A little late to the RIP-fest:
Nothing Says 'Girl's Empowerment' Like A Headscarf You'll Be Beaten for Not Wearing
Sesame Street's heart is in the right place, no doubt. And, in truth, a hijab is downright "feminist" in the context of Afghanistan, where the conservatives insist on a full burqa if women are not to be beaten or executed.
Still... c'mon.
Still... c'mon.
"Look, I'm Just Like You!"
Who raised this woman? I've know six-year-olds who could pour a better beer. Teaching them how is one of those things a man is supposed to do. It goes with the other common-sense teachings you learn at that age.
The True and the Beautiful
Claire Berlinski is trying to understand the collapse of architectural standards in Paris after the Second World War. (H/t: Instapundit.)
If you can make art that is more real than nature, then you are refining something found in the natural world. That is what Aristotle suggests art exists to do: to perfect the natures of things. You start with the good in the world, and perfect it. Nature might provide shelter in a cave. Men taking shelter in such caves made them places for worship by decorating their walls with other beautiful scenes found in nature. Such a cave begins to be improved by being made more perfect, and thus -- this was Twain's insight -- more real.
A cathedral is just an artificial cave, in a way. Notre Dame is more real because it is more beautiful. It is more beautiful because it more perfectly realizes the goods that it was brought into being to serve.
I need to make the case that my judgments about this aren’t arbitrary. I’m saying something more objective about beauty than, “I like building A but I don’t like building B.” So I need to start with a robust theory of aesthetics. Here’s what I need it to do:I've never been to Paris, so I can't speak with much authority on the beauty of the buildings there. However, I can tell her why the beautiful and the good used to be thought connected. Here is an old post:
It needs to be able to tell us, in some detail, why Building A is more beautiful than Building B. These principles should be broadly applicable to all buildings.
It would be useful to show that these principles may broadly be applied to the idea of “beauty,” generally.
I’d like to explore the idea that it’s at least reasonable to associate “the beautiful” and “the morally good.”
This point must be based on evidence, the nature of which must be defined. So, for example, I want to look at the criminogenic quality of ugly buildings, and the way people tend to get sick and die sooner when they live in and among them.
Htom asked for a break to put his thoughts in order before we reconvened on the subject of levels of reality -- that is, whether a thing can be "more real" than another. Here's St. Augustine on the subject:The Twain discussion tracks to this earlier post, and this one. Twain's subject was Wagner's opera, which he criticized intensely -- but his admission undoes all the criticism.Look around; there are the heaven and the earth. They cry aloud that they were made, for they change and vary. Whatever there is that has not been made, and yet has being, has nothing in it that was not there before. This having something not already existent is what it means to be changed and varied. Heaven and earth thus speak plainly that they did not make themselves: "We are, because we have been made; we did not exist before we came to be so that we could have made ourselves!" And the voice with which they speak is simply their visible presence. It was thou, O Lord, who madest these things. Thou art beautiful; thus they are beautiful. Thou art good, thus they are good. Thou art; thus they are. But they are not as beautiful, nor as good, nor as truly real as thou their Creator art. Compared with thee, they are neither beautiful nor good, nor do they even exist. These things we know, thanks be to thee. Yet our knowledge is ignorance when it is compared with thy knowledge.That gives us two 'levels' of reality: God, and creation. The original claim of Mark Twain's suggested that a human creation could -- if it were also true and beautiful -- be "more real" than other things that were part of God's creation.
Confer with Tolkien's idea of sub-creation, and his creation myth in the Silmarillion. Human nature has a capacity to seize upon the True and the Beautiful as they are in other things. We can separate them intellectually from the things they are in, and think about why they are beautiful. We can take things that are imperfectly beautiful, and imagine how to make them more so. We can, in our arts, make them actually more beautiful.
If you can make art that is more real than nature, then you are refining something found in the natural world. That is what Aristotle suggests art exists to do: to perfect the natures of things. You start with the good in the world, and perfect it. Nature might provide shelter in a cave. Men taking shelter in such caves made them places for worship by decorating their walls with other beautiful scenes found in nature. Such a cave begins to be improved by being made more perfect, and thus -- this was Twain's insight -- more real.
A cathedral is just an artificial cave, in a way. Notre Dame is more real because it is more beautiful. It is more beautiful because it more perfectly realizes the goods that it was brought into being to serve.
Break: Goodnight, Merle
A sad day for the nation. I'd say for 'the country,' but this is no time for puns.
I'm sorry to see him go. He was one of the last of the Outlaw Country greats.
UPDATE: I don't know if this story about Merle's last show is true. However, it is coherent with this news report about that show.
UPDATE: A young Merle Haggard does impressions of the singers who were great in those days.
I'm sorry to see him go. He was one of the last of the Outlaw Country greats.
UPDATE: I don't know if this story about Merle's last show is true. However, it is coherent with this news report about that show.
UPDATE: A young Merle Haggard does impressions of the singers who were great in those days.
Kolejka
This game came up in a discussion on another site, and I thought the Hall would enjoy it.
Here's the description from Amazon:
Here's the description from Amazon:
Kolejka -- Queue -- Boardgame
by Instytut Pamici Narodowej
Get in a queue with your family in front of a store and experience a rush of genuine emotions! The board game Kolejka (a.k.a. Queue) tells a story of everyday life in Poland at the tail-end of the Communist era.
The players' task appears to be simple: They have to send their family members out to various stores on the game board to buy all the items on their shopping list. The problem is, however, that the shelves in the five neighborhood stores are empty.
The players line up their pawns in front of the shops without knowing which shop will have a delivery. Tension mounts as the product delivery cards are uncovered and it turns out that there will be enough product cards only for the lucky few standing closest to the door of a store. Since everyone wants to be first, the queue starts to push up against the door. To get ahead, the people in the queue use a range of queuing cards, such as 'Mother carrying small child', 'This is not your place, sir', or 'Under-the-counter goods'. But they have to watch out for 'Closed for stocktaking', 'Delivery error', and for the black pawns the speculators standing in the queue. Only those players who make the best use of the queuing cards in their hand will come home with full shopping bags.
On the product cards are photos of sixty original objects from the Communist era. The merchandise includes Relaks shoes, Przemysawka eau de cologne, and Popularna tea, as well as other commodities that were once in scarce supply.
The neighborhood also has an outdoor market but the prices there are steep unless, of course, you manage to strike a deal with the market trader. In this realistic game you really have to be savvy to get the goods. Are you brave enough to confront the everyday life of the 1980s?Appropriately, the game is only available from 3rd party sellers and the lowest price is currently $473.46.
Political Correctness as the End of Moral Relativism
So, we usually talk about PC as an outgrowth of moral relativism: you can't criticize any other culture without causing offense because you can't suggest that any culture is better than another. A new article in the Atlantic says that, actually, that's a perfectly serviceable non-relative ethic by itself. The harsh punishments of pro-PC activists are an enforcement of a non-relative ethic against the non-PC.
What happens outside of that mental torture chamber is none of its proper concern.
The subjective morality of yesterday has been replaced by an ethical code that, if violated, results in unmerciful moral crusades on social media.Well, except no: the most intolerant and exclusive brands of all can travel under this flag, because they can claim to have been not tolerated or excluded by some previous authority. It remains an anti-Western Western philosophy, a West that blinds itself like Oedipus out of horror at its past sins. In that blindness, it now can see nothing except the ever-cycling vision of the old sins playing out again against the mind's eye.
A culture of shame cannot be a culture of total relativism. One must have some moral criteria for which to decide if someone is worth shaming....
This system is not a reversion to the values that conservatives may wish for. America’s new moral code is much different than it was prior to the cultural revolution of the 1960s and 70s. Instead of being centered on gender roles, family values, respect for institutions and religious piety, it orbits around values like tolerance and inclusion. (This new code has created a paradoxical moment in which all is tolerated except the intolerant and all included except the exclusive.)
What happens outside of that mental torture chamber is none of its proper concern.
Fatal Design Flaw in SCAR
Funker530 has video of a professional attempting to reproduce the failure.
21 Generals for 5,000 Troops?
There's a politically incorrect phrase we used to use to describe this setup. Something to do with 'chiefs' and 'Indians.' Now, I don't want to fail to respect our Native American brothers and sisters, but I can't help but think of the phrase when I read a report like this.
Exclusive: 21 Generals Lead ISIS War the U.S. Denies FightingHow does anyone get anything done with that much brass? Well, maybe that's why we somehow aren't winning. I've known a couple of Brigade Commanders who could have cleaned this up, if you gave them their head.
There are only 5,000 U.S. troops in Iraq—about what a colonel usually commands. But for this ISIS war, as many as 21 generals have been deployed. Why?
Another Reason to Value Being Long-Married
Cosmopolitan invites four young women to talk with their boyfriends about guns. "Almost all of the boyfriends believe they have the right to gun ownership under the Second Amendment, but their girlfriends don't see it that way."
My favorite is the one who just cannot imagine why anyone would want to own a "death machine." Her boyfriend says, well, you know, you drive a car and they kill just as many people (and about three times as often by accident! More than two thirds of gun deaths are suicides).
I suppose I would have said, "In fact I own many death machines. Wait until you meet my motorcycle."
If she was the sort to really mind saddling up on a death machine, she'd have moved on long before we got to the conversation about guns.
Still, I feel bad for these young guys having to negotiate dating in an environment like this one.
Well, maybe I don't feel too bad for them. It's a hard ride, but at least some of them seem to be working it out.
My favorite is the one who just cannot imagine why anyone would want to own a "death machine." Her boyfriend says, well, you know, you drive a car and they kill just as many people (and about three times as often by accident! More than two thirds of gun deaths are suicides).
I suppose I would have said, "In fact I own many death machines. Wait until you meet my motorcycle."
If she was the sort to really mind saddling up on a death machine, she'd have moved on long before we got to the conversation about guns.
Still, I feel bad for these young guys having to negotiate dating in an environment like this one.
Well, maybe I don't feel too bad for them. It's a hard ride, but at least some of them seem to be working it out.
Did the Hall see this?
This has got to be one of the most amazing stories of wartime survival I have ever read. Please do yourself a favor and take some time to read the amazing story of a British WWII RAF veteran.
The Dramatic Exception to Nondiscrimination?
Many years ago when I was a teenager, I saw a version of Hamlet with a black actor in one of the leading roles. Knowing that the film was set in Medieval Denmark, I had a moment of being jarred out of the suspension of disbelief necessary for effective drama. However, I made the mental effort to thrust the issue aside and found no problem enjoying the play. Such casting has apparently now become common, and the reaction of viewers is now standard: we have decided not to care.
In fact, it turns out that Medieval Denmark -- if it were much like Medieval England -- probably did have a certain number of people of color in it. Several of the Round Table knights turn out to have been, a fact missed because the Medieval authors didn't make a big deal about it. It apparently wasn't that remarkable.
Nevertheless, one can see that the suspension of disbelief is a real issue for dramatic works. More than that, if a play is really partially about race, the dramatic vision of the whole could make it valid to cast certain roles in a certain way. It might be interesting to do a version of Roots or Tarantino's Django with racial casting reversed, but it makes a certain sense to play the casting straight. I'm not sure it would make sense to fail to take race into account at all: while reversing casting would make a point, you would lose something important to the drama if you gave the sense that race was of no importance in the time period being portrayed. It is the centrality of racism that is the issue, and casting has to reflect that somehow.
I'm thinking about this because the Hamilton musical has come under fire for a casting call asking for only "non-white" actors. There's a question about whether the law can support race-based casting. That's a separate question from whether or not it makes any sense to try to put on a play set in a particular time and place that doesn't take audience expectations into account -- either to smooth suspension of disbelief, or to challenge their preconceptions.
It seems as if the artistic concerns are valid, but they may be illegal. If they were illegal, should there be a nondiscrimination exception for art?
In fact, it turns out that Medieval Denmark -- if it were much like Medieval England -- probably did have a certain number of people of color in it. Several of the Round Table knights turn out to have been, a fact missed because the Medieval authors didn't make a big deal about it. It apparently wasn't that remarkable.
Nevertheless, one can see that the suspension of disbelief is a real issue for dramatic works. More than that, if a play is really partially about race, the dramatic vision of the whole could make it valid to cast certain roles in a certain way. It might be interesting to do a version of Roots or Tarantino's Django with racial casting reversed, but it makes a certain sense to play the casting straight. I'm not sure it would make sense to fail to take race into account at all: while reversing casting would make a point, you would lose something important to the drama if you gave the sense that race was of no importance in the time period being portrayed. It is the centrality of racism that is the issue, and casting has to reflect that somehow.
I'm thinking about this because the Hamilton musical has come under fire for a casting call asking for only "non-white" actors. There's a question about whether the law can support race-based casting. That's a separate question from whether or not it makes any sense to try to put on a play set in a particular time and place that doesn't take audience expectations into account -- either to smooth suspension of disbelief, or to challenge their preconceptions.
It seems as if the artistic concerns are valid, but they may be illegal. If they were illegal, should there be a nondiscrimination exception for art?
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