Miranda Frum in defense of classical studies against that intellectual giant, Rush Limbaugh, published in the Huffington Post.
Nice Try, Rick
Art and Beauty
I just wanted to draw attention to this interview in order to highlight this quote:
Artists are not necessarily intellectuals. Intellectuals produce ideas. Artists produce beauty.
Obviously, I am taking this out of context, but even within the context, it doesn’t address the final sentence.
Do artists necessarily create beauty? Is there no great and compelling art which is not beautiful? Political art, art that comments on civilization’s failings. Are they then not the work of artists, at all, but of intellectuals trading in ideas disguised as art?
I don’t have the answer, but I firmly believe that if you limit the function of art to creating beauty, you are putting very unsettling limits upon it, indeed.
Why Bill Young Won’t Be Beat This Election Cycle
The answer is simple: money.
Yes, Young has let his fundraising slip. The truth is, he has been living off his cash on hand (COH) for several cycles and it has finally reached the point where you can safely say that it’s pretty darn low. Less than two hundred thousand dollars, in fact.
But his last opponent, Charlie Justice, raised less than three hundred thousand, if I recall (I’m too lazy to look it up, but if I’m wrong, it’s not by much). And Young is more than capable of bringing in $100K a quarter without getting out of bed, simply by having someone mail donation envelopes to lobbyists, PACs, and defense contractors.
The way to beat him is money. I would say at least $1 million, with most of that being put on television and a serious investment in a ground game, with a considerable team of organizers in the field.
And do you have a candidate in mind who can raise that?
Didn’t think so.
Ken Welch is broadly popular, but he hasn’t shown the ability nor the desire to raise that kind of money. Down the road, Kriseman could become that, but he’s not nearly there yet.
Yes, Democrats should run someone – not credible, since I’ve just spent this post explaining that there really isn’t a credible candidate (credible in the sense of having a half decent at winning), but someone with a good profile who won’t embarrass anyone – but folks need to get away from focusing on guys like Bill Young and start focusing on winning city council and mayoral races and then on state legislative and countywide races.
Then, once a sizeable number of Democrats have clout at the county level, let’s talk about Young. Of course, he’ll probably have retired by then (and don’t think that Republicans Karen Seel and Frank Hibbard aren’t licking their chops at that eventuality).
I should add that if you live in St Pete or Largo, you will have a chance to vote for some up and coming Democrats in municipal elections. St Peter City Councilman Steve Kornell is great candidate, great member of the city council, and just a good guy to boot and I’ve heard great things about another St Pete candidate, Charlie Gerdes, and about Largo City Commission candidate, Michael Smith.
Bike Trails
Why am I not shocked to hear that Republicans are trying to eliminate funding for bike trails?
There’s a beautiful right by where I grew up in Florida, called the Pinellas Trail.
But maybe those GOP’ers are right. After all, surely Americans, especially are children, are currently spending too much time out doors and getting too much exercise. Because, really, Americans are in too good of a shape. We should spend less time on bike trails and more time on our couches.
Is John Rawls Behind The Occupy Movement?
No, not really.
But this article does posit him as a guide for how the movement might push America towards building a more just society.
Connie Mack Running For Senate
He’s actually in.
This probably hurts LeMieux and McCallister the most. LeMieux because he will no longer have the “moderate” tag to himself. McCallister because he was never really doing well because people liked him, but just because they weren’t sold on Hasner and LeMieux – and now Mack will be the new shiny object for folks to look at.
The question now becomes whether Mack will be able to pull in the DC money that was flowing more to LeMieux and how much will state based interests put into independent expenditures on Hasner’s behalf (the corollary being whether Mack can raise enough to deal with those IEs).
Also, how much heat will he get for being married to a California congresswoman? It makes for a fine argument that he’s not really as deeply attached to Florida as he ought to be – presumably he’s spending not insignificant time in her Palm Spring district, as well spending a lot of time keeping house together in Washington. I don’t pretend to know the answers, but someone’s going to make hay out of this.
In 2014, This Man Will Be The Most Powerful Person In Florida
Chris Dorworth will become the Florida House Speaker in 2014.
As you can see here, he appears to be a combination of the kind of stupidity that gives heft to the argument against evolution (‘If evolution were a fact,’ said the philosopher of intelligent design, ‘shouldn’t Chris Dorworth have been killed and eaten by a hedgehog by now?’) and the sickly sweet smell of semi-legal corruption.
Ezra Pound: Canto LXII
This Canto returns to the western world. Specifically, Revolutionary America.
It begins as if by a (presumably) pro-British governor, but the ‘narrator’ seems to change. This can only be determined by subject matter as the voice does not change much (though it does get colloquial in its spelling in parts).
The subject matters moves to discussions of attempting to secure funding and support for the Revolution from various European powers, including the French and also Dutch banking houses. Surprisingly, he shows little venom towards those Amsterdam banks.
There is an odd lines: in consideration of endocrine human emotions
Correct me if I’m wrong, but I don’t think an 18th century speaker would even know of the endocrine system, much less of the affect of hormones and glands on human emotion.
An accident or a deliberate anachronism by Pound?
He also includes a Chinese character (see picture) near the beginning of this (fairly long) Canto. What does it mean? And what did Pound intend by including it, despite having left China, so to speak.
How The Trojan War Explains Occupy Wall Street
Ajax (described in the Iliad as ‘Ajax of the Seven Fold Shield,’ a reference to the size and thickness of his shield, having seven layers of leather or hide) and the cunning Odysseus performed two very different roles. Odysseus was cunning and sneaky, while Ajax was gigantic wall who physically held the invading Greeks together (at one point, near the beginning of the Iliad, the Trojans are driving the Greeks back into the water, with soldiers drowning and their ships on the verge of being burnt; eventually, Zeus decides to save the Greeks from total destruction, but before the god stepped in, it was Ajax who kept things together, physically pushing back several charges and rallying the troops into some kind of formation to hold the line).
Poor Ajax, the hard worker, was taken advantage and finally lost it and tried to throttle the Greek commanders. Meanwhile, Odysseus never failed to get rewarded for his work behind the scenes.
Hint: the CEOs getting billions on bonuses are Odysseus and the rest of us are Ajax.
the coffee philosopher 