even if they should win in 2012. They’re not ones to go for the jugular; at least the current crop isn’t. And in fact it would be a generally bad idea for either party to change the filibuster rules, unless you believe the end justifies the means. This particular check on power benefits us all in working against the tyranny of an “overbearing majority” of which I wrote in this article. Once the filibuster is undone by either party, we would lose its protective value forever.
But the Democrats should have shut up about it, then. Before the 2010 election they talked and talked about doing away with the filibuster in the new session. Does anyone have any doubt that they would have done so if they hadn’t performed so badly in the last election? The only thing that stops them from doing away with the filibuster right now is the fact that they lost so many members, as well as fear of losing more in the future. If and when Republicans take over, the Democrats will be singing the praises of the filibuster once more.
You know, I just don’t regard Sarah Palin’s WTF as a big f-ing deal.
[NOTE: It may be time to recycle this post.]
A bot in praise of you guys–keep up the good work!:
I’m just really impressed because there is not any worthless comments on your blog as there is on the majority of sites on the web today.
Perhaps you’ve heard of Edna St. Vincent Millay. She was a lyric poet of great renown during the 1920s and until her death in 1950, known mostly for her sonnets. Her fame as a poet was of a magnitude difficult to understand today because there’s no equivalent. Part sprite, part sexual magnet (her candle burned at both ends, with a vengeance), part intellectual—ethereal, earthy, fragile, strong, and brilliant all at the same time—she was an essentially romantic figure.
She was political, too, as poets sometimes are. She opposed the First World War and picketed against the execution of Sacco and Vanzetti.
But something happened to her right before World War II. During the late Thirties, she became alarmed, enraged, and activated by what was happening in Europe, including the appeasement that led to the fall of Czechoslavakia, and the anti-Semitism of Kristalnacht. Millay was moved to speak out publicly and loudly [the following excerpt is taken from the Millay biography by Nancy Milford, entitled Savage Beauty]:
I used to be a most ardent pacifist, but my mind has been changed. I am afraid the only hope of saving democracy is to fight for it…[There are people in power who are] not human beings in the sense that we have been brought up to understand that term. We have beasts in control of human beings. I am not speaking of the German people themselves, but if we have a wild animal to deal with we cannot be pacifists forever. Whatever we do, we cannot keep aloof from the general world situation, and it would be silly to think we can.
Words such as those were not going to sit well with the crew Millay usually hung out with. But in living her rather shocking life until then (lots of sex with men and women, inside and outside of marriage), courage is one thing Millay always had in abundance. She showed it now by stating:
Persons who begin writing lyric poetry at a young age are deeply concerned with themselves…As they mature, they begin to grow out of themselves and they feel a concern for others. Lyric poets who continue writing lyric poetry are likely to go into a dry rot and just say the same thing over and over again.
One impulse motivating Millay seems to have been a fear for the end of freedom of speech, a right she prized highly. She correctly saw that freedom as being imperiled far more by the threat from without than from within. The following passages from the Milford book concern a radio broadcast Millay made in October of 1939:
What we had to fear most, she said, was the menace of the “most loyal and idealistic Communist, and the most loyal and idealistic Fascist.” If we love democracy, then “We must love it in England and France. In Germany we must love it, if only we could find it there”—and here she paused for a long time—“but we have not found it there.”
Millay added:
Why, then, should we be so afraid to say that as regards the war between a Germany whose political philosophy is repugnant to us and an allied Britain and France whose concepts of civilized living are so closely akin to our own that we hope with all our hearts that Great Britain and France may win this war and Germany lose? [We must avail ourselves] as partiotic Americans, of this fine free speech of ours.
Her 1942 poem “The Murder of Lidice” was highly controversial, and many of her friends were highly critical—not just of its poetic value (I have no way to judge this, not having read it) but of its politics. No surprise there; we’ve seen this sort of thing before and since. Merle Rubin noted, “She seems to have caught more flak from the literary critics for supporting democracy than Ezra Pound did for championing fascism.” And in his journal, her old friend Arthur Ficke wrote:
…this is so bad for her, so false to her real nature…
As a lyric poet, she was superb, unsurpassable…I cannot, I will not, believe that this war is an ultimate conflict between right and wrong: and although I do not doubt for a moment that we are less horrible than the philosophy and practice of Hitler, still I think we are very horrible: and I will not, I must not, accept or express the hysterical patriotic war-moods of these awful days.
This was written in 1942, in the middle of the horror of World War II. It’s the familiar typical stuff; the difference is that, today, most poets would probably say we are more horrible. But after all, this was the Nazis Ficke was talking about. And still, still, this poet called those such as Millay “hysterical,” a practitioner of kneejerk patriotic jingoism rather a clear-sighted observer of an intense conflict between morality and immorality.
You may not have noticed it, but Obama’s tepid SOTU speech was actually a cunning trap cleverly set for his enemies, according to Ed Kilgore in TNR.
Did you think it boring and devoid of good ideas, re-circulating tired slogans and a pastiche of ineffective and worn-out solutions—if you could bear to listen at all? Well, think again:
…[T]hat’s the beauty of Obama’s address. He basically put together every modest, centrist, reasonable-sounding idea for public investment aimed at job creation and economic growth that anyone has ever uttered; and he did so at the exact moment that the GOP has abandoned the very concept of public investment altogether.
Only Noam Scheiber’s latest, also in TNR, can match the breathtaking cynicism of the following paragraph of Kilgore’s [emphasis mine]:
Moreover, Obama’s tone””the constant invocation of bipartisanship at a time when Republicans are certain to oppose most of what he’s called for, while going after the progressive programs and policies of the past””should sound familiar as well. It was Bill Clinton’s constant refrain, which he called “progress over partisanship,” during his second-term struggle with the Republican Congress. During that period, the Republicans being asked to transcend “partisanship” were trying to remove Clinton from office. And Clinton wasn’t really extending his hand in a gesture of cooperation with the GOP but, by creating a contrast with their ideological fury, indicating that he himself embodied the bipartisan aspirations of the American people and the best ideas of both parties. It was quite effective.
So, similarly, Obama will pose as a bipartisan, contrasting his tone with that of the angry GOP. Brilliant! And this is from a supporter, who seems to think it’s not only okay but remarkably clever and bound to succeed.
Only problem is that, if the American people have any smarts at all, they will recall that Obama’s outstretched bipartisan hand has only come on the scene after the Republicans won back the House. Funny timing, that.
One more thing: Clinton had the personality to pull it off. Obama does not.
Oh, and GOP “fury” much more clearly matches the mood of much of the country right now than it did in Clinton’s time.
It’s showtime!
Talk amongst yourselves.
[ADDENDUM: It’s over, so now I could turn on my TV.
Watching Fox afterward, I heard Krauthammer—who sometimes praises Obama highly—say it was “flat” and “uninspired.” That’s certainly how I feel about most SOTU speeches. Krauthammer said Obama spent a great deal of time defending the expansion of government he presided over during his first two years.
Brit Hume says it was a rationalization for further government spending. But “How much borrowed money, sir, are you willing to spend on these items?”
So although the more upbeat Obama showed up, he apparently hasn’t gotten that old-time fiscal restraint religion (as I had incorrectly predicted here)—not much anyway, not even rhetorically.]
[ADDENDUM II: Reading a bit around the blogosphere, I see that Sputnik was a big theme.
Sputnik! That’ll pull the young folks in.
I remember it well, although I was just a little kid. It meant that big bad Russia had beaten us, or something like that. It meant we kids had to learn more math and science, faster and better than our elders, so it wouldn’t happen again. Sputnik was thrown in our faces for years, as though we were personally responsible. I hated Sputnik! Down with Sputnik!]
[ADDENDUM III: Jennifer Rubin also fails to find that elusive centrist Obama who is the One we’ve all been waiting for.]