tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5956838.post281211931606737939..comments2023-11-22T01:14:54.298-08:00Comments on amor mundi: Succeeding BiglyDale Carricohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02811055279887722298noreply@blogger.comBlogger5125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5956838.post-20123997992493740232016-08-26T09:46:02.854-07:002016-08-26T09:46:02.854-07:00[A]s she stood outside the factory gates, the soul...[A]s she stood outside the factory gates, the soul irresistibly<br />compelled her to sing, and a wild song came from her lips, hymning the<br />marshlands. . . [E]veryone stopped and listened. . .<br /><br />So a change came into the life of Mary Jane.<br /><br />[F]inally it was arranged that she should take a leading part in the<br />Covent Garden Opera. . .<br /><br />[S]he was told that the English people would not listen to her as<br />Miss Rush, and was asked what more suitable name she would like to be<br />called by.<br /><br />'I would like to be called Terrible North Wind,' said Mary Jane,<br />'or Song of the Rushes.'<br /><br />When she was told that this was impossible and Signorina Maria Russiano<br />was suggested, she acquiesced at once. . .<br /><br />And Signorina Russiano sang.<br /><br />And into the song went all the longing of her soul. . .<br /><br />[I]t ended. And a great silence fell fog-like over all that house, breaking<br />in upon the end of a chatty conversation that Cecilia, Countess of Birmingham,<br />was enjoying with a friend.<br /><br />In the dead hush Signorina Russiano rushed from the stage; she appeared again<br />running among the audience, and dashed up to Lady Birmingham.<br /><br />'Take my soul,' she said; 'it is a beautiful soul. It can worship God, and<br />knows the meaning of music and can imagine Paradise. And if you go to the<br />marshlands with it you will see beautiful things; there is an old town<br />there built of lovely timbers, with ghosts in its streets.'<br /><br />Lady Birmingham stared. Everyone was standing up. 'See,' said Signorina Russiano,<br />'it is a beautiful soul.'<br /><br />And she clutched at her left breast a little above the heart, and there<br />was the soul shining in her hand, with the green and blue lights going round<br />and round and the purple flare in the midst.<br /><br />'Take it,' she said, 'and you will love all that is beautiful, and know<br />the four winds, each one by his name, and the songs of the birds at dawn.<br />I do not want it, because I am not free. Put it to your left breast a<br />little above the heart.' . . .<br /><br />[Lady Birmingham] half-closed her eyes, and said 'Unberufen'. Then<br />she put the soul to her left breast a little above the heart, and<br />hoped that the people would sit down and the singer go away.<br /><br />Instantly a heap of clothes collapsed before her. For a moment,<br />in the shadow among the seats, those who were born in the dusk hour<br />might have seen a little brown thing leaping free from the clothes,<br />then it sprang into the bright light of the hall, and became<br />invisible to any human eye. . .<br />====jimfhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04975754342950063440noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5956838.post-30403153269550667562016-08-26T09:45:35.455-07:002016-08-26T09:45:35.455-07:00> ". . .the ultimate luxury, an existence ...> ". . .the ultimate luxury, an existence unmolested by the<br />> rumbling of a soul."<br /><br /><br />http://www.sacred-texts.com/neu/dun/swos/swos04.htm<br />------------<br />"The Kith of the Elf Folk", from<br />_The Sword of Welleran and Other Stories_<br />by Lord Dunsany (1908)<br /><br />. . .<br /><br />The Wild Things are somewhat human in appearance, only all<br />brown of skin and barely two feet high. Their ears are pointed<br />like the squirrel's, only far larger, and they leap to prodigious<br />heights. They live all day under deep pools in the loneliest marshes,<br />but at night they come up and dance. Each Wild Thing has over<br />its head a marsh-light, which moves as the Wild Thing moves; they<br />have no souls, and cannot die, and are of the kith of the Elf-folk. . .<br /><br />Now, on the night that I tell of, a little Wild Thing had gone<br />drifting over the waste, till it came right up to the walls of<br />the cathedral. . . The sound of the organ roared over the marshes,<br />but the song and prayers of the people streamed up from the cathedral's<br />highest tower like thin gold chains, and reached to Paradise,<br />and up and down them went the angels from Paradise to the people,<br />and from the people to Paradise again.<br /><br />Then something akin to discontent troubled the Wild Thing for<br />the first time. . .<br /><br />. . .and the little Wild Thing longed to have a soul, and to go and<br />worship God. . .<br /><br />So the kith of the Elf-folk went abroad by night to make a soul for<br />the little Wild Thing. . .<br /><br />And they said to her: 'If you must have a soul and go and worship God,<br />and become a mortal and die, place this to your left breast a little<br />above the heart, and it will enter and you will become a human.<br />But if you take it you can never be rid of it to become immortal again<br />unless you pluck it out and give it to another; and we will not take it,<br />and most of the humans have a soul already. And if you cannot find<br />a human without a soul you will one day die, and your soul cannot go<br />to Paradise, because it was only made in the marshes.'. . .<br /><br />One day she decided that it was better to be a wild thing in the lovely<br />marshes, than to have a soul that cried for beautiful things and found<br />not one. From that day she determined to be rid of her soul, so she told<br />her story to one of the factory girls, and said to her:<br /><br />'The other girls are poorly clad and they do soulless work; surely some<br />of them have no souls and would take mine.'<br /><br />But the factory girl said to her: 'All the poor have souls. It is all they have.'<br /><br />Then Mary Jane watched the rich whenever she saw them, and vainly sought<br />for some one without a soul. . .<br />jimfhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04975754342950063440noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5956838.post-81322844367347958482016-08-26T09:40:00.638-07:002016-08-26T09:40:00.638-07:00Donald Trump needs help from The Kith of the Elf F...Donald Trump needs help from The Kith of the Elf Folk<br /><br />In today's NY Times:<br /><br />http://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/26/books/in-books-on-donald-trump-consistent-portraits-of-a-high-decibel-narcissist.html<br />------------<br />In Books on Donald Trump, Consistent Portraits of a High-Decibel Narcissist<br />By MICHIKO KAKUTANI<br />AUG. 25, 2016<br /><br />. . .<br /><br />The portrait of Mr. Trump that emerges from these books, old or new,<br />serious or satirical, is remarkably consistent: a high-decibel narcissist,<br />almost comically self-obsessed; a “hyperbole addict who prevaricates<br />for fun and profit,” as Mr. [Mark] Singer [author of _Trump and Me_]<br />wrote in The New Yorker in 1997.<br /><br />Mr. Singer also describes Mr. Trump as an “insatiable publicity hound<br />who courts the press on a daily basis and, when he doesn’t like what<br />he reads, attacks the messengers as ‘human garbage,’” “a fellow both<br />slippery and naïve, artfully calculating and recklessly heedless of<br />consequences.”<br /><br />At the same time, Mr. Singer and other writers discern an emptiness<br />underneath the gold-plated armor. In “Trump and Me,” Mr. Singer<br />describes his subject as a man “who had aspired to and achieved the<br />ultimate luxury, an existence unmolested by the rumbling of a soul.” . . .<br />====jimfhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04975754342950063440noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5956838.post-90232601356135043022016-08-23T15:47:33.454-07:002016-08-23T15:47:33.454-07:00> I presume they're **all** Trump supporter...> I presume they're **all** Trump supporters, or at least<br />> Trump sympathizers.<br /><br />Which makes it all the more ironic that while "Sargon" is warning<br />his libertechbrotarian pals that increasing income inequality might<br />eventually enable a left-wing revolutionary demagogue to amass an angry mob<br />of supporters in this country, it is in fact Trump who is<br />currently feeding off some of the same resentments<br />(though the right-wing underclass has been well-trained by the<br />Republican party and their church pastors to focus their resentment<br />on immigrants, "welfare queens", atheists, homosexuals, and so on).<br /><br />http://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/23/opinion/my-daughter-the-pole.html<br />---------------------<br />My Daughter the Pole<br />Roger Cohen<br />AUG. 22, 2016<br /><br />. . .<br /><br /><br />The world was full of fear and anger in the 1930s, enough to<br />propel a hatemonger to power in Germany. It is full of fear<br />and anger again today, enough to propel Britain out of the<br />European Union and a man as flawed as Donald Trump to the<br />brink of the American presidency.<br /><br />The troubled psyche requires a scapegoat. For Hitler, it was<br />the Jews, among others. Today scapegoats are sought everywhere<br />for the widespread feeling that something is amiss: that jobs<br />are being lost; that precariousness has replaced security;<br />that incomes are stagnant or falling; that politicians have<br />been bought; that the bankers behind the 2008 meltdown got<br />off unscathed; that immigrants are free riders; that inequality<br />is out of control; that tax systems are skewed; that terrorists<br />are everywhere.<br /><br />These scapegoats, on either side of the Atlantic, include Syrian<br />refugees, African migrants, Polish workers in Britain, Mexicans,<br />Muslims and, now that it’s open season for hatred, just about<br />anyone deemed “foreign.”<br /><br />There is not much new under the sun. As Rudyard Kipling<br />observed: “All good people agree, / And all good people say,<br />/ All nice people, like Us, are We / And everyone else is They.”. . .<br />====jimfhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04975754342950063440noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5956838.post-28745456020696315852016-08-23T11:27:45.891-07:002016-08-23T11:27:45.891-07:00Bigly Wigly, Bugly Ugly.
So there's this YouT...Bigly Wigly, Bugly Ugly.<br /><br />So there's this YouTube channel called "Computing Forever" that I've<br />occasionally browsed:<br />https://www.youtube.com/user/LACK78/videos .<br /><br />The guy who runs it (Dave Cullen) is an early-middle-aged ginger with a charming<br />Irish accent:<br />https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images/604336102112116736/wAdWmm6T.jpg<br />http://computingforever.com/ .<br /><br />Apart from the computer reviews, he spends a lot of time on<br />libertechbrotarian social commentary -- lamenting the Social Justice<br />Warriors, the Regressive Left, Feminism, Hillary Clinton, the<br />censorship of Milo Yiannopoulos, etc., etc.<br /><br />So there was this recent video. . .<br /><br />https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3YcR2qVTVMM<br />------------<br />Feminists Celebrate Boy's Academic Failures<br />Computing Forever<br />Streamed live on Aug 21, 2016<br />====<br /><br />. . .that was a conversation among Mr. Cullen, an Australian who calls<br />himself "Independent Man" on YouTube<br />( https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCjbgKUcTjpxmuW-8U0LR80Q/videos ) and<br />(starting at 52:00/3:29:35) another (in)famous YouTube denizen<br />who calls himself "Sargon of Akkad"<br />( https://www.youtube.com/user/SargonofAkkad100/videos )<br /><br />The first approximately hour and a half of this discussion is<br />the usual stuff about which all three are in agreement (bashing<br />the silliness of feminist demands to control speech, and so<br />on), but where things get interesting is at 1:26:35/3:29:35, where<br />"Sargon of Akkad" tries to point out the danger of increasing income inequality<br />in the industrialized world. He claims that, if left unchecked, this<br />contrast between ultra-rich CEOs and ultra-poor workers may<br />well result in another French or Russian revolution, to<br />the regret of everyone. He claims that "nobody's labor is worth<br />a billion dollars" and that the unfettered capitalism that makes<br />billionaires possible **must** be reined in by government regulation,<br />tax reforms, etc. The other two are **having none of it**!<br />"You're invoking 'the politics of envy'!" protests Cullen.<br />To which Mr. Sargon replies something along the lines of "You're<br />providing a perfect example of how it's impossible to have a<br />nuanced discussion of this dire matter by reaching for the usual<br />political slogans that people trot out instead of actually<br />thinking about the issues." And so it goes. Cullen and "Independent"<br />are a bit mollified when Sargon reassures them that he's not<br />proposing **abolishing** capitalism, just **reforming** it,<br />but then they (or at least Cullen) is un-mollified a minute later<br />and claims that making it impossible for people to become<br />billionaries would "stifle all innovation". Billionaires have<br />**earned** their billions, sez Cullen. Sargon isn't so sure.<br /><br />It's kind of entertaining. (I presume they're **all** Trump supporters,<br />or at least Trump sympathizers.) ;->jimfhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04975754342950063440noreply@blogger.com