Guilty Pleasures

There are genres of film that, invariably, I find myself attracted to. Vampire movies (excluding Twilight), for whatever reason, have always intrigued me. The same goes for zombie flicks. I don’t know what it is about the concept of the undead, but it intrigues me. It’s not pure, unadulterated mainstream, but I at least find it interesting.

Turns out, though, that I’m not the only person to find zombies interesting; interesting enough, at the very least, to write an academic paper on the subject from the perspective of biology. The overview is pretty intriguing, actually.

Courtesy of Sebastian

One of the cooler things I’ve seen yet this week:

And This is What You Come Up With?

I’d like to take a moment and echo the recent observations of Mr. Lichens regarding smoking. As usual, I am probably going to issue my declarations with a proportionately harsher style, but you really should be used to that by now.

I get annoyed with my darling mother when she nags (as she incessantly does) me regarding my pipe smoking. Pipes burn tobacco, and tobacco brings cancer – or so she tells me. Now, I’m not going to argue the merits of carcinogenicity right now. It’s not that I have no problem with the science; I haven’t met science I can’t have a problem with. It’s also not the fact that the woman who critiques my pipe smoking is the child of two smokers, one of whom is alive and the other of whom did not die of cancer – sure, she died of complications to a perforated ulcer that was certainly aggravated by emphysema from years of smoking, but I’m not talking about emphysema, I am talking about cancer. I’m not so daft as to claim that, from a health perspective, tobacco is as harmless as broccoli.

The point is not that I take issue with the idea of smoking as a vice. It’s not just because of the quip of a certain Italian cardinal, back in the day, who when speaking to a man who had just declined an offered cigarette with the pompous line “I have no vices,” replied that “it is not a vice, or doubtless you would have it.” Even if it is a vice, it is a very minor vice, in the grand scheme. It’s the kind of vice that mothers nag their sons about, and that is fine.

It is (a thousand gorram times) not the sort of thing that the Federal government needs to get involved in. At all. Ever.

Think about the irony – and I am keeping my hands off of Mr. Lichens’ commentary on Oregon entirely – the inherent absurdity of a government that bravely defends the right of a woman to dismember her child alive in utero also courageously protecting its ignorant subjects from the dangers of smoking, which they are apparently far to stupid to recognize in spite of the publicity, warning labels, and that big fat lawsuit back in the 90s.

I wonder if it ever occurred to the government that we’re actually banking on the cancer to save us from the bullcrap insanity of its further delusions? Nah.

Why Rhyming Doesn’t Matter

I’m fairly primitive when it comes to literature. What I mean by that is that I tend to gravitate toward more primordial works – epics like the works of Homer or Virgil, or Beowulf. I have very little interest in later works, regardless of their genre. This includes later epics such as Dante’s Paradiso and Milton’s Paradise Lost, as well as the multitude of individual poets, be they as lofty as Donne or as dubious as Eliot.

The reason for this is, I believe, directly related to my mainly political mind. Political philosophy has as its project the integration of ideals and the everyday world. The example I typically use is the relationship between ideal justice and a just society. One may posit many true things about justice in the abstract, but to create something that in practical application can be legitimately and substantively called “just” is a very different – and, I would argue, more challenging – task. One of the most useless – and dangerous – things in politics is a raw sense of idealism, totally untempered by any sense of practicality. That’s what we political thinkers refer to as ideology – not only does it never work out, but it manages to fairly effectively destroy true political society on the way there.

The old epics were truly in touch with the myths of their society. “Myth” in this sense does not refer to a story which is patently false; quite to the contrary, a true myth communicates something fundamentally true about the society from which it springs. The beauty of the old epics is that they draw on those myths, and illustrate them in practice. A reader could not legitimately encounter Beowulf or the Aeneid and come away without understanding something of what it meant to be a Saxon or a Roman. The reader is given to understand not only ideals, but how such ideals are carried into practice in the political world. Poets of the more contemporary variety tend to lack that type of insight.

Now, I am not advancing the claim that modernity’s poetry is not valuable due to this lack; however, it does illustrate an issue that speaks not only to a shortcoming of poetry in thr modern era, but a shortcoming of idealism in politics as well. At the heart of this shortcoming is the problem of democratic equality. In the democratic age, there is a tendency to equate “equality” with “sameness” – the idea that, since all men are at least in theory equal before the law and equal in their intrinsic dignity as human beings, they are essentially the same in all important respects. The difficulty is that the latter proposition is in no way borne out by the former proposition. In fact, the equality of democratic societies tends to allow a degree of self-determination and individualism that all but guarantees that sameness can only exist on a highly abstract level – the abstraction, incidentally, that tends to not mesh well with the practical needs of running and existing in a political society.

The patricians and the plebians of Rome were radically different in almost every respect from each other; except that they both were Roman. The modern individual may appear to have many concerns – family, job, community – in common with many other individuals; however, because – as Tocqueville observes – those interests are very particularized, the commonality is at best very abstract or idealistic.

The problem with ideals in politics is that they do not exist in the concrete. There is no incarnated system of perfect justice, only practical (and of necessity flawed) attempts to approximate it. Any attempt to actually institute a perfect ideal – as the French tried to do with equality in the Revolution – is going to be doomed to a disasterous end.

This principle – that the implementation of ideals must always be a little imperfect – is an unavoidable law of political existence. Whether the ideal is one of principle such as justice or equality, or of time – hearkening back to a “golden age” of yore that is probably highly romanticized and probably never existed – that ideal absolutely must be tempered with an understanding of practical reality and a willingness to compromise. If this is absent, then the result will not only fail to achieve the aspirations of the ideal, but will in all likelihood destroy what good is already present, whether concretely or in potentiality.

Are We Being Serious?

Recently, and for the first time in over half a century, there may have been a “new” flavor of cloud discovered.  They’re awfully pretty, too, based upon the different pictures I’ve seen floating around.  What’s really interesting about them, however, is what they reveal about the scientific mind.

I find that, buried slightly below the surface of many propositions we think we should accept as valid on account whatever inane societal pressure we choose to allow to serve as the baseline for our public currency, there are often glaring stupidities that, if known, might – I imagine – make us feel rather silly for giving such propositions the credibility which we invest in them.  Take this gem of a statement, for example, from a National Geographic article on this brand-spanking new “asperatus” cloud:

LeMone [whoever the heck he is] agreed that clouds are a “big unknown” [!] in climate change, mostly because climate-change models do not provide a high-enough resolution to determine what clouds’ impacts will be on a changing world.

In case you were wondering, the snark and emphasis are mine – placed there (aside from the profession of ignorance regarding the identity of “LeMone”) to illustrate just how insane the statement and its implications for the whole climate change hypothesis are.

Clouds are, perhaps, the most primordial meteorological tool.  You can look up at the sky and with relatively little experience be able to figure out whether it is going to rain or not, just by gauging the clouds.  If you have ever stepped outside, odds are pretty good that you have seen clouds.  Maybe I’m being harsh, but if your theory of radically changing weather patterns is too “low resolution” or “high level” or whatever other ephemism that you want to use for “sketchy.”

Honestly…exactly how much credibility am I supposed to invest in an alleged theory of meteorology that can’t account for the relevance of clouds?  Perhaps there’s a very good reason why it doesn’t matter, but I’m inclined to fall back on what seems like blatant common sense.  I am, as always, willing to be proved wrong – if you can come up with arguments better than my traditional climate change interlocutor.

Bizarre

I know people who would kill to see this.  Okay, maybe not kill, but it would definitely entice them to leave the maiming option open.

I myself tend to not get all that excited about musical spin-offs of cult movies.  Maybe it’s because the medium of the musical is in my head a bastardized form of opera – which I most assuredly do not get as a medium of storytelling.  Maybe I’m just a little bit too…primitive.  It’s not that I don’t appreciate sophistication in my storytelling, but rather that I don’t appreciate complexity in spades.  Some stories are meant to be sung, which is fine.  Some stories are meant to be plays, which is also fine.  However, I have yet to find a story that was meant to be a sung play.  It just hasn’t happened, yet.

Either way, if musicals are your cup of tea, and you’re a Sam Raimi fan, then this is probably made of awesome.  Maybe you can explain musicals to me…or at least try to.

Not Often Enough

It’s been a good week, it would seem. Not only has Mr. Lichens started posting again after a long hiatus, but he’s started a new project up to focus on things related to G. K. Chesterton. Bravo!

You can find this gem henceforth in my blogroll. Go forth and read.

A Word (or, No I Am not Dead)

Sometimes, my brain feels like a popcorn popper: stored in the cupboard, unused, until somebody pours a bunch of seeds in and things literally start exploding. Unfortunately, again like a popcorn popper, the tasty, buttery ideas don’t stay there all that long – taking me from wonderously full of fluffy goodness to woefully empty again. I think I’ve been having an extended form of one of those moments.

I’ve been writing stuff down, though…there are several things brewing in my mind and my hard drive, which I hope to get completed and scheduled before the inevitable surgery on my beloved lappy (which I have been putting off for reasons that will, perhaps, be revealed in a later post). However, I have something that I have to do first.

I’d like to take a page from Mr. Lichens’ playbook for a moment. (As an aside, I was filled with glee when I realized he was writing again.) To whit, I have a thing to say to all you people in the Cloud who are googling, among other things, for news about Thomas More College, Jeffrey O. Nelson, Pat Monaghan, and all other things gossipy, controversial, and over-dramatized: move along; these aren’t the droids you’re looking for; you can go about your business, now.

I’ve had some very pointed, and often verbose, things to say about Thomas More College over the past couple of years. There were things that definitely needed saying, but they don’t particularly bear saying any longer. I love my alma mater, and I would be very happy if I could go to the reunion of 2035. I wish it – and it’s sitting and oh-so-valid-and-capable president, Dr. William Fahey – nothing but prosperity, success, and blessing.

There’s one problem with the College, though. It breeds drama whores, which, like every other kind of whore that I can think of off the top of my head (please, don’t ask for that list), are mostly demeaning and immoral. I’ve been guilty of exactly such melodramatic prostitution in my time, but recently I said my private ciaos and vafanculos (don’t look that one up if you don’t know what it is) to that crowd in favor of a more aloof path. I now feel the need to take that path a little more publicly. So, while I enjoy self-censorship just about as much as I enjoy lighting my own pants on fire, I have decided to at a not-too-distant point in time move methodically through my old posts and edit what I believe ought to be preserved, while deleting in its entirety whatever I deem unworthy of enduring.

So, to all of you who come here searching for drama and controversy, this is ciao and vafanculo. Thanks for the ride.

Oh, and on an unrelated note, I will continue on as many occasions as possible to make plain my conviction that John Zmirak is a demented gnome.

Have a good day!

Counter…Well, Counter-Something at Any Rate

Call me crazy, but there’s a bit of me that yearns for the square, the clunky, and the 19th Century. I don’t know why, precisely, but I try not to ask too many questions. The fact remains that I find the phone below almost more appealing than its standard retail equivalent:

Now, if only it had been a jailbroken iPhone running a theme slightly more complimentary to its outer housing. That would be exciting.

Important

Could somebody please tell me what in the name of ever-loving hell this is:

I mean, if I might be allowed to liberty, I would ardently desire to not encounter a living version of this whatever-the-heck-it-is. Either it would try to incubate inside me, or it would try to chew my face off…in neither of those scenarios do I find myself involuntarily filling up with warm and fuzzy feelings.

This concludes your weekend proxy freak-out.