Ambiance

Caption Contest

December 13, 2009 at 11:01 am (By Amba)

“Season’s Greetings,” by Barry Blitt.

Perhaps words can add nothing, only subtract. Go ahead, take the challenge.

Ham-let

December 11, 2009 at 2:51 pm (By Amba)

(I just made this post “sticky,” not knowing what that meant. Turns out it means it stays at the top, so you can watch it again! Look for new posts directly below. Let’s keep it here for a while.)

(H/T: The Anchoress)

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The Last Instrument Fit for a Gentleman to Play.

December 9, 2009 at 7:50 pm (By Theo Boehm)

A little music by Sylvius Leopold Weiss (1687-1750) to warm your cold, snowy evening, played by the incomparable Robert Barto. This is a Courante in Bb major.

Weiss was an almost exact contemporary of J.S. Bach (1685-1750), a friend of Wilhelm Friedemann Bach, and a sometimes friendly competitor with Johann Sebastian Bach himself.

Weiss’ style is astonishingly like Bach’s. It’s pretty obvious that Bach’s lute music, like the rest of his output, was the ultimate expression of its genre. You can hear another take on this style, however, by Weiss. Although Bach has long been given first place among Baroque composers, and perhaps composers generally, in lute music, at least, J.S. Bach seems to have been only first among equals.

Here’s another Weiss piece, a Presto in A major. It’s recorded live in front of an audience, so you hear more room echo and noise. I think it’s a wonderful fantasy to imagine having this gentleman over to play by your fire on a December evening:

(Reposted from A Quiet Evening.)

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Porn: Harmful or Helpful?

December 6, 2009 at 10:44 am (By Amba)

They threw a study of male “porn virgins,” and nobody came.

Mind you, the sensational title of the article — “All Men Watch Porn, Scientists Find” — is misleading. The study was done at the University of Montreal; the subjects were in their 20s. That means they were Canadian (insert bad Canada joke, e.g., what else is there to do up there?), and members of the Internet generation, for whom parental controls are not hard to circumvent and porn is just a mouse click away. Indeed, the average age of first exposure was 10 — an age when peeping is motivated more by curiosity and mischief than by deeper, darker currents, which might nonetheless draw a 10-year-old in.

So, do all men watch porn? Or, better put, have all men watched porn? Have some sworn never to watch it, the way some people never smoke a cigarette? Has anyone watched it once and never again? Are there men who have watched it, found it dangerous or repellent or boring, and quit? Is it possible to consume porn regularly and not become addicted, or desensitized to real sex with real women? For those (if any) not at risk of addiction is porn even useful, as a harmless (no risk of disease, no actual infidelity) safety valve for the alleged innate superabundance and variety-craving of male desire? Note that frequent ejaculation appears protective against prostate cancer (though not against benign prostate enlargement). Are the possible benefits outweighed by spiritual and emotional harm? Or is that a lot of puritanical fussing, making a mountain out of a molehill?

I’m really curious about this issue. You might even want to set up an anonymous e-mail account so you can comment frankly. (It will be like a masked ball — we can try to guess who’s who!)

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“Tim’s Revived, See How He Rises!”

December 6, 2009 at 12:54 am (By Amba)

This seems the only song with which to salute the passing of Liam Clancy.

Unless it’s this one.

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I’ve Seen Fire and I’ve Seen Rain.

December 2, 2009 at 11:31 pm (By Amba)

We’ve “moved in” to the new apartment in one sense but not the other. We and all our stuff are in. On the other hand, very little has found its permanent place, and it may be months before it all does. About forty boxes, mostly full of books, are stacked up against the dining alcove wall. Most of them are white boxes with the green triangle logo of Cary Reconstruction, the disaster specialists who moved us. A night or two ago J cast a jaundiced eye on the stack and said, “What’s all that beer doing here?” I cracked up, because that’s how it does look, even to me, who never owned a bar.

I needn’t have worried about feeling eerily as if I was back in the old apartment. Despite having the same layout, this one feels very different. I’m somehow very aware of the different compass orientation, not only because of the sunlight that pours in on clear afternoons, but geomagnetically, or something — I can feel it. And the place has different problems. It’s pouring out today, and we’re lower. Rising streams and puddles turning to small ponds outside the window and porch threaten to creep into the foundations and over the threshold, reminding me that I just signed an obligatory renter’s insurance policy that specifically excludes flood.

The cheapness of the construction and maintenance here is both comical and disheartening. The “hardwood” floor is actually a thin, plastic-treated hardwood veneer that goes “pat, pat” like linoleum when you walk on it. It’s fine with me — very easy to clean, and far preferable to the puked-up-oatmeal-beige carpeting — but the maintenance guys installed it themselves with endearing amateurism, leaving a few scraps or screws under it that make large boils in the “wood” that aren’t fun to step on barefoot. There’s a big gap in the weather stripping of the front door through which, on cold nights, cold air pours directly into our heating bill. One of the maintenance guys patched it with sticky-backed weather stripping that came off the second time the door was opened.

Oddly, too, we seem to have moved into the tenements of our prefabricated “neighborhood.” Crying newborns, rowdy kids, and vicious marital quarrels in the breezeway are all part of the new soundscape, making our former milieu at the top of the hill seem downright genteel.

It’s still an improvement (hey, when we come back from a walk I don’t have to push the wheelchair up that hill!), and a chance to start fresh in a more orderly way. Kitty litter and cat hair show up on the shiny floor as they did not on the oatmealy carpet, prompting good new habits of near-daily sweeping. The absence of the hideous carpet, and the slow seeping-in of acceptance that, Toto, we’re not in Manhattan any more, make me more disposed to try to make this place into a home I kind of like.

But life goes on, and there isn’t time (or bookcase space, yet) to devote to an orgy of “moving in” in the second sense. As much as I would like to have a cozy home in time for the holidays, I’m going to have to content myself with doing it — as Bookaholics Anonymous would say — one box at a time.

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“Now is not the time to withdraw.”

December 1, 2009 at 1:33 pm (By Amba)

A timely read on Afghanistan from a most unlikely source:

We were a group of eight women and one man organized by Code Pink, Women for Peace, and we arrived in Kabul believing the U.S. should withdraw its troops and spend more money on development.

After eight days, our presumptions were turned upside down, splitting us into camps with conflicting opinions. Some still wanted an exit strategy, but one woman who’s spent 40 years in non-violent peace work reversed her lifelong stand, believing the military should stay and more troops might be helpful. “It shocks me to admit this,” she said. […]

[M]eeting with a wide range of Afghans […w]hat surprises us is that almost all say they want U.S. troops to stay, for security and to train the Afghan army. Even those who are hostile to U.S. policy say, “Now is not the time to withdraw.” […]

Asad Farhad, a former minister of finance, tells us that if all foreign troops are withdrawn, “This government collapses in 48 hours and we have what we had before: killing, looting, rape.”

Paul [the lone male peace activist] is perplexed. “I’d read that only 20 per cent of Afghans want American troops to stay, but that’s not what we’re finding.”

One woman, an attorney, wonders out loud whether the group ought to reconsider its call for a quick exit strategy. Code Pink cofounder Medea Benjamin jumps in, warning that believing is more important than seeing:

Medea breaks in, “Let’s not be so quick to change our thinking. In the first days you get bombarded with new ideas. At the end we’ll see what we want to integrate in our bedrock beliefs.” I ask what those beliefs are. “The military can’t defeat the Taliban,” she says. “Countries have to work out democracy on their own and women have to find ways to liberate themselves.”

So much for solidarity with oppressed sisters.

The story continues with a visit to a group of women, from their 20s to their 50s, “on fire for learning.” The stories of women’s fate are harrowing, the questions and the answers far from simple. For Afghan women, the Taliban is not the only enemy: tradition and ignorance are even worse. Can we Americans fight that?

Can we not?

I have more to say on this, but will save it for dialog in the comments.

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Ne’er So Well Expressed

November 30, 2009 at 12:27 am (By Amba)

Doctor Zero at Hot Air’s Greenroom just said something that has been knocking and nagging at me to get said, too. I concede with relief: it has found a much better outlet. This is what has been lost in the partisan and ideological tug-of-war between alternating derangement syndromes. This is the country, one nation, under God, indivisible, to which too many have abandoned allegiance in favor of allegiance to their “side,” their team, their half a brain. I will try to resist the temptation to quote it all.

I wonder how truly desirable these uncompromising contests between capitalism and socialism are. Aren’t elected officials, especially Congress and the President, supposed to represent all of their constituents? Wouldn’t that mean listening to the concerns of both liberals and conservatives, and trying to craft legislation that satisfies both sides to some degree? Are the members of a winning political coalition supposed to have absolute power to do whatever they want, even if they won with only about half the popular vote, while the other side sits in obedient silence until their next chance at the ballot box?

In the course of endorsing a Dick Cheney run for the Presidency in 2012, Jon Meacham of Newsweek writes:

One of the problems with governance since the election of Bill Clinton has been the resolute refusal of the opposition party (the GOP from 1993 to 2001, the Democrats from 2001 to 2009, and now the GOP again in the Obama years) to concede that the president, by virtue of his victory, has a mandate to take the country in a given direction.

I don’t think most Americans are under the impression they’re voting for a dictator every four years. Bill Clinton won the Presidency with a mere 43% of the popular vote. What sort of “mandate” did that give him to “take the country in a given direction?”

Of course, we cannot parcel out presidential powers based on the scale of the candidate’s electoral victory. The proper functioning of our government, and the harmony of our democracy, demand that we acknowledge the full legitimacy of the man or woman who sits in the Oval Office. The Left did their country no favors by bitterly dragging the 2000 elections out until 2008. The complementary aspect of this principle is that strong electoral victories cannot logically yield enhanced “mandates” to take the country in various radical directions. If close elections don’t produce miniature Presidents who just keep the seat warm until the next election, then landslide victories don’t produce super-Presidents with turbocharged authority. A President who carries 49 states, and wins 70% of the popular vote, is not entitled to stuff the opposing 30% of the electorate in the trunk and take America out for a joy ride. […]

The American understanding of democracy does not envision voters as slaves who enjoy the privilege of voting for a new master every few years. When the Declaration speaks of the right – and, later the duty – of the people to abolish tyrannical governments, it renders the notion of “mandates” to impose radical change on unwilling citizens absurd. […]

The dissent of a minority is not rendered irrelevant by victory in a popular vote… but the health-care debate in the Senate proceeds on the assumption that victory in a parliamentary struggle between a hundred elected officials will compel the consent of the millions of citizens – now a sizable majority of the population, based on the latest polls – who strenuously object to ObamaCare. […]

The vital role of consent in the structure of a just government is one of the most powerful ideas ever advanced by the human race. […] The need for your consent is not respected when your only hope of withholding it lies in historic midterm electoral victories and the rapid construction of huge Congressional majorities.

Go, read the whole thing. Now how to put this (I’m in an inarticulate phase): I do not quite see the health care bill in such dire terms as Doctor Zero does. I see it as unacceptable — burdensome, bureaucratic, inefficient, vastly overpriced, with many little pit traps hidden in its obfuscating length — but not as the calculated first step in a Stalinist power grab. Democratic socialism, European style, may not ever suit America, but neither is it dictatorship.

What bothers me more than the health care bill itself, or inseparably from it, is the way it is being rushed and rammed through. The majority of Democrats, the Congressional leadership above all, care only about party power and vanity. They have to grab their chance to piss on the country and put their territorial mark, their stink, on it. Many Republicans would do exactly the same (thank God or the BFFs — Best Founding Fathers evah — it takes more votes than most majorities get to amend the Constitution), but it’s hard to separate out their motives right now because all they can do is try to stop this juggernaut — whether for partisan or nonpartisan reasons.

But what kind of country is it when whichever rogue fragment is in power tries to impose its will, while the other merely does its best to sandbag that? The best that can happen is that we go nowhere, because each loco motive is trying to drag the train off the rails. Why has Afghanistan been subjected to an exhaustive review of all points of view, while health care has been all hugger-mugger? If you really cared about the state of the country, why would you try to force a prefabricated and dated agenda on it? Wouldn’t you start fresh, take your time, listen to your citizens, and invite the best ideas from all sides?

Wouldn’t that, among many other things, have been the best way to get reelected?

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