Theodore Dalrymple

Why read me? If you haven't read Theodore Dalrymple, maybe it's time to start now!

Sunny side of the street

Every time my dog and I leave the house for a walk, find the sky sprinkling lightly on us, and we decide the pour is light enough to continue, my dog immediately leads me to the other side of the street, something he never does otherwise, as if thinking that it won't rain there. (Once or twice, believe it or not, he's been correct.)

It's a perfect metaphor, or an outright example of the follies of human (and canine) thinking about things we cannot affect. If only we had elected the other guy (just coincidentally, of course, from "my" political party.) If only the U.N. had passed such and such resolution. If only everybody on the highway (except for me, I can't!) took public transportation. If only guns were banned. Like in Switzerland. No, wait, never mind. If only they put up a speed limit sign on my street.

Well, they did put up a 25MPH speed limit sign in front of my neighbour's house. The neighbour protested to the city hall and they moved it, so it now stands between my house and the house of the neighbour on the other side. As if I had to say it, having the sign there has had no effect whatsoever on the cars speeding through my residential street.

I lost a friend once, a firm believer in the goodness of government action, when I mocked the "No Drug Dealing Zone" sign we passed driving through a neighbourhood, as the billboard advertising where illegal substances can be obtained, at all hours of day and night. That was the beginning of the end of our friendship.

There is a poster hanging in the common area of my office building advertising an event called 'Walk to Cure Diabetes'. That's right, you walk to cure diabetes. (It doesn't say if it's your own diabetes or the disease of diabetes in general for all humanity.) Well, I walk more every day than anyone I know in this car cursed culture, and so far it hasn't helped to cure my children's colds much less some still incurable diseases.

But that's just me. You go ahead, don't let me stop you from meditating for peace. The earth needs it (peace, not meditation.) Maybe it is sunny on the other side of the street, after all. If only we had elected the other guy, I wouldn't be in such a pickle now!

Book Excerpt

Emotions, what are you doin'?
Oh, don't you know,
don't you know
you'll be my ruin?
(Brenda Lee song)

An excerpt from Love and Language, by Ilan Stavans.

Deborah Kerr

Read this thoughtful, perceptive tribute to movie actress Deborah Kerr.

The Pope in Washington

The president of the United States (POTUS) is like a Pope to many in this country. Revered, if he's of your own political party or irrationally despised if he's of the other party in this two party system. And so, many public figures and private citizens threatened to move abroad in 2000 if George W. Bush had been elected. None ever did, of course, and there is never any shortage of excuses. Now, I'm beginning to hear the same from the other side, partisans of the Right threatening to move if She, who cannot be named, is elected.

All of this, hatred and worship are irrational and reflect a certain amount of ignorance about what the POTUS can and cannot do. The first job of the POTUS, one that is seldom mentioned, is to promote and propose policies that do not threaten the economic stability in the country. The President is not alone in this task, and is not always successful, as the economy runs its own course of ups and downs.

The ignorant who elected and worshipped the criminal hillbilly in 1992, tend to think that the President is the one who can keep their sacrament of abortion legal. Others are convinced that their priest of global warming would have kept the country out of war following 9/11.

There are checks and balances on the Presidents and certain things that the followers of various pretenders to the Presidency believe will be done, if and only if their guy is elected, will never be done. Example: Ronald Reagan ran against the government in 1980, promising to eliminate the federal Departments of Energy and Education. You can easily check on how successful he was.

The interesting thing to me is that the haters of the other party's president, however educated they may be, are seldom if ever aware of the ideological basis for their resentments. There is a deep ideological divide in this country, and the best explanation for it that I know of you'll find in Thomas Sowell's book A Conflict of Visions. Here is a link to Thomas Sowell's website.

By the way, if you think the "criminal hillbilly" reference above betrays my own partisanship, you should educate yourself on the scandals of the years 1992-2000. The Wall Street Journal, alone among the fawning mainstream media (89% of America journalists vote Democratic) kept track of them and published a compendium of its investigative reports. (If you must know, as a radical Monarchist, I despise them all.)

But here's a small recent example. Sprinter Marion Jones, who for years denied using performance enhancing drugs, and only recently admitted to having lied and returned her Olympic medals, at one point hired a well known operative of the 1992-2000 administration as a publicist to help her with the lies and to divert attention from her use of drugs by attacking in public all those who doubted the lies. From the local newspaper:

Their playbook was thin: Attack your opponents, lie, lie, lie, and try to look good doing it.

This was the famous tactic of this and other operatives of the criminal hillbilly. Oh well, what can you do with the Cult of Personality condemned so long ago by Nikita Sergeyevich Khrushchev, First Secretary, Communist Party of the Soviet Union in the Secret Speech Delivered at the Twentieth Party Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, February 25, 1956.

Hot!!

Al Oerter

A great athlete died yesterdat at 71. Al Oerter, Olympic discuss thrower who won gold medals in four straight Olympics. Later in life he became an artist. For the last 25 years of his life he was outspoken against drug use by athletes. Quote and the reason for this post:

" What sense do you have of yourself when you're cheating!"

Guys and Dolls

Here is something I found:

Taken across the board, in aggregate studies, there is not a particle of difference in overall intelligence between women and men. What they do with the intelligence, and how the approach problems can be dramatically different, but in balance, they equal out.

Women are better at diffused awareness, men at focused.
Women tend to use both sides of the brain, men one side or the other.
Women use more relative logic, men use more logic vs principle
Women take in more data, but filter poorly, and have a tendency to data flooding
Men filter data inputs, avoiding flooding, but often miss obvious aspects of there environment.

Overall, the different types of awareness are complimentary.