Sleep

I see the rise and fall
Of your chest,
The swell
Of your breast,
And all
Is well.

Balls In The Air

Here's a video of Chris Bliss juggling balls with background music from the B side of the Beatles' Abbey Road album. With the music on, it's eerily like dance. Thanks to Craig for the link.

I struggle
To juggle
At all.

Who knew there was a way
For balls to do ballet?

Ballet Night

Had phenomenal seats for ABT's Le Corsaire. Angel Corella was awesome as the male slave.

The women went "Woohoo!"
When Angel flew in view.

Horowitz vs. Kirstein

We drove over to St. Xav's to hear David Horowitz and Professor Peter N. Kirstein debate "The Iraq War: In The Classroom And Beyond".

Horowitz is quite a character. He was once an anti-Vietnam-war leftist, but is now a pro-Iraq-war rightist.

Kirstein is a leftist historian with an emphatic speaking style and lots of facts at his fingertips.

There was a big security contingent of guys who looked like off-duty cops. Horowitz got heckled to some extent, especially as the event was winding down. But it never truly got out of hand. Unfortunately, some of the hecklers were sitting right behind us, which made it kind of hard to hear Horowitz talk sometimes.

The funniest moment, to me, was when Horowitz started complaining that Islam had not gone through a Reformation. Then he caught himself, and reflected out loud that maybe he shouldn't make positive mention of the Reformation at a Catholic University. Then he said something like, "Well, even the Catholic Church has come a long way. They're not like they were during the Inquisition."

His best moment, I thought, was when he digressed to talk about all the millions of deaths under communism, in peace-time, in engineered famines. For a man who wrote books as a Marxist, this can't be an easy thing to talk about.

It's a good thing he wasn't a diplomat.
I think his career would have fallen flat.
His star has shone far brighter
As a trouble-making writer.

Talaq

Under Islamic family law, a man can divorce his wife just by telling her "I divorce you" three times.

Even though India is a predominantly Hindu country, Muslims are expected, by law, to live by Islamic rules. It's a legally encoded form of multiculturalism.

This brings us to the plight of a Muslim husband in India, who accidentally divorced his wife while talking in his sleep!

Clearly this is a case of clerics gone wild. But now he can't just marry her again. He has to wait a while, or let someone else marry and divorce her first.

I hope in the future he keeps
His mouth shut when he sleeps.

10G for Me & Thee

Charles Murray has "A Plan To Reduce The Welfare State." For some reason, this plan involves giving every American exactly ten thousand dollars a year. No more, no less. Of course, we will tax ourselves to give ourselves this money.

I am put in mind of a quote attributed to Isabel Paterson: "If you hear some bad collectivistic notions, chances are that they came from liberals. But if you hear or read something outrageously, god-awfully collectivistic, you may be sure that the author is a conservative."

As a rule, our current welfare state is conceived as a patchwork of safety nets and forced-insurance plans. It is not currently conceived as society owing you a living. In my view, this is its saving grace.

Putting aside the collectivist grounds,
Don't you think 10,000 sounds
Suspiciously round?

This number came from where?
Out of thin air?

I have a plan to make it rounder yet.
Zero is all that anyone will get.

Taboo

The New Individualist came in the mail. The one whose cover features that Danish cartoon with the Prophet wearing a bomb for a turban.

The issue broke another taboo, too. It contained a favorable discussion of romance novels in an Objectivist publication. The title of the article is "Individual Meets Pulp Fiction."

The author, Lou Villadsen, makes the very true point that successful businessmen are often the heroes of romance novels. She's obviously a fan herself and writes about the genre with enthusiasm. She doesn't try to make a strong aesthetic argument for romance novels, but makes a case for the values embodied in these books.

A lot of times the plot line goes like this:

When she meets a guy who embodies success
And she feels all tingly under her dress,
You know where the story's headed.
They're going to end up wedded
And thoroughly embedded.

The Great Debate

I spent the morning at the campus of my alma mater. This weekend it's the site of a big debate tournament for the Chicago public high schools. I was there to support gregorysparr in his debating efforts. I only got to watch him for one session, but I thought he won it, hands down.

At one point, while he was preparing for the next step in the debate, I looked over at him and saw him moving his fingers in a rhythmic way, as if counting time for music. It puzzled me, but it's something I sometimes do when I'm writing a poem. Sure enough, his closing speech was a rhymed poem! This delighted the judge. Gregory said most judges like it when you close with a poem, but that a few judges don't care for it.

Perhaps if you could ask
The judges first:
Please don't take me to task
For being well-versed.

Oppression

These people plan to kill a man
For converting to Christianity.
I thought we invaded Afghanistan
To get RID of religious insanity.

Oldest Tortoise Dies

This critter was a British officer's pet in the 18th Century. You know, like around the 1750s.

Farewell, Mr. Tortoise!
Human lives are not the shortest,
But avoiding rigor mortis
For 250 years,
Is a trick for deserving cheers.

Women's History Month

Stephen Hicks is going to talk about Ayn Rand as part of Rockford College's Women's History Month lecture series. On April 3rd.

She rarely gets in "Women's" stuff,
So I'm glad that she's included.
Something about her point of view
Usually gets her booted.

The Prying Eyes of Texas

Texas is using undercover agents to ferret out intoxicated people.

In bars.

No surprise, they found some. And arrested them.

I know you shouldn't be drunk
When you're driving a car.

But who'd have thunk
You couldn't get drunk in a bar?

Sunset

Streaks of pink and purple in the sky
Make me think of blue- and raspberry pie.
Although it wasn't on my list of wishes,
It's great to taste a sunset turned delicious.
Soon the sun will sink to something duller,
So seize the instant - gobble up the color!

Sprung

Spring sneaked in.
Just peeked around the corner,
And slid by without warning.

The increase in daylight
Was easy to sight,
But when will the cold wind
Cease against my skin?

An English Major's Lament

Why are there so many spammers
Lacking the basics of grammar?
Did they skip their studies
To play with their buddies?
Is that why they now work as scammers?

The Philosopher's Stone and The Klein Bottle

Tom Stone, owner of the valuable EpistemeLinks site has started up a new blog, called Philosopher Stone, which is a cute pun on his name and one of his big interests.

The original Philosopher's Stone was a much sought-after dream-stuff of Alchemy. It was a mysterious substance that would let you turn tin, and other cheap metals, into gold.

But if you kept making gold and didn't stop
Its market price would drop.

I also just learned that Shawn Klein has a blog up, which he just calls Philosophy Blog.

I began thinking about funny punny names Shawn could use for a blog. Maybe something to do with Klein Bottles? But do people even know what they are?

There's an anonymous limerick that explains:

A mathematician named Klein
Thought the Möbius band was divine.
Said he: "If you glue
The edges of two,
You'll get a weird bottle like mine."

The Most Distressful Country

Kirinqueen and Madbard both alluded to this traditional song:

I met with Napper Tandy and he took me by the hand,
And he said, "How's poor old Ireland, an' how does she stand?"
She's the most distressful country that ever yet was seen,
For they're hanging' men and women for the wearin' o' the green.

Today, Ireland is booming economically, and even the troubles in the north seemed to have abated a bit.

It's the most amazing miracle that ever yet was seen.
That most distressful country now is rolling in the green!

Alley Patrol

My dogs just treed a possum.
They thought that was awesome.

Wrong Number

Did you ever make an accidental cell phone call?
Did it set you up for a fall?
Was it to 9-1-1?
Was it when you were planning a robbery with your son?
Well, now that's been done!

Educational Reading

"The literary world had revolted against the yoke of coming capitalism - its money-lenders, its bank directors, and its railway magnates... The middle class had the power, and held its coal and iron well in hand, but the satirists and idealists seized the press..."

That's from The Education Of Henry Adams, which we did for book club this month. It was long stretches of yawn interrupted by bursts of insight.

Adams had been a professor of medieval history at Harvard, and in some ways his heart was still in the medieval world. On the other hand, he had a lively inquiring mind, and he saw that technology was transforming the world in the latter half of the nineteenth century.

In an often-anthologized chapter of the book, "The Virgin And The Dynamo," he argues that devotion to Mary was the power behind medieval civilization, but that the big electrical generator is the power behind modern civilization.

The Virgin's power controlled
Europe in days of old.
But now the Dynamo
Makes the whole world go.