Month: August 2011

"Meaning" by Czeslaw Milosz:

When I die, I will see the lining of the world.
The other side, beyond bird, mountain, sunset.
The true meaning, ready to be decoded.
What never added up will add Up,
What was incomprehensible will be comprehended.
– And if there is no lining to the world?
If a thrush on a branch is not a sign,
But just a thrush on the branch? If night and day
Make no sense following each other?
And on this earth there is nothing except this earth? …

The full poem, translated by former national Poet Laureate Richard Hass, is here. Mark Gordon is awed:

This and many other poems by Milosz always cause me to ask: If faith isn’t a leap, with all the attendant risk that word implies, then what good is it? The tremulous joy of living isn’t in certainty, or even in mathematical probability. The joy, the ecstasy is in possibility!

The Paris Review interviewed Milosz about his Catholic faith, philosophy, and poetry as "the passionate pursuit of the real," to which he replies:

The real, by which I mean God, continues to remain unfathomable.

(Photo: "A Tale Of Two Hemispheres" by Tunç Tezel and Stéphane Guisard via NASA)

A breakthrough at MIT.

Guy Sorman wonders why the Arab world's per-capita income is one-tenth the amount in the US and Europe:

Indeed, from a strictly religious perspective, one could view Muslims as having an advantage at creating wealth. After all, Islam is the only religion founded by a trader—one who also, by the way, married a wealthy merchant. The Koran has only good words for successful businessmen. Entrepreneurs must pay a 2.5 percent tax, the zakat, to the community to support the general welfare, but otherwise can make money guilt-free. Private property is sacred, according to the Koran. All this, needless to say, contrasts with the traditional Christian attitude toward wealth, which puts the poor on the fast track to heaven and looks down in particular on merchants (recall Jesus’s driving them from the Temple).

Sorman spoke with Duke economist Timur Kuran, who believes the blame partially lies with sharia and waqf, or welfare foundations to aid the poor:

According to sharia, all money given to these charities was exempt from taxation. But Muslim merchants began to establish waqf as fronts for commercial enterprises, depriving the government of sufficient funds to function properly. This tax evasion contributed to the failure of the Arab kingdoms and the Ottoman Empire to build a competent minimal state, which is essential to the effective rule of law.

Escape to Crater Lake:

Now that men are living longer, the NYT recently focused on gender-specific grief counseling for men. Phyllis R. Silverman emphasizes the role of widowers helping fellow widowers:

These grieving men are working with professionals as collaborators, not as patients. The widowed are developing programs for themselves. They are taking the initiative. We see the power of learning from peers who bring to the table experiential knowledge. Our professional knowledge is finally catching up with what we’ve learned over the years from the widowed I talked with. We need to appreciate experiential knowledge as a critical source of information as we try to understand grief and what help is appropriate for the bereaved. What are the gains gained from mutual help activities? It legitimates the pain; it normalizes it given the circumstances. It provides opportunity to learn new ways to cope. Personal experience is valued. The individual is not a client but an informed consumer. There is no sense of uniqueness; members don’t feel alone in their grief.

"Whilst I adore this ineffable life which is at my heart, it will not condescend to gossip with me, it will not announce to me any particulars of science, it will not enter into the details of my biography, and say to me why I have a son and daughters born to me, or why my son dies in his sixth year of life. Herein, then I have this latent omniscience coexistent with omnigorance. Moreover, whilst this Deity glows at the heart, and by his unlimited presentiments gives me all Power, I know that to-morrow will be as this day, I am a dwarf, and I remain a dwarf. That is to say, I believe in Fate. As long as I am weak, I shall talk of Fate; whenever the God fills me with his fullness, I shall see the disappearance of Fate. I am defeated all the time; yet to Victory I am born," – Ralph Waldo Emerson, from his journals.

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

The full interview above. She wants us to ignore her extreme views on gays (watch after the 19 minute mark). She wants us to believe that "submission" means the same thing as "respect". She says the following:

I am running for the presidency of the United States, I’m not running to be anyone’s judge.

But gays need to be cured of being themselves. And her husband makes money from peddling such nostrums. But note how absolutely on message and coherent she is. She really does help reveal Palin's near-illiteracy and incompetence. But she has no actual policy proposals, except repealing financial regulation and repealing universal healthcare. You get no sense that she has ever weighed conflicting goals or dealt with differing opinions in marshalling any support. But she is the natural leader for the current GOP: divorced from empirical reality, riveted on ideological purity, incapable of seeing any good in her Democratic opponents or their arguments.

First this. Then this:

The twitter accounts for Michelle Bachmann, Mitt Romney, Tim Pawlenty and Rand Paul combined have fewer followers than a twitter account for a cobra that escaped the bronx zoo. @BronxZoosCobra

He gone (Krugman is crushed). And his rationale too:

Sam’s Club conservatism was floated by Ross Douthat and Reihan Salam when the Republican Party felt a need to reinvent itself. It seems to have lost out, in Pawlenty’s campaign and in the party, to the tea party grass roots, interested in rolling government back, not reshaping it.

I should be happy about this and in some ways I am. I don’t want a conservatism devoted to soothing the culture war base with government aid and support. But a reasonable small government conservative? Someone who does not actually despise government? Someone who can see the fruits of compromise for the body politic as a whole?

Tumbleweeds, no?

Even Huntsman joined the hands up moment – perhaps the most important single moment in recent GOP politics – when all the candidates declared they would walk away from a debt deal that was 10 – 1 spending cuts to revenue increases. That was when they told us they were an ideological and religious movement, not a party fit for actual government.