Month: April 2005

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America and “the arts”–the long goodbye

Well, no duh
 
I’m not sure where in the blizzard of quick skimming I’ve done in the last hour or so that this turned up (though it’s almost certainly at Jerry Pournelle’s site, probably in Current Mail), but it points out the excruciatingly obvious “dog bites man” story about most young Americans and anything that comprises real music, graphic art or literature.  A sample of “Why Literature Matters”:
 
“According to the 2002 Survey of Public Participation in the Arts, a population study designed and commissioned by the National Endowment for the Arts (and executed by the US Bureau of the Census), arts participation by Americans has declined for eight of the nine major forms that are measured. (Only jazz has shown a tiny increase — thank you, Ken Burns.) The declines have been most severe among younger adults (ages 18-24). The most worrisome finding in the 2002 study, however, is the declining percentage of Americans, especially young adults, reading literature.”
Of course, the problem is many-faceted.  On the one hand, there was little of artistic merit that was both produced during the latter part of the 20th century (or is being produced today) and accepted as “art” by the tasteless drones of academia or their sycophants in the media “critics” (which is where art “certification” is “done”).  Nah.  Most “serious” music, graphic, dramatic or literary “art” of the latter part of the 20th century was as crappy (if not more so) than popular “art.”
 
That’s one problem: when “art” is crap, why bother to partake of such snobbery when equally crappy fare is available in pop “culture”?
 
Another is that academia (and especially that portion devoted to the study of education and the training of teachers) has been focusing ever more carefully on producing stupid students.  When stupid people (whether it is their natural state or a state inculcated via the artifice of educrats) are presented with beauty, they tend to, at best, use it to wipe excrement from their nether regions. If they have the sensibilities to do even that.
 
Aw, shucky darns, heck and rot. And all that sort of weak [expletive deleted].  *sigh* Again, Holly Lisle pretty well describes why people ought not to read that which critics and academia proclaim as “literature”—at least, 20th century “literature”—in “How to Write Suckitudinous Fiction” (I keep telling you to GO READ IT. I’ll wait.  Go.  Come back later for the rest of this rant.)
 
…..

…..

…..

…..
Back now? OK.  Her exposition of the problem of “Suckitudinous Fiction” also applies to “Suckitudinous” graphic, musical and any other art.  I’d say it has more to do with a loss of appreciation for beauty—no, make that Beauty—than anything else.  “Expression” is now a substitute for speech, art, music—a whole range of once very human things now made the equivalent of monkeys throwing feces at each other.
 
But when our schools turn out products that are the moral equivalent of monkeys (a less charitable person would probably argue that monkeys are the moral superiors of most “public school” products) in that each is just about equivalent in their ability to percieve and appreciate Beauty, Meaning, Love—all those silly passé values our parents once understood as eternal.
 
*profound sigh*
 
The subject matter of “Why Literature Matters”  is not news.  It’s just sad. (And besides, the author misses the most important reasons why literature—or any art—matters.  Of course.)
 
I think I’m going to listen to some music, now.  Copland*, I think.  Maybe one of the Bs.  Nothing written or performed in “serious” or popular music in the last 25 years, though.  And while I’m listening, maybe I’ll get a little deeper into Chesterton’s Orthodoxy. I missed it when I was younger and just recently found a copy.  Maybe some good music and well-written prose can wash the taste of the 21st century out of my mouth for a little while.
 
Maybe.
 
(*Yeh.  It’s not a sound clip.  It’s a manuscript page. read it and weep. heh)

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Nostalgia: remembering a land that once was…

you know, “the land of the free”?
Jerry Pournelle fondly recalls a land that he once knew; a kinder, gentler, freer land:
“Perhaps the world is safer now that we are involved everywhere, and have had to close the people’s house of government, the building most recognized everywhere in the world; a building anyone would walk up to, walk inside, photograph; visit the seat of government of the land of the free, and it wasn’t disorderly conduct to do it. But permit some of us to remember earlier times, when there were 26,000 nuclear warheads aimed at us, but we did not close down the symbols of freedom.”
Yes, well, perhaps he’s noticed that we no longer (as Fred Reed notes) live in either a democracy or a republic…
But we were born free… weren’t we?
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The customer is always… greedy

Well, almost always
 
Alan Woody posts today about an attitude that goes hand-in-hand with the attitude of the sheep Fred Reed rants about and that I commented on in the [BUMPED UP] post below.  He cites two examples that illustrate his point about,
 

“… the same mindset that leads to higher retail prices, higher insurance premiums, and wasteful government entitlement programs. It’s a hidden tax on all of us. We need to get real and stop deluding ourselves…”

Just read and… repent.  🙂
 
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America: Democracy, republic or… Neither

 
Gee. Looks like I’m going to have to repost something from last month.  Fred Reed is mostly right in the post linked to above. The following (bumped up from March 8, 2005) is a slightly different take in a similar vein. (Does this mean I’ve run outa things to say?  No.  Just time, right now.  Besides, it fits well with the Fred Reed column which you will go read. Now! *s*)
 
From:

Tuesday, March 08, 2005

Public (and other) Servants

Words that lie

So much of language today is comprised of words that carry little or nothing of their once common sense. Faith, truth, love—even so once-innocuous a word as “gay”—have all been virtually stripped of once meaningful content, or even turned on their heads entirely!

This is not a new phenomenon, of course, but post-modern relativism still holds sway in the heads of those committed to sub-literate stupidity, so it seems more common today for many to co-opt words with virtuous content and, it seems, deliberately corrupt them in attempts to legitimize unvirtuous conduct (“truth” stands out in the list above as one such; it seems that whenever pseudo-intellectuals talk about truth it is either from the perspective that truth is individual and relative or that their lies are true; “gay” used in referring to homosexual behavior is one such lie presented as true, of course).

A word much corrupted today is “servant.” Many who proclaim themselves to be servants of others seem to do so with the deliberate intention of decieving. We have all known such. I’ll reserve this space for those in the political class who refer to themselves as public servants.

What liars!

Kipling, in the lil ditty I referred to a couple of days ago, rightly pegged these people as one—he claimed chief!—evil facing mankind in all ages. Since you may not have read that poem recently (not even as recently as when I posted a link to it *LOL*), here it is in its entirety. Notice Kipling consciously invokes Solomon’s wisdom via typical Proverbial form.

“A Servant When He Reigneth”

Three things make earth unquiet
And four she cannot brook
The godly Agur counted them
And put them in a book —
Those Four Tremendous Curses
With which mankind is cursed;
But a Servant when He Reigneth
Old Agur entered first.
An Handmaid that is Mistress
We need not call upon.
A Fool when he is full of Meat
Will fall asleep anon.
An Odious Woman Married
May bear a babe and mend;
But a Servant when He Reigneth
Is Confusion to the end.

His feet are swift to tumult,
His hands are slow to toil,
His ears are deaf to reason,
His lips are loud in broil.
He knows no use for power
Except to show his might.
He gives no heed to judgment
Unless it prove him right.

Because he served a master
Before his Kingship came,
And hid in all disaster
Behind his master’s name,
So, when his Folly opens
The unnecessary hells,
A Servant when He Reigneth
Throws the blame on some one else.

His vows are lightly spoken,
His faith is hard to bind,
His trust is easy boken,
He fears his fellow-kind.
The nearest mob will move him
To break the pledge he gave —
Oh, a Servant when he Reigneth
Is more than ever slave!

Rudyard Kipling

Kipling may well be right in labeling soi-disant “public servants” (as well as the civil “servants” who carry out their dicta) who cling to their office, commit crime after crime against society via harmful, inctrusive, tyrannical legislation as the vilest affliction of mankind. Oh, that we could have an electorate that kept track of every single abuse of power by the political class and their minions in various civil service “work” and hold the political class—and their minions in the civil service—responsible for the abuses of power they create and actively support and engage in on a day-to-day basis! If every time a citizen is subjected to harrassment by some so-called servant for committing the “crime” of “maiastas, loosely defined as ‘insufficient groveling before the agents of the state…” [*]

Such “servants” would better serve, IMO, after an intimate consultation with Dr. Tarr and Mr. Fether, after which it could be determined whether they make a better submarine or torch… (Less harsh, I might add, than Arnold Amorie’s famous prescription for the citizens of Bezier in 1209, viz**., “Kill them all. God will know His own.” *heh*)

*sigh*

But that will not do in a society of sheep eager to be shorn… as long as their neighbor’s grass is made available by their shepherds. (IOW, We have the servants we have because of our own greed, laziness and stupidity. Ain’t cosmic justice weird that way?)

“Remember Martha!” is the true battle cry that is heir to “Live Free or Die!” and sums up nicely many of the charges laid at King George’s door by the Declaration of Independence (charges I dare say less than 1% of the electorate have any knowledge of).

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“The power of the state ought to be reserved for indictable crimes — at least in a republic. In an Empire the main crime is maiastas, loosely defined as ‘insufficient groveling before the agents of the state.'” J.E.P. (Speaking about Martha Stewart’s indictment and conviction for “lying”—NOT under oath—about not having committed a crime that the feds tacitly admit was not a crime. I say “admit” because they did not indict her or seek to pursue her for the “crime” she said she did not commit. Remember Martha: you too can be charged with any damned thing these “servants” want if you do not sufficiently grovel at their feet whenever and wherever you come into contact with them.)

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Another Kipling Tuesday

The American Rebellion
1776
Before
 

Twas not while England’s sword unsheathed
          Put half a world to flight,
       Nor while their new-built cities breathed
          Secure behind her might;
       Not while she poured from Pole to Line
          Treasure and ships and men–
       These worshippers at Freedoms shrine
          They did not quit her then!
 
       Not till their foes were driven forth
          By England o’er the main–
       Not till the Frenchman from the North
         Had gone with shattered Spain;
       Not till the clean-swept oceans showed
          No hostile flag unrolled,
       Did they remember that they owed
          To Freedom–and were bold!
After
 
The  snow lies thick on Valley Forge,
  The ice on the Delaware,  
But the poor dead soldiers of King George
  They neither know nor care.
 
Not though the earliest primrose break
  On the sunny side of the lane,
And scuffling rookeries awake
  Their England’ s spring again.
 
They will not stir when the drifts are gone,
  Or the ice melts out of the bay:
And the men that served with Washington
  Lie all as still as they.
 
They will  not  stir  though  the mayflower blows
  In the moist dark woods of pine,
And every rock-strewn pasture shows
  Mullein and columbine.
 
Each for his land, in a fair fight,
  Encountered strove, and died,
And the kindly earth that knows no spite
  Covers them side by side.
 
She is too busy to think of war;
  She has all the world to make gay;
And,  behold, the yearly flowers are
  Where they were in our fathers’ day!
 
Golden-rod by the pasture-wall
  When the columbine is dead,
And sumach leaves that turn, in fall,
  Bright as the blood they shed.
More Kipling available here.
 

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OK, pleased as can be with Zoundry’s Blogwriter

Of course, that’s not saying all that much… heh
 
OK, check out the download page, if you’re interested:
 
The d/l page notes the known issues with this beta. Of course, it misses some of what I call issues (like missing common keyboard shortcuts, etc.). But I can live with that—which is what I mean by “pleased as can be”… under the circumstances.
 
One neat advantage: Firefox is the only browser that consistently does (did) a good job of interfacing with the Blogger editor.  And that’s the ONLY thing I used Firefox for, since it’s so much clunkier and less elegant in use than Opera.  Now, I’ll have even less reason to fire up Firefox.  Nice.
 
Still, editing with Blogwriter is clumsy: too many mouse clicks and such needed.  I miss much of the keyboard functionality that’s normal in Windows apps.  And it is NOT available for users of any Windows version older than Windows 2000, so Win98/Me users are out in the cold.
 
Yet, it seems useful, so I think I’ll keep it around for a while.
 
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Since Blogger is still “broken,” let’s try an experiment

Been getting tired of coding html and having blogger screw it up (the wysiwig editor is still broken)…
 
This (a beta of “Blog writer”) seems a lil clunky—common keyboard shortcuts don’t seem to work—but if it’ll publish what I want, without inserting its own errors like the Blogger html editor seems to invariably do, I’ll be OK with it.
 
So, here’s a hyperlink: Take the Money and Run
 
Yeh, it’s just to my previous post, but it seems to work.  Again, it’s a clumsy link insertion method (right-click and choose “Create Link”—no keyboard stroke or menu icon—but at least it’s workable.
 
I like the preview and html source tabs—should be easy for those used to Front Page, for example.
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The 65-cent solution

Take the money and run

Here’s an idea: improve the delivery of services in so-called “public education” to the end user (the student) without raising taxes. The example below is for Missouri. Go to http://firstclasseducation.org/ to check $$ in other states. Now, admittedly, simply more $$ in the classroom isn’t THE answer to better education, but less spent on administration (the biggest waste of $$ in “public schools”–administrators are typically the dumbest people around and
doing the most to obstruct teaching/learning–but that’s another issue) would be a great place to get more $$ for the classroom, IMO.

For more on improving “public education” past the “prisons for kids” situation that now exists, see:

“It’s For the Childrenâ„¢”

Sure, I posted “It’s Forthe Childrenâ„¢” on April 1, but I wasn’t kidding. While funding issues (like
those dealt with by the 65-cent solution) don’t make my top five problems that need
solving, less money on non-essential (read, mostly “Administration”) services and more
on the classroom is a big plus.

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“…singing in the wilderness…”

When I posted my chili “recipe” a while back, I mentioned that pinto beans ONLY were the right beans to use in it and alluded to the relative difficulty of cooking red beans as opposed to pinto beans. Well, this recipe specifically calls for red beans and, really, no other will do. After all, how can ya call it “Red Beans and Rice” if you use a different bean, eh?

Red Beans and Rice

Beans

Wash and sort one pound of red beans. Soak ’em OVERNIGHT (at
least) in a quart or more of water. Next day, discard the water,
re-rinse and cover with about 1.5 quarts water, bring to a boil,
back it off to simmer and let simmer for three to four hours. The
beans are done when

1.) you can “blow” the skin off a couple of them by
gently, well, blowing on them (get a few in a spoon to do this,
though. Who wants your breath on their beans, now, really?)

2.) the water is reduced to a moderately thick sauce.

For a tastier buncha beans, add to the bloiling beans (before you
start to simmer them)

1 or 2 hamhocks OR some sliced smoked sausage a cup or more chopped yellow onion
some chopped green onions (maybe 1/4-1/2 as much as the yellow onion)
one clove garlic, minced (better: use a garlic press for this one)
chopped green, red or jalapeno or other peppers, depending on your taste
freshly-ground black pepper

Add salt AFTER the beans are done–the hamhock(s), if used, may add enough salt on their own.

Rice

2 cups brown rice
4 cups water (you may need more. My “waterless” cookware pots have spoiled me)

Bring the water to boil. Sprinkle the rice into the boiling water
slowly enough to keep the boil going. Cover and reduce to simmer.
My pots/altitude, etc., results in a fluffy rice in about 20
minutes. YMMV.

“A plate of rice, a scoop of beans and thou, singing in the wilderness.”

Or something like that.

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Well, is it working yet?

Bumping to top, because Blogger is still busy applying the (metal fastener having a tapered shank with a helical thread, and topped with a slotted head) to the… um, puppy. *sigh*

No. Blogger is still not working correctly.

This post has “disappeared” three times during its composition, thus far.

So much for the vaunted new autosave feature. Frankly, I’d just like to be able to post things as I could on Thursday, warts and all.

I’ll try a “real” post (as real as I can make it under these circumstances… might have to go to some sort of offline composition and ftp uploading… *sigh*)… real. soon. now.