Month: January 2019

The Toxic Mission to Reengineer Men – Minding The Campus

Long, uber-interesting piece here by emeritus anthropology prof at McGill U., much involved and drawing on years of experience, including in the field. Discussing at its end whether anti-masculinity is aimed at solving men’s problems, this:

Yes, being a man is not stress-free, and sometimes we have inner struggles. But do women not also have inner struggles, and is that not in our nature as human beings?

Feminists who simplistically argue that women’s psychological and other problems are all and always the fault of “toxic” men, are doing a very human thing: blaming others for their problems.

That such sad naivete has been adopted by our governments, scientific organizations, and schools and universities does not reflect a very sound understanding of people or the world. Even more so for psychologists, who should know better.

Ideas, conditions, behaviors toxic there are, but masculinity is not one of them.

Pelosi Asks Trump to Delay State of the Union Address – WSJ

Crafty lady.

WASHINGTON—House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D., Calif.) asked President Trump on Wednesday to delay his State of the Union address to Congress until the government is reopened, citing security concerns.

It is custom for the speaker of the House to formally invite the president to give a State of the Union speech to a joint session of Congress at the beginning of the year. That address is scheduled for Jan. 29.

In a letter sent to the president, Mrs. Pelosi said such a speech requires the full resources of the U.S. Secret Service and Department of Homeland Security—two agencies where employees are currently working unpaid.

Immediate guess: Won’t happen. Speech delay, that is.

Breaking ranks: why Boston’s cardinal intervened in an abuse case in New York | Catholic Herald

And what happened to him then:

Cardinal O’Malley’s latest action continues a recent trend in which he has broken an unspoken rule by openly criticising his fellow bishops, including Pope Francis. Last January, he criticised the Pope’s handling of the situation in Chile, in which the Pope accused critics of Bishop Juan Barros, who has since resigned, of “calumny”.

The cardinal’s outspokeness seems to have resulted in a loss of favour at the Vatican. O’Malley was notably not initially named among the participants in next month’s safeguarding summit in Rome. Instead, Chicago’s Cardinal Blaise Cupich, a staunch progressive and reliable papal ally, was appointed to take part.

Blaise does keep turning up, does he not?

Networks Trashed Trump With 90% Negative Spin in 2018, But Did It Matter?

Chicago Newspapers

What can your average fair-minded person take from this?

The tone of coverage remains incessantly hostile: 90% negative, vs. just 10% positive (excluding neutral statements), matching the historically bad press we documented in 2017. Yet despite the media’s obvious disapproval, public opinion of the President actually improved slightly during 2018, from an average 40% approval on January 1 to 42.7% approval on December 31, according to RealClearPolitics.

Keep in mind that this is news coverage — stories placed in the paper or on screen by editors, pursued by reporters approved by editors and publisher, working in an office atmosphere that bestows sometimes plaudits on confreres, rarely any sense of discomfort as to choice of story, how it’s written, etc.

Nobody here but us chickens, we can hear them saying. We like it this way.

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Death of the Author? Pregnant notion

Not for attribution

I find myself attracted by the (even randomly discovered) pregnant phrase, such as “the philosophical notion of the Death of the Author,” encountered this very day it in a capsule review of a French novel, Amélie Nothomb’s Pétronille in Times Literary Supplement 5/20/14.

Forthwith (right away, ok?) I looked it up and found “Death of the Author” at the Oxford Reference site, from which I quote two segments that explain the phrase briefly.

This:

… [It’s] the idea associated with French critic Roland Barthes that a text should be regarded as self-standing, a field for the interplay of signs. The idea is not that things like Pride and Prejudice grow on trees, but that information or speculation about the author and the author’s intentions is irrelevant to reading them. . . .

And this:

… the title of an essay by Roland Barthes , ‘La mort de l’auteur’…

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Bulls center Robin Lopez removed from chippy Monday practice

Short items of little import . . .

Breaking a code:

Either way, Boylen said practice got “very, very competitive” — code for chippy. At one point, Boylen had to send Lopez out of the gym for close to 10 minutes to cool down after a run-in with guard Kris Dunn.

Wait. Perfectly usable phrase requires de-coding by use of multi-meaning word that to some readers calls for its own de-coding.

To some. Happens all the time. There’s jargon for every field. Technical terms in some fields, lingo in others.

You gotta know the lingo to catch the drift. Follow?

Just sayin’.

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Writing a book? Consider these self-admonitions by and for another author . . .

Writers & Writing

When talking to oneself is a fruitful enterprise:

Dear Jim:

In your soon to be published book, do the anti-Novus Ordo — New Mass — part, interspersing it with with the pro. Can you do that, Jim? Keep it dry and detached? If you try, yes. But will you try?

Jim: Good question.

Good advice, continued:

* Make your posts a foreshadowing of arguments to be fleshed out along the way.

* Keep it flat. (Not telegraphic, however, except when that helps, nor purple nor flowery.)

* Be not overly concerned with order and sequence, but be willing to test your readers for their ability to connect things. Does not mean not concerned at all, which would be a slatternly procedure.

* Go rather for the lasting image or hit-home phrase, the (dare I?) poetic. Absolutely. Do not shrink from the poetic. (But be careful.)

* Don’t…

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