More Than Political Correct Culture Problem

Daniel Henninger goes beyond criticizing the political correct culture that led to Hasan not being dishonorably discharged and thus preventing the terrorism he perpetrated. I don't think any of Henninger's suggestions will be enacted, which is annoying but not surprising.

Look Who's Back!

Caryn is back writing! I love the post about the magic of automatic daily rituals.

9:15 am. Steps from my front door, I push the button to call the elevator. I think to put on my sunglasses. I reach into my purse, and there they are.

Magic.

I don’t ever remember putting the sunglasses back into my bag. I obviously do it at some point, but I couldn’t tell you when. But every morning, I can count on the sunglasses being in my bag.

Political Correct Cultural

Ace's touches on the destructive policies that exist and perpetuated by our own government of being overly sensitive to certain groups. Writing about the Fort Hood atrocity and the investigation on why Hasan wasn't removed before he could commit the atrocity.

This investigation will go nowhere, because no one will ever admit they refrained from acting out of fear they would be punished and their careers terminated for doing so. In other words, the government has created a perfectly self-sustaining system of willful ignorance: They will cashier people who lodge complaints about people about to "Go Muslim," but, on the other hand, those people, having failed to take the necessary steps to protect human life, in order to protect their careers, will never have the guts to admit they did so, and will blame their inaction on other factors.

Which is just what the government wants: It wants these things swept under the carpet and deliberately overlooked, and it furthermore wants its very policy of sweeping these things under the carpet and deliberately overlooking them themselves to be swept under the carpet and deliberately overlooked.

That's the way it perpetuates this scandalous indifference to security and human life: It has created such a perverse system of rewards and penalties that no one can publicly admit to being so monstrous and callous as to act according to that system of rewards and penalties.

The system will remain in place, because no one dares admit the very existence of The System at all. The System requires denial of The System. In fact, that's rule one of The System.

And so we see here, everyone who could have acted to stop Hasan's murderous rampage quickly ascribes their behavior to any other motive -- well, we just need mental health professionals in the Army; even -- dare I say especially? -- mental health professionals who are themselves floridly schizophrenic lunatics, because hey, personal experience and all -- rather than admitting to following the covert, cowardly policy the government actually favors and enforces. Secretly.

Read the whole thing as they say.

Autumn

Autumn, originally uploaded by approachingchaos.

This photo was taken back in September. Back when birds just started migrating South. The gym I went to is right next to a beautiful old cemetery (in fact most of the Kennedy clan is buried there). Light was magnificent, dark and moody, mixed with light from the setting sun. And then there were the birds, chirping and swooping all around. So full of life. It was incredible. I'm glad I got to document a tiny fraction of that magic. Favorite shot of the whole day.

P.S. Damn I wish I had a fancy camera. This photo would be bijillion times better.

A Good Thing To Remember

Jerry: Oh, you don’t understand, Osgood! … I’m a man.
Osgood: Well, nobody’s perfect.

This is one of my favorite lines/scenes of all times. I remember watching this movie with my parents and the big reaction that line got. Russians are big on taking quotes from movies, books, songs, even poetry, and using it in daily conversations. The sayings can come from anywhere - my parents loved to tell me about where this or that expression comes from. I'm horrible at this, if you ever heard me quote ANYTHING, you know how bad I am at it. And even though I studied film, I'm terrible at the movie quote game. Horrible. So I love this quote because a) I can quote it (correctly) b)my parents used to quote it c) it's so universal, true, and hilarious

Gayest. Photo. Ever.

I say that lovingly, the YMCA Hollywood shirt and the cut off jeans just scream it. On another note I realized that in a certain light Leonard Cohen tends to resemble Bob Dylan and Serge Gainsbourg. #Jewy

Your Daily Moment of WTF

glumbert - Hold your feet! Korean baseball gets strange

Via Allah's twitter

Update:

This is not a real professional baseball game.

There is a fund-raising baseball game organized by actors, musicians, television stars and other public figures annually and they were trying to entertain the crowd.

The game they are playing can be roughly translated into "chicken fight" which is a traditional Korean game where the players hold one of their leg up in the air and try to knock each other out.

I hope that cleared some confusions around here. By the way, baseball in South Korea is extremely popular. Aside from US and Japan, I am pretty sure South Korea has one of the largest baseball fan base in the world.

Individual Vs. The State

I recently re-watched one of my favorite films, Blue by Krystof Kieslowski. The film focuses on the concept of liberty (it's part of a trilogy (Blue, White, and Red - colors of the French flag and each film correspondents thematically with the three values represented by the colors - liberty, equality, and fraternity) however, like all Kieslowski's (later) films, it's not the political that Kieslowski focused on but the personal.

The film follows Julie and questions if a person can be truly free of everyone and everything? At the start of the film, Julie loses her only daughter and her composer husband. She decides to completely cut her self off from her old world and all people, can she live a life of complete isolation? Her liberty from people is what the film tries to explore and does so beautifully.

When I was watching the commentary by Anne Insdorf, a colleague and scholar of Kieslowski's, she noted how keenly aware he was of the political situation (in fact the movie itself can serve as a metaphor for the Europeans unification efforts), since in his early career he produced documentaries in Communist Poland, but that after the fall of Communism he chose to make movies about the individual, staying away from overt political messages. This seemed to slightly surprise Insdorf, why would someone who was interested and invested in the politics choose to explore the individual over and over again, but it made perfect sense to me.

When the political intrudes on every part of your life like the Communist regime Kieslowski lived under, the last thing you want to show, over and over again, is the political generalities. Kieslowski knew the personal was much more richer way to connect to people and explore what was really important over the political dogmatism that some people think is the way to reveal the truth. The individual will always be more compelling and more truer than the State.

The Way My Boss Sees Himself

[Overhearing a conference call.]

My co-worker: Do you think he (our boss) gets tired of saying the same thing over and over again?

Me: No, he sees himself as bringing the truth to the masses.

My co-worker: Kind of like Jesus? Spreading the gospel?

Me: Something like that.

Oh the heft....

I don't know this poem by heart, but some days parts of the poem pop into my head because they are so dead on. Emily Dickinson was good at what she did. I've been in a bit of a melodramatic mood lately or maybe all my life. Hard to tell.

Sometimes I think I like being depressed, there is a certain comfort and familiarity to the feeling. Sometimes I think I should give myself a big kick in the rear for even indulging it. Life has a tendency to feel oppressive, it's beautiful yet heavy at the same time.


There's a certain Slant of light,
Winter Afternoons—
That oppresses, like the Heft
Of Cathedral Tunes—

Heavenly Hurt, it gives us—
We can find no scar,
But internal difference,
Where the Meanings, are—

None may teach it—Any—
'Tis the Seal Despair—
An imperial affliction
Sent us of the Air—

When it comes, the Landscape listens—
Shadows—hold their breath—
When it goes, 'tis like the Distance
On the look of Death—

Song of the Day

The Kills were at Coachella this spring, but we didn't get to see them because I think they were on at the same time as The Cure, which was one of our "must see bands." I've been curious about them for a while. Besides constantly confusing their name with The Killersthe only thing I knew about them is that one of the members dates Kate Moss and the other (a woman) covers her face when she plays shows.

I found this song, "Black Balloon," randomly on tumblr and loved it. It has that spacey, out of this world feel to it. I didnt' actually watch the whole video, but the bits I saw seem kind of bloody. So um, enjoy the song, I can't vouch for the video part though.

Don't Call It A Religion

Except you're dog will die and you should feel guilty for using a car and living in your warm house.

IF you don't reduce your carbon footprint, then puppies will drown and bunny rabbits will die. And a terrifying, jagged-toothed monster with crazy hooked hands will descend from the clouds to eat you up.

Believe it or not, that is the message being delivered by the British government to children, in a L6 million ($10.7m) advertising campaign designed to scare the next generation witless about the alleged horrors of global warming.

Taking environmentalist propaganda to a new low, the TV ad shows a father reading a nightmarish bedtime story to his perturbed-looking young daughter.

He tells her of a land where the "weather is very, very strange". There are "awful heatwaves" and "terrible storms and floods". A cartoon bunny is shown crying as it starves on the dried, cracked earth, while elsewhere a puppy drowns in floodwaters.

Above it all, a sooty, blackened monster - CO2 made hideous flesh - surveys the horrors with a grotesque grin on its face.

And just in case the little girl, and the millions of children that the TV ad is aimed at, thinks this is merely a twisted fairytale, her father makes clear that it is reality.

It is the "horrible consequence", he says, of human beings using too much CO2, much of which comes from "everyday things like keeping houses warm and driving cars".

In short? Children who live in warm houses and who get lifts to school or football practice should feel guilty, because their evil antics are causing dogs to die and cute rabbits to go hungry.

Not surprisingly, the ad has caused a storm. Nearly 400 people have complained to Britain's Advertising Standards Authority. Some are disturbed by the ad's scientific illiteracy (how one gets from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's relatively sober reports about changing weather patterns to a cartoon dog drowning in a flooded city is anybody's guess). Others have slammed the government for knowingly and deliberately - and with taxypayers' money - scaring kids.

Total rational and scientific response to the situation. But it's evil religion like Christianity and Judaism that is hateful and fear inspiring. Good grief.

H To The Izzo

It seems that's the real name of the song. I blame the stupid Eminem/Jay-Z mashup commercials for getting the song stuck in my head.



Happy Friday to all. I'm covering for two coworkers who are "sick" today. Fun!

Sadness Without Being Sad

I've mentioned a few times on the blog that my father passed away when I was a teenager. It's something that I rarely talk about, since I find that it embarrasses people. So while I'm the type of person who is comfortable with over sharing, sex trumps death, any day of the week, as a topic people prefer to talk about. So I try not to mention it too much. Plus over sharing on this topic leads to pity looks and I don't take them so well.

Tomorrow is the eleventh anniversary of his death. Actually, he died between October 28 & 29, in the middle of the night. This year, for some reason (I have my theories), his absence has felt heavier and more real than I can remember. He was a great man, a person I wish the new members of my family had the chance to meet and love.

I've been extremely unhappy recently, but all of sudden about a two weeks ago, the sadness started to lift. For the first time, in a long time, I have felt the sadness without being sad. I don't know if that makes sense to others, but incredibly clear in my head. It has made an incredible difference - learning to acknowledge the sadness without letting it drag me down. I'm pretty sure it's life changing, in fact I know it is.

So tomorrow I'll be with people who I love, who have loved my father, and who my father loved. A little part of him will be with us, the sadness will be there but so will the joy that came from my Father's life. I'm looking forward to tomorrow, a day when talking about him is not only appropriate but is needed & expected.

Freakoonomics Freak Out

A fantastic piece by Bret Stephens about the SuperFreakonomics Freakout over Global Warming heresy aka the authors' suggestion that global warming can be solved in less radical, more human happy ways:

But when it comes to the religion of global warming—the First Commandment of which is Thou Shalt Not Call It A Religion—Messrs. Levitt and Dubner are grievous sinners. They point out that belching, flatulent cows are adding more greenhouse gases to the atmosphere than all SUVs combined. They note that sea levels will probably not rise much more than 18 inches by 2100, "less than the twice-daily tidal variation in most coastal locations." They observe that "not only is carbon plainly not poisonous, but changes in carbon-dioxide levels don't necessarily mirror human activity." They quote Mr. Myhrvold as saying that Mr. Gore's doomsday scenarios "don't have any basis in physical reality in any reasonable time frame."

More subversively, they suggest that climatologists, like everyone else, respond to incentives in a way that shapes their conclusions. "The economic reality of research funding, rather than a disinterested and uncoordinated scientific consensus, leads the [climate] models to approximately match one another." In other words, the herd-of-independent-minds phenomenon happens to scientists too and isn't the sole province of painters, politicians and news anchors.

But perhaps their biggest sin, which is also the central point of the chapter, is pointing out that seemingly insurmountable problems often have cheap and simple solutions. Hence world hunger was largely conquered not by a massive effort at population control, but by the development of new and sturdier strains of wheat and rice. Hence infection and mortality rates in hospitals declined dramatically as doctors began to appreciate the need to wash their hands.

Hence, too, it may well be that global warming is best tackled with a variety of cheap fixes, if not by pumping SO2 into the stratosphere then perhaps by seeding more clouds over the ocean. Alternatively, as "SuperFreakonomics" suggests, we might be better off doing nothing until the state of technology can catch up to the scope of the problem.

Why Is This The Matter of the State

This is why I love the separation of church & state in America. Why does the Supreme Court in Britain get to decide how Jews view themselves? This is totally completely absurd, if a school, like King David, who have a requirement that a child should be born to a Jewish mother in order to qualify to attend there, then they should be allowed to keep that standard. It might be "racist" but all religions are prejudice, if they weren't we wouldn't have religion.

Until now, that didn't matter because, in common with other schools under the religious authority of the Chief Rabbi, they've taken Jewish children as defined by Orthodox Jewish law - the children of Jewish mothers. No test of observance or belief was set.

"Judaism differs fundamentally from all other faiths," says Yitzchak Schochet, rabbi of an Orthodox congregration in London. "Regardless of one's observance level, if one is born a Jew it doesn't matter if they keep absolutely nothing.

Just because someone feels Jewish and even acts Jewish, doesn't make them Jewish. If they want to be accepted then convert to Judaism!

Update: I've corrected the link (thanks Peter!). I meant to mention how horrible the comment section of the post is. Like this gem:

Some of us (me included) would say that a child has no religion. There is no such thing as a Christian or Jewish or Muslim child, only a child of Christian or Jewish or Muslim parents. Where would this leave faith schools? Nowhere, I'd be happy to see them all turned over to state control and absorbed into the rest of the school structure tomorrow, their doors open to all children no matter what faith their parents were.
Ponder, London

I liked the following one:

The fact that faith-based schools (especially Church of England schools) are oversubscribed is itself interesting: even non-practising parents see benefit in a faith-based organisation. Why? Because a basis of faith - whatever faith - entails a value set, a discipline and a high standard that is otherwise lacking in our society. And there is always the hope that a child attending such a school might make up his or her own mind to become a practising member of that faith - and that would make the world a better place.
Jane Evans, Los Angeles, USA (British expatriate)

What I Learned This Weekend

Everyone and their mother has a soft spot for Journey. Also this video is awesome and hilarious:

The Pain of Forgetting

Lately I've been thinking a lot about death and the pain that comes when someone close has died. The pain is multifaceted and changes over time, or at least it does for me. In the beginning, when the death just occurs and the pain is still raw you usually have people there by your side, caring, concerned, trying to be helpful. Offering such things as the seven steps of loss pamphlet, as though that guide of emotions somehow is supposed ease what your feeling by letting you know others experience the same exact pain. This usually left me annoyed, since I wanted my pain to be SPECIAL and UNIQUE for the person who had died. After a certain time the phone calls and emails stop, the concern in their voices fade and you are expected to go on as though nothing had changed. The time for grief is over, living your life is the new order of the day.

It's true that as time goes by the pain becomes duller, some days you don't even think of the person or how your life would have been different that very moment had they been alive.Then there are days where you feel their absence so sharply it's hard to breath, the pain of not having them there is crippling.

Then there's the pain of knowing you are forgetting the person. The weight of their hand on your face, the sounds of their voice, the way their face looked when they were annoyed, happy, or bored. After a while all those memories start turning into dust, and what you have left is caricature of the person you loved so dearly. It's sick really, I want to remember and yet one by one the slip away, there's no magical way (a la Harry Potter) to store the most precious memories. So on top of the pain of missing someone you will never see again, you have the pain of losing the memories that mean so much to you. It's devastating and feels like, on some level, another loss.

John Lennon with Panda

IMG_3752, originally uploaded by jakedobkin.

I love this street art.

Sometimes It Truly Is

IMG_3754, originally uploaded by jakedobkin.

I try to remember that once in a while. The optimist that I am.

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