Month: August 2010

An excellent rebuttal on Frum's site of the hyperventilation of NRO's Ed Whelan.

A music critic explains why he doesn't care about the private lives of songwriters:

To trace anybody's work, what they produce, what they put into the world, what you or I respond to, to somebody's life, their biography, is utterly reductionist. It's simply a way of protecting ourselves from the imagination, from the threat of the imagination. Some people are very uncomfortable with the idea they can be moved, they can be threatened, they can be thrilled by something that is just made up.

John Irving, the novelist, once said to me, "You know why that is? It's because people who don't have an imagination are terrified of people who do." I don't know if that's true, but we live in culture of the memoir, where we're not supposed to believe anything unless it's documented that it actually happened. Never mind that most memoirs are more fictional than novels. We want that imprimatur: "This really happened. This is really true." You can respond to it. You can feel "okay" about being moved by it.

Whereas with art, whether music, movies, novels, painting, ultimately, to be moved by art, by something somebody has made up, is, from a certain perspective, to be tricked. To be fooled. You made me cry, and you just did it like you hypnotized me. I love that. Not everybody does.

By Carli Davidson (who also appears to have shot Stains).

Most encouraging:

"During the interview she also asked me about the plan to build a mosque in New York, very close to Ground Zero. I told her it is a sign of the value we have for freedom in this country, and for religious freedom in particular. We certainly do not want to support groups that promote terrorism, but there are many American citizens who are Muslim, and they have a right to practice their faith. Having a mosque near the site of the attack can be a very important symbol of how much we value religious freedom in this country.

I compared the situation to a historical situation in Ireland: During the Easter Revolution the Irish were very careful to protect the rights of the Protestants in the Free State. They did not take back their cathedral or close their churches. Instead, they wanted people to see they believed in freedom of religion."

The person I'm most interested in on this question is Mitt Romney.

Even NRO dissents. A reader writes:

I don't think you really appreciate the magnitude of the insanity of that list of the 25 worst Americans.  Just think, FDR, the man who led us through the Great Depression and to victory over Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan is apparently "worse" than a terrorist who murdered 168 people in cold blood, including children (not to mention FDR apparently is worse than spies who handed nuclear secrets to the Soviet Union and Lincoln's assassin).

I'm beginning to wonder is the right in the country has less of a grasp of reality than your average North Korean party member.

Prop 8 supporters seem to be having a bit of a meltdown:

In its 73-page appeal, which was filed Thursday, ProtectMarriage repeatedly accused Walker of distorting the evidence from a trial he presided over in January. "The district court simply ignored virtually everything — judicial authority, the works of eminent scholars past and present in all relevant academic fields, extensive documentary and historical evidence, and even common sense — opposed to its conclusions," the group said. Challengers of Proposition 8 presented 17 witnesses at the trial. ProtectMarriage called only two, and those witnesses made several damaging concessions during cross-examination. In his ruling overturning Proposition 8, Walker complained about the dearth of evidence from ProtectMarriage.

Anya Kemenetz profiles TED:

[It is] creating a new Harvard — the first new top-prestige education brand in more than 100 years. Of course TED doesn't look like a regular Ivy League college. It doesn't have any buildings; it doesn't grant degrees. It doesn't have singing groups or secret societies, and as far as I know it hasn't inspired any strange drinking games.

Still, if you were starting a top university today, what would it look like? You would start by gathering the very best minds from around the world, from every discipline. Since we're living in an age of abundant, not scarce, information, you'd curate the lectures carefully, with a focus on the new and original, rather than offer a course on every possible topic. You'd create a sustainable economic model by focusing on technological rather than physical infrastructure, and by getting people of means to pay for a specialized experience. You'd also construct a robust network so people could access resources whenever and from wherever they like, and you'd give them the tools to collaborate beyond the lecture hall. Why not fulfill the university's millennium-old mission by sharing ideas as freely and as widely as possible?

If you did all that, well, you'd have TED.

Reihan concurs:

The success of TED doesn't mean that traditional elite institutions don't have a place. But it provides a very constructive kind of competition. As TED's "mindshare" expands, will will hopefully see more efforts like MIT's OpenCourseWare, if only because elite schools don't want to lose their relevance and their influence. Eventually, the mission of these schools, with their vast resources, will focus more on the wider public than on their own enrolled students, thus delivering more educational bang-for-the-buck. TED is, in a small but important way, teaching educators how to solve the problem of scalability.

They have an enemies list – throughout history. Money quote:

Out of all the gangsters, serial killers, mass murderers, incompetent & crooked politicians, spies, traitors, and ultra left-wing kooks in all of American history — have you ever wondered who the worst of the worst was?

Jimmy Carter is the worst of the worst. Barack Obama is the second worst. Yes, worse than every mass murderer and serial killer in American history. Worse than Dahmer and Manson. Whoever these bloggers are, they are sick. But hey: this is the conservative movement today. It makes the John Birch Society look tame.

Update: for what a sane conservative might suggest, see Bainbridge.