Egregious Reader

I have been on a Chesterton kick lately after I found Eugenics and other Evils in my podcast app as a free audiobook. And then I finally got from the library Schumacher's Small is Beautiful: Economics as if People Mattered . I am only no chapter two, but lets start there. He quotes the famous Lord Keynes. Schumacher tells us that in 1930, during a time of world-wide economic depression he felt moved to speculate on the "economic possibilities for our grandchildren" and "concluded that the day may not be far off when everybody would be rich." I see us free, therefore, to return to some of the most sure and certain principles of religion and traditional virtue – that avarice is a vice, that the exaction of usury is a misdemeanour, and the love of money is detestable, that those walk most truly in the paths of virtue and sane wisdom who take least thought for the morrow. We shall once more value ends above means and prefer the good to the useful.  But he con...

Picture from D'Aulaires' Book of Norse Myths Desert dust. Or Eden mud. Or, in the forests of Finland, ash and alder become man and woman. But this is the primordial beginnings. Today there is a curly-headed, two foot, quick, agile baby boy who is all of two and one half in his mis-matched pajamas. He easily slams his fists in rhythms on the table, one, then the other, feeling his power, expressing his dominance over the five year old who has to watch the baby show on the computer. Next he balances his tummy on the edge of the table so he can lean within 4 inches of the screen, its white glow lighting up his little face. When he does this the hand-me-down jammy shirt is too short and shows his lower back. What a wonder life is. All life. Human life.

This play was incredible. It definitely opened up some ideas of what is going on today as it was questioning the ideas of majority and democracy vs. truth. It was adapted by Miller during or soon after the McCarthy era, where Miller was in some danger. Early on in the play, Dr. Stockmann (who is telling the town that the springs which will be a tourist boon of the town were built too low and are poisoned from the tannery) niavely says; what can go wrong, we have the liberal press and the majority on our side. But the mayor is fairly handy at converting the liberal media (who pretend radical, but are really just opportunists) and does the same with the majority. The is much in the book dealing with logic of "realistic" vs. the truth .... in this case scientific proof. At one point, facing a mob, Dr. Stockmann said this discovery of the poison springs has actually led him to a far greater discovery: "I revolt against the age-old lie that the majority is always right! —...

I was reading an interesting article on slate.com about the baby boomer generation and was reminded of Trump's comments last year about John McCain not being a war hero .  Its so ugly. Here is Trump in his bluster - “He’s not a war hero,” Trump said. Sarcastically, Trump quipped, “He’s a war hero because he was captured.” Then, he added, “I like people that weren’t captured.” He also tweeted that John McCain "should be defeated in the primaries. Graduated last in his class at Annapolis--dummy!" Ok, so who is Donald Trump for saying all these things about John McCain. Where was The Donald during Vietnam when McCain was a POW. The topic is covered in both articles. The recent one from Slate and the last year one from the Washington Post. I will quote the Slate one because it gives a little more detail: Donald Trump’s selective service file reads as follows: Between 1964 and 1966, as American troop commitment in Vietnam escalated and the military draft began in...