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"The stream of Time, irresistible, ever moving, carries off and bears away all things that come to birth and plunges them into utter darkness, both deeds of no account and deeds which are mighty and worthy of commemoration. . .Nevertheless, the science of History is a great bulwark against the stream of Time; in a way it checks this irresistible flood, it holds in a tight grasp whatever it can seize floating on the surface and will not allow it to slip away into the depths of Oblivion. "
- Anna Comnena (1083-1153), The Alexiad
"I have taken all knowledge to be my province."
- Francis Bacon, 1592
Monday, May 10, 2004
Absence Makes the Heart Grow. . .
So I'm wrapping up and getting ready to go to Basic Training. After Wednesday this blog will be offline for at least two months, probably a bit longer. When I come back it'll probably be light posting till the end of summer, because AIT will be pretty busy.
Which is probably fine because the quality of the blog hasn't been so good lately. My mind's been on other things and certainly will have a different focus in training. Certainly there are people out there who are writing what I would be, but better. Glenn Reynolds on the purpose behind the much of the coverage of Abu Ghraib - not that there’s coverage, but that if it has "you demoralized, and hopeless, and depressed, let me suggest that this isn't an accident -- it's the goal" - because of how it's shaped and the spin put on it. He also has a roundup of others who are writing about the war against the war. Nelson Ascher, as usual, has an insightful post. I would be righting about the same things as these people are and don't have anything much to add.
They say that absence makes the heart grow fonder, but that's not really true. Ok, it is when someone is gone for a week or two. It reminds you of all the things about them that you value. But after that, no. After that, lives adjust to the change and people go on. Absence makes the heart grow indifferent.
One of the foolish little things that kept me from doing what I should have done years ago is this sense of things. If I'm gone for several months, will people remember me? Miss me? When you're 18 or 22 you kinda wanna be gone, get away. When you're older it's a bit different. Trust me when I say that there's little in Southwest Colorado that is holding me back, but the community of people I've come to know on Internet is a bit different. People I know "in real life" as they say (as if Internet friendships are less "real") I'll be able to stay in contact with a bit better, through "snail mail" and eventually the occasional phone call. But as it turns out there won't even be minimal e-mail access in Basic.
So there won't be any writing me that way - or at any rate I won't be able to read it and reply - for two months. AIT will be different. I did replace the e-mail address at the top of this blog ("Contact Porphyrogenitus") with what will be my .mil account. If anyone is interested in writing to it, feel free but don't expect a response till mid July.
It turns out that human contact is a lot more valuable to me than I thought it was, and than it was when I first went through Basic years ago. Well, that's perhaps not the right way to phrase it because there will be the experience of meeting tons of new people, and some of the best people in the world you'll ever meet are the people you get to know in military training. But I'm going to miss the people I know outside of that. I'm sure it's no big deal but. . .well, I always get melancholy when I pack all my stuff up in advance of a major move (not that I'm bringing my stuff to Basic, obviously).
I get the sense that I'm leaving the wrong tone here, too. I want to re-emphasize that I'm looking forward to it in other respects. As I say, I should have done it years ago. It's just getting over the initial "hump" of training and then what my permanent duty station is going to be like and where it's going to be. . .which is unknown. It's the anticipation that'll kill ya every time - and for me the concern that when I'm absent, things I care about will fade away.
That's why I considered having a "guest blogger" for the duration. But I got some good advice that it would be a bad idea, and I'm going to take that advice. So there won't be anyone posting here when I'm at Basic, except perhaps I might get family to post an occasional "progress report"/update. I can't guarantee that and there will be no way of notifying anyone when it happens. Maybe that "teaser" and intermittent reinforcement will keep people clicking the button for their pellet even while I'm gone.
But enough babbling. It's hard to not be in a maudlin mood at the moment, for anyone who cares about the war and what its outcome will be. In a lot of ways, while I have part of me that is really going to miss this, a sizable part of me thinks that an "enforced break" will be a good thing. That being in Basic will have intrinsic value, naturally, but that the downside "loss" of being cut off from the world will really be a benefit. A good part of the reason this blog has deteriorated is I've worn myself out. Add to that the other life-changing things (to get all Newagy) and it's really no wonder.
Two months and getting into something where I will have a renewed sense of purpose - a feeling that I should have done something years ago but didn't isn't very great to have. It'll be super to actually be doing it. And two months - four months, six months, however long it takes is hardly a lifetime. But service is something I've thought about since I was a child. The National Guard was one way to do that but I really should have gone active Army sooner than I am. I'll also pursue my studies, my academic and intellectual interests, so I won't slight that. This is going to be a great experience, it's just that there are some things I'll miss till I can get back into the flow of things. But some things that when I really think about it, I probably need a break from anyhow.
*Mutter* Ok, one thing's for sure when I get settled I'm going to get broadband or a cable modem or something if it's at all possible.
At home, all I have is dialup, and very slow dialup at that. I think I mentioned I live out in the boonies. We're fairly far out, and there's a couple miles of copper wires before getting to anything "decent". Nope, not even fiber optic dialup here.
Everything takes forever to load, pages sometimes (often) hang and won't load properly and thus need to be reloaded. Thus reading stuff on the web becomes more of a chore than it should be. Writing isn't that hard, but reading stuff to get the info is a pain. Actually, the reading is ok it's getting to the pages that is a chore and a half. So much time is wasted waiting for pages to load. I have a practice of having multiple windows open so I can read something in one window while waiting for the other(s) to load, but even that only goes so far.
Well, just a post venting. But that's one of the reasons I haven't posted much at night over the years, only occasionally, and one of the reasons - but by no means the only one - why posting has been lighter lately. Getting materiel is too frustrating, and contributes to the mental distraction that is an obstacle to writing.
It's not the only factor. There are plenty of reasons why posting here hasn't been as extensive as before, most especially the mental distraction itself. Posts used to flow naturally. It didn't take much external stimulus to get thoughts rolling in my head that would lead directly and often immediately to a post on whatever subject. Lately, however, my mind has been filled with all sorts of other things and it's been difficult to focus on something worth blogging about. It's been difficult to even think of subjects worth writing about.
Part of it is all about "detaching", moving from one physical place to another involving a shift of mindsets. I've been thinking about what I'm going forward into and what I'm leaving behind. I've also been regretting lost time. If only can be a curse. "Get over it" and "snap out of it" I my mind tells myself when I get in such a mood. At least we're going forward now, and it isn't as if I did nothing worthwhile over the last several years.
There's also the process of getting everything sorted out here, all lose ends wrapped up, packing up my stuff so that it can be shipped later and getting rid of things I'm attached to but no longer have a use for and haven't used in years. Even with disposing of a fair amount of what I own in the way of books &tc, I have a lot of stuff that will eventually have to be moved. I'm not a twenty year old and, like I said above, it isn't as if I did nothing worthwhile over the last several years. My accumulated stuff is part of what I have achieved, just as with any life. None of that will accompany to Basic or AIT of course, but it will be saved, stored, and moved later.
Anyhow, lightish posting today.
Update: Markellus N.K. shares a different frustration and oh, boy, I know how that goes, too! Often I have something rolling around in my head that I want to post about, but by the time I get through doing other things that need to get done I'm too exhausted to write it up. . .
As the good people revel in his problems with a savage glee and invent rationalizations for using this to their political benefit and his political detriment, without any self-awareness regarding how some of their assertions might apply to them given their reactions (you can always feel their goodness shine through at a time like this), I'm going to do what I always do in situations like this.
I'm going to pray for his quick and complete recovery, send him my best wishes, and hope for the best for him.
So on Saturday I wrote this post and since then, nothin'. Right now I'm very sleepy - not because I partied all weekend (I didn't), but I just haven't been able to sleep much lately. Coffee's no solution to me since I don't drink coffee (blech!) Anyhow, the dog ait my blog ideas. Actually, she didn't; I have a few things I want to write, but they're involved posts.
Used to be, whenever I was hard up and needed something easy to hang a post around, I'd turn to the editorials in the Financial Times (go ahead, enter "Financial Times" or "FT" into the search engine). But ever since The Great "American Freedom Divisive" debacle (see here and here and the letter I sent them), they've taken all the good fiskage materiel of their comment & analysis section and made it "subscriber only".
So that leaves us with a blog post about writing blog posts this morning. Yay!
People who read both Saturday's Post, Leonard Part V and the comments I wrote in the discussion of Armed Liberal's post will note that there are major similarities between what I said over there last week and what I posted here on Saturday. With some exceptions.
The Blog post is better organized, makes the main points, leaves out some clutter, and has some (IMO) kewl additional stuff, especially at the end. Though it's a long post, it's shorter and less wordy than the cumulative length of the comments it is based on. So why didn't I just write the blog post straight away, post that, and send a link to it to Winds?
The answer's simple, really. It has to do with mental processes. At least my mental processes. The blog post is the result of the various comments posts; ideas that were developed there then made it into the post, with a dash of things that came to mind on Saturday. The blog post wasn't possible till Saturday, when I drew everything together. I wouldn't have been able to write it without first going through the mental processes of the comments exchanges.
Some posts come together differently. The vast majority come without something like that. Others simply have to wait awhile for whatever reason, till ideas reach the stage where I can express them.
Well, that's that. Rather than string out this post I'll just let it peter out there, point you to this post on how the French government is trying to come up with some ideas to keep an attribute of the French national character that is very vital to them "fresh", and say that there should be some good (real, non-boring, non-naval-gazing) posts over here later on today.
Tonight on Around the World in 80 Days Michael Palin passed through Glenwood Springs and Aspen Colorado, not too far from where I live.
Only it was about 15 years and an entire era ago.
I really felt the difference watching it this time around. I had seen this series years ago, when it was first aired in the States, and it was interesting and fun but close. Perhaps it is just me, but it all seems more distant. When I first saw it, that was our world.
This time around, that was then - no longer now.
He boarded a ship and sailed out past the Statue of Liberty, and as the ship headed to sea the camera panned back towards the Manhattan skyline, and there they stood stabbing skyward, where they no longer stand.
If you know a decent number of people then you probably know someone who is politically and intellectually Liberal, but temperamentally conservative in how they live, day to day. The opposite is also the case: there are people who are politically and intellectually conservative, but have radical temperaments.
There's no real point I'm trying to make insofar as saying one type is better than another - they aren't, so far as I can tell. But I know that even if I had remained a political Liberal, I'm fairly conservative in my temperament. I just got back from my lunch break. Ahead of me in the checkout line was a young mother with two children, fairly close together in age (3-5ish). One was acting up a bit and she calmed him down, saying to him "oh, mommy's little gentleman doesn't behave that way. You're mommy's little gentleman, right? I know you want a sucker. You'll get it when we're done here, if you behave like a gentleman."
A gentleman? I thought that light had gone out of the world already. I was almost as impressed as when I first saw the preview for the latest Lara Croft movie. There was Angelina Jolie, riding sidesaddle.
Some people got infatuated with Lara when they first saw her large. . .polygons. Well, don't get me wrong - that's nice and all. But it's not a solid foundation for a relationship, is it? I mean, unlike infatuation based on seeing her ride a horse at full gallop, guns blazing, on sidesaddle. Now that's true love.
Angelina is very different from the character, though; for one thing, she's festooned with tattoos and probably has piercing where woman was not meant to have piercing. I doubt Lara has those.
I know, I know; one isn't supposed to judge a book by its cover - and, actually, from what little I know about Angelina (and former beaux, William Robert), she seems cool. It's just that tattoos and piercing in strange places are not for me: it's not a judgement about how others live their lives. A book's cover, how a person comports themselves, does say something about what they're like; the book may be very good but just not suit your taste. People can have different personality types without either being worse than the other, but just incompatable.
Like I said, temperamentally conservative. In a world of tattoos and "hook ups" (I'm not a prude, but what a grotesque euphemism), I'm an oddball at best. I do think I'll go see Cradle of Life, though, and watch Our Damsel out-Indi Indiana Jones.
I don't mean the above to be sexist; I'm just more interested in ladies than gents is all. Plenty of men have piercings now, too; but then I hold that a men was not meant to have piercing at all unless he's a buccaneer. But what the hell - with your tattoos, earrings, scraggly beards and long unkempt hair, all you dudes need is a parrot, an eyepatch, and a cutlass and you're set. Lots of guys also have the scurvy look down pat and plenty are certainly rakish enough, and women see a lot in these guys. Bully for them.
Regarding Quidditch, Quentin Stephens writes, via e-mail:
I cannot disagree with you more about your article on Harry Potter. In particular your analysis of Quiddich is entirely wrong. You clearly have not read the books. The players other than the Seeker play important roles and scoring with the Quaffle is significant. You state that scoring with the Quaffle is about as common as scoring in soccer: a quick check of the books will disprove this. You also indicate that 15-nil is uncommon: apparently not so in Quiddich (qv Book 4), and not so in rugby (even after normalising). This is illustrated most clearly at the start of Book 4 but also in Book 2. You also ignore the role of the Beaters whose task is to both aim the bludger at the opposing players - including the Seeker - to put them off and defend their own players.
I did mention I hadn't read the books; I was evaluating the movie and my reaction to it. Based upon that, the game stands as called. If there's a problem with that, blame the people who adapted the book for the movie.
I'll also add, though, that I have read the rules (which are posted on more than a few websites), and upon reading them, they are flawed.
I do want to take this opportunity to say that this isn't meant as a cut on the whole Potter thing, though; the characters were all good, even the ones that were "types" were interesting. The story was lively and had enough surprises to be interesting and unique. But, the things I mentioned are the things I found annoying and that got to me. They are, in the great scheme of the story, small things, really. But the movie would have been a heck of a lot more enjoyable for me if some of the things Quentin mentioned had been a factor (it wouldn't have needed to take a lot of time, really. I do not actually ask for much).
I do completely stand behind everything I said in re. comparison with "Midichlorians" and I note that Quentin did not try to contradict that (makes me curious if Rowling is one of the people who thinks Britain should be a "classless society" - and how this division of her world into contemptible muggles and talented magi fits that. But I digress - it's actually a very common disconnect/inconsistency among those who claim a longing for a classless society and simultaneously believe in a elect "Vanguard" of the more enlightened which they will, naturally of course, belong to; but this isn't meant as a political theory dissection of the Potter universe). I thought I was being really generous to a movie that tried so very hard to lose my goodwill right at the beginning in overcoming that (which was for me possible once Harry arrived at the train station and I just decided to put out of mind everything that had occurred before that point; the movie really begins there, anyhow). Then they had to go and lose my goodwill again with this dumb game.
John writes, also via e-mail:
Can you say means testing? I have no love for the Socialists Democrats on general principles but how come they're not running this one up the highest flagpole they can find? To me it's time and past time that those who can afford to pay for their own should do so.
The Veteran's Administration has been rationing health care to their
target audience by means testing for years so it's not a concept totally foreign
to the government.
Well, that was in Bush's original proposal but Democratic criticism convinced him to essentially take it out. Why?
For many, especially Democrats, the brilliance of these programs is that they're "universal", rather than based on need. The supporters of this view can give you chapter and verse about why they need to be universal, but in the end it boils down to "maintaining (or gaining) popular support for the programs" - or, to put it bluntly, buying your vote with your own money.
See, for Democrats who otherwise complain when people who make a lot of money (the 50% of the people who pay over 95% of all income taxes - a proportion that will actually go up, not down, after Bush's tax cuts are fully enacted) are allowed to keep it and spend it as they choose (in the immortal words of W. J. Clinton in a moment of candor “Yeah, we could give you a tax cut but how do we know you would spend it right?") is an outrageous giveaway, but government-administered transfers to the same people is politically shrewd and is the basis of sound policy-making. You only give tax cuts to people who don't pay income taxes, but spending on programs is for everyone.
(Democratic office holders and their hangers-on are also far less opposed to giveaways to big business than one might have been led to believe. Witness, for example, Tom and Linda Daschle's giveaway to Boeing - the latest Joint Daschle Gift of tax money to aerospace-related industry - at the expense of the military budget, leasing planes at a higher cost than they could be bought at, thus leaving less available for vital programs. The list could really go on and on, so next time a Democratic politician starts talking about protecting "the people from the powerful" and their intention to reign in big business, remember also all the spending programs they've proposed and enacted and refused to see done away with that take money from the people and give it to big business. Take the Farm Bill - and that's a good example because the Republicans and Bush are far from having clean hands here, either; their hands are almost as dirty as that of the Democrats. But lets be real, it was really Democratic pressure that Bush and the Republicans decided not to fight that pushed that turkey through - and the Republicans were, yes, also happy to add in their own layer once they had made that decision, so do not think I'm letting them off the hook. The vast majority of the money in that Farm Bill, roughly 80%, will end up going not to "America's struggling family farms" but to large agribusinesses and to well-known sharecroppers like Ted Turner). The point is that giving the same industries a tax cut equal to, or even less than, the amount given in the form of a program would have been anathema, on ideological grounds. See, the issue is really control, not the money: a tax cut, you have control (and might spend it on the wrong things). The same given to you or to a corporation in the form of a doled-out program, the government has control (and, of course, they know best and never spend it on the wrong things, right?)
I'm still unhappy with Bush over the Farm Bill and the Steel Tariffs thing, though. Oh, and don't get me started on the Political Speech Regulation Act of 2002 again. . .
There are some sites I don't link to. Steven Schwartz, author of "the Two Faces of Islam" has an article on a pair that represents this type - the "two faces of Fascism", that's well worth reading.
As for Buchananites, any movement that calls for high tariffs and government regulation of the economy and social life to such an extensive degree really cannot be called conservative in the American context, much less expropriate the mantle of Libertarianism.
Frontpage also has a good article on how Amnesty International glossed over the violations of human rights by the Ba'athist regime and spent most of their time haranguing America, and an article by Michael Reagan titled "Oil for Corruption" - it's on the UN's Blood for Oil program, natch.
They're on somewhat of a roll today, with a profile by
Ben Johnson and Michael Tremoglie of the movement for make the UN the enforcer of global socialism, something I posted on a few weeks ago. Jack Kemp has a piece on the worthlessness of having the UN involved in Iraq, as well as a reposted Newsmax article on how the scions of friviledge are profiting rather than suffering (as they loudly claim) from their dissent. Choice quotes from Garofalo, Robbins, and others. All worth reading.
