Candlemas

This is one of the "-mas" days Malory mentions occasionally, and until today I didn't know when it was. Apparently it falls on 2 February, "exactly 40 days after Christmas." The date has to do with a Jewish ritual of purification for new mothers and the first presentation of their children at the Temple in Jerusalem. This was to happen forty days after the birth, so this would be the date if we are right about the date of Christmas.

So that's something I didn't know until this morning.

Small Pipes

On Plastic Surgery

This piece from the UK's Daily Mail shows that the left's "war on women" shtick isn't limited to the United States or to condemnations of the Republican party. The game is to suggest that conservatives in general just don't "get" women. Notice, though, how much of the effect is achieved by shifting from "can be" to "is." The headline says that plastic surgery "is" condemned, but the argument in the working paper is that it "can be" symptomatic of a problem.

In the Pontifical Council for Culture's working paper, cardinals noted that going under the knife for elective surgery has been linked to eating disorders and depression.

'Plastic surgery that is not medico-therapeutic can be aggressive toward the feminine identity, showing a refusal of the body in as much as it is a refusal of the 'season' that is being lived out,' it said.

Again failing to understand the difference between a government and a church, the suggestion is that women will be forbidden from doing what they want with their bodies. The actuality is that the council is trying to understand the ways in which the culture is creating or worsening problems for women in Catholic parishes. All they are going to do with this argument is offer it as a way of saying to older women, "It's OK to be who you are."

The failure to understand this is behind their attacks on the Vatican's advertisement, too, I think. There's no reason to make an issue of whether the woman in the ad is old or young. Painting her as "sexy" is out of line; it's not like she's wearing "sexy" attire. She's a Catholic, and a woman who wanted to talk to other women about these cultural issues. Somehow she's not allowed to do that because she's the wrong shape to be taken seriously.

St. Brigid's Day

The beginning of Spring comes in late March according to our calendar, but of old in Ireland it was the first of February that marked the beginning of the coming of Spring. It was a feast, Imbolc, before it became a Christian feast day. This hymn in Gaelic is from the 11th century, in honor of St. Brigid, one of those early saints who is possibly a historical abbess, and possibly a goddess.

Parliamentary Comity

That's how they do it in England.

Nice Essay

It begins:

Dear King,

It is sad that you died of natural causes.

It's got a pretty good last line, too.

The long battle

Also via ChicagoBoyz, a Veronique de Rugy plea for patience in fighting the battle for big ideas.

Viking revival

From ChicagoBoyz, news of a "Late Varangian/Kievan Rus/Viking" revival in the Ukraine.

 

Financial tracheotomy

"Operation Choke Point" is an FDIC program that identifies certain industries as "high risk" for banks. I'm not sure of the details, but the claim is that it has influenced a lot of banks to cut off customers in the gun or ammunition sale business.  The program is supposed to have something to do with fraud, but the customers complaining of being cut off don't appear to have been accused of fraud, only of being in the gun-and-ammo business.  They're losing access to things like credit-card processing and PayPal.

The first thing this makes me think of is the crying need for alternative banking providers to spring up, so I was pretty happy to read that new companies, such as one called Payment Alliance, are stepping into the breach.  That's why it's nice to have lots of private institutions competing with federal ones, or even ones that have drifted into accepting too much federal control in return for goodies like FDIC insurance.

In other good news, the new Congress may be taking steps to get the regulators under control, too.  So hurray for elections.

Peepboards

That appears to be the consensus word.

"I'm not your dad, but . . . ."

Great weather forecast.

C.S.S. Hunley

They've started to look at it after pulling it out of Charleston's harbor, for those interested in such things.

Apropos of Last

Also, it's Friday.



Drink deep, killers.

UPDATE: For those who like jokes more than drinks, or jokes with your drinks.

That's Harsh

Kevin Williamson, again.

Dr. Ron Chapman, director of the California Department of Public Health, says that vaping should be treated like “other important outbreaks or epidemics.”
But epidemics of what? Prole tastes?

Progressivism, especially in its well-heeled coastal expressions, is not a philosophy — it’s a lifestyle. Specifically, it is a brand of conspicuous consumption, which in a land of plenty such as ours as often as not takes the form of conspicuous non-consumption: no gluten, no bleached flour, no Budweiser, no Walmart, no SUVs, no Toby Keith, etc.

One could say without offense that the philosophy entails a lifestyle. The claim here is that there's no coherent philosophy at all. True?

These Are Good Movies

I was moved especially by the first one, but perhaps you'll like the others better.



UPDATE: Based on the picture he put with it, though, I can see that Bill Whittle doesn't know any bikers.

Not going to have Mitt to kick around this time

NBC is reporting that Mitt Romney is about to announce he will not run.  They observed that this "clears the Republican field for Jeb Bush."  They never give up.

I Hate Public Transportation

Buses are always noiser, smellier, and disrupt traffic far more than guys in cars -- to say nothing of guys on motorcycles! But some want public transit to take over how you go anywhere, and they think it would be helpful if it were free.

Now, if you hate buses like I do, that doesn't seem like a good road. But I find it amusing that the first thing they did was to set up a free-market style insurance scheme, whereby you're indemnified against the cost of getting caught breaking the law by jumping turnstiles.

The group calls itself Planka.nu (rough translation: "dodge the fare now"), and they’ve banded together because getting caught free-riding comes with a steep $120 penalty. Here's how it works: Each member pays about $12 in monthly dues—which beats paying for a $35 weekly pass—and the resulting pool of cash more than covers any fines members incur.

So what if nobody pays for the buses? Don't they go away? No, of course, because the use fees aimed at the poor can never cover the cost of their operation. They always depend on taxes on people who never use the damn things.

So what about the other people? I've drunk beer in Zamboanga in daylight during Ramadan, and traveled in rural Tawi-Tawi and Sanga-Sanga, where gasoline is sold in little plastic baggies because a gallon is far too great a sum, and nobody can buy an underground tank's worth.

People still had motorcycles. Trucks, even, sometimes.

A Moment of Steinbeck

A thing going around right now is a John Steinbeck quote from The Grapes of Wrath:

If he needs a million acres to make him feel rich, seems to me he needs it 'cause he feels awful poor inside hisself, and if he's poor inside hisself, there aint no million acres gonna make him feel rich.

This goes with a second quote allegedly from Steinbeck.

"Socialism never took root in America because the poor see themselves not as an exploited proletariat but as temporarily embarrassed millionaires."

This is followed by a rant against the Koch brothers, etc.

But consider: if the American people think of themselves as 'temporarily embarrassed millionaires,' then they are a people who are on Steinbeck's terms rich inside.

How are you going to make them feel poor?

NASCAR: Where Everyone Gets A Trophy

"...as long as..."

Bringing the Hammer

The payoff comes two minutes, twenty-eight seconds in.



That guy might have been President, these last six years.