WFB

I was saddened to see that William F. Buckley, Jr. was found dead earlier today. Whether or not one agreed with his positions, one cannot help but be impressed by his vision, his intellect, and his capacity to articulate both.

The National Review Online has thorough coverage of his passing, and here is a link to the NYTimes' article.

Nike

"The Winged Victory (Nike) of Samothrace" (220-190 B.C.), Unknown

A Man's Best Friend

Ella Dog Truslow

Expelled

The above is an extended trailer for the upcoming Ben Stein film / documentary titled, "Expelled: No intelligence allowed." Movie trailers are notoriously poor representations of films' actual content, but my initial impression is that this is a critique not of Darwinist thinking itself (though elsewhere Stein has said that Darwin's "ideas led to genocide not once but many times"), but of our culture's open hostility toward those who question scientific dogma. Stein seems implicitly to second Mark Twain's observation, that "whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it is time to pause and reflect."

A quick glance at the online reaction (update: here's some) suggests that the movie will be controversial, and the public discussion surrounding it will be reactive and uncivil. In short order, Ben Stein will be vilified as The Right's shabby response to Michael Moore (update: they did), an erroneous association.

The film may turn out in the end to be an anti-Darwinist piece, but the larger question is still well-considered: "Why do we demand that some popular ideas - even ideas grounded in empirical evidence - must not be questioned, and that other, minority beliefs must not be held at all?" If anything, the answer to that question suggests rigid limits to the essential American value most frequently given meaningless lip service: tolerance.

The Failure of Normality

Especially in this election-cycle-with-no end, the U.S. media should be faulted (and severely beaten) for failing in almost every circumstance to provide the general public with any historical context, any candidate accountability, any meaningful analysis, or coverage of any policy substance. It is truly shameful.

One article excepted from my Brutal Beatings List is a piece called, "The Failure of Normality: The unhappy lessons of the Thompson campaign", written by Andrew Ferguson and printed in the February 4, 2008 issue of The Weekly Standard.

Ferguson provides a very interesting overview of how and why Fred Thompson's campaign collapsed after starting off with such high expectations. The article does this by describing how candidates used to campaign for the presidency in the 19th and early 20th centuries, and argues that Thompson was a man out of time (and thus was doomed to fail). Thompson is here portrayed as unwilling to swap out his personal sensibilities and more traditional view of democracy for the modern (apparent) requirements of sound bites and non-stop campaigning.

He was a different kind of candidate but not an incompetent one. Indeed, his finest moment came in a debate before the Iowa caucuses, when the moderator asked the assembled candidates for a show of hands if they believed human activity caused climate change.

"Well, do you want to give me a minute to answer that?" Thompson said. When the moderator said she didn't, he said: "Well, then I'm not going to answer it. You want a show of hands, and I'm not going to give it to you."

The moderator looked as though Thompson had suddenly sprouted daffodils from his ears. So did his fellow candidates. After a stunned silence, they all courageously announced their refusal to show hands, too. They looked like the Little Rascals, hitching up their britches and flexing their biceps after Alfalfa clocked the neighborhood bully.

Ferguson also addresses the most oft heard criticism of Thompson, that he lacked "fire in the belly" - whatever that means. The article accepts this criticism as being accurate AND historically appropriate (if Thompson had been campaigning in the 1890s). Ferguson does a thorough job of describing the core democratic belief in the unseemliness of seeking power over other men, but if you've read The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams, then you got the basic thrust of the argument mirrored there:

"The major problem - ONE of the major problems, for there are several - one of the many major problems with governing people is that of whom you get to do it; or rather of who manages to get people to let them do it to them. To summarize: it is a well-known fact that those people who most want to rule people are, ipso facto, those least suited to do it. To summarize the summary: anyone who is capable of getting themselves made President should on no account be allowed to do the job. To summarize the summary of the summary: people are a problem."

Well, yes. Yes, they are. I think I'm done with politics for the year.

** Photo above is the film representation of Galactic President Zaphod Beeblebrox (a character from The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, and the point of the quote above). **

Allan B. Jones

"Self portrait" (1991), by Allan B. Jones

(click on painting for larger image)

The Princess Bride

The Princess Bride (1987) is like an old friend with whom I share a large repertoire of inside jokes.

I am not left-handed, either.

A secret life

John Hamilton, George Reeves, Noel Neill, Jack Larson, and Robert Shayne in "The Adventures of Superman" (1952-1958).

Almost as soon as I wrote about Post Secret, I came upon the following poem, "A Secret Life," by Stephen Dunn. My only contribution is to note how exhausting and debilitating a secret life can be. Unless you're Clark Kent, try to do without.

Why you need to have one
is not much more mysterious than
why you don't say what you think
at the birth of an ugly baby.
Or, you've just made love
and feel you'd rather have been
in a dark booth where your partner
was nodding, whispering yes, yes,
you're brilliant. The secret life
begins early, is kept alive
by all that's unpopular
in you, all that you know
a Baptist, say, or some other
accountant would object to.
It becomes what you'd most protect
if the government said you can protect
one thing, all else is ours.
When you write late at night
it's like a small fire
in a clearing, it's what
radiates and what can hurt
if you get too close to it.
It's why your silence is a kind of truth.
Even when you speak to your best friend,
the one who'll never betray you,
you always leave out one thing;
a secret life is that important.

Le Noeud Noir

"Le Noeud Noir / The Black Bow" (1882), by Georges Seurat

Love II (Post Secret)

I am a big fan of the Post Secret project (even when the creative contributions are not exactly "secrets"). Presently, there seems to be both a blog, and a community site worth checking out. Here is a good project intro video, and this video page on the community site is also full of interesting work.

Love

"Love in the afternoon" (1992), by Andrew Wyeth

Love never dies a natural death. It dies because we don't know how to replenish its source. It dies of blindness and errors and betrayals. It dies of illness and wounds; it dies of weariness, of witherings, of tarnishings. - Anais Nin

Anger is the fluid that love bleeds when you cut it. - C.S. Lewis

There is no safe investment. To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything, and your heart will certainly be wrung and possibly broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact, you must give your heart to no one, not even to an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements; lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket - safe, dark, motionless, airless - it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable. The alternative to tragedy, or at least to the risk of tragedy, is damnation. The only place outside of Heaven where you can be perfectly safe from the perturbations of love is Hell. - C.S. Lewis

No people find each other more absurd than lovers. - C.S. Lewis

Love and Truth: Their warfare seems eternal. - E.M. Forster

A friend loves at all times. Proverbs 17:17

Icarus

As a young man in the late 1920s and early 1930s, John Winthrop Truslow, Sr., my grandfather, was an actual "barnstormer". This photo probably was taken near the family home in Summit, New Jersey. Click on the image for a larger version.

Life mimics art.

If you've seen the movie "Election", I'm pretty sure that commentary is not required here...

Modern Mythology

Drew Carey has created a series of thoughtful videos for Reason.tv. Here, he takes a look at one of contemporary America's most popular myths: The decline of the middle class. While I'm not entirely satisfied with his explanation for the narrative's genesis, I am thankful that someone took the time to consider the claims critically. Our culture is full of stories like these, and we've been getting an earful of them lately.

The video seems to suggest that a conspiratorial press and complicit politicians live at the root of this myth, but I don't think we can discount our society's insatiable desire for more, our unwillingness to have any historical or cultural perspective, or the stress associated with consumer credit debt reflected in the retelling. It could also be the case that as a culture, we no longer value work.

Update (2/11/2008): Be sure to check out Will's post on the subject, which contains a link to a well-done radio broadcast by "Marketplace".

Leisure

"The stare: Laysan Albatross, Midway Island" by Jay Holcomb

What is this life if, full of care,
We have no time to stand and stare.

No time to stand beneath the boughs
And stare as long as sheep or cows.

No time to see, when woods we pass,
Where squirrels hide their nuts in grass.

No time to see, in broad daylight,
Streams full of stars, like skies at night.

No time to turn at Beauty's glance,
And watch her feet, how they can dance.

No time to wait till her mouth can
Enrich that smile her eyes began.

A poor life this if, full of care,
We have no time to stand and stare.

"Leisure", by W. H. Davies (William Henry Davies, 1871-1940)