OK, Emily, I'm going to link to a Fox News story. You can make all the nasty comments you want. But they broke the story...http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,128198,00.html
The US Department of Agriculture, which very logically controls these sorts of things, is considering non-renewal of the waivers that allow foreign doctors to work in the USA.
Why would we send back doctors that are providing health care in a time when there is a shortage of health professionals?????
Because they might be terrorists. Let's keep ourselves safe by getting rid of all the doctors. After all, we've just received breaking new intelligence that people who hate America might try to attack our financial and political centers (http://www.lewrockwell.com/rockwell/roost.html)
Saturday, August 07, 2004
Hollow Men?
Do you agree with T.S. Eliot (http://www.cs.umbc.edu/~evans/hollow.html) that the world ends "not with a bang but with a whimper?" Is our civilization coming to an end, has it reached stasis (a la Fukuyama), or is it basically the same as past ages? The other day I heard an interesting proposition that the extreme sarcasm and irony among the young is a sign of a declining civilization. That seems rather tenuous - Alexander Pope was the most civilized of men and was extremely sarcastic.
Thursday, August 05, 2004
Are You Feeling Better Now?
My favorite Decembrist song has always been Grace Cathedral Hill. It is poetry about real life. The songwriter is trying to find some sort of cheer in an atmosphere that stinks of fish and beer, in a world that will never belong to him. Small things, a candle, a hotdog, a paper halo, can make the people in the song feel better for awhile, but the foul smells and decaying buildings still assault their senses, making the world tedious. We can never always feel good. We can only feel better for a little while.
Sometimes I think I am a bad Christian because my life seems to go in circles. The older I get, the more everything that I see and hear and smell seems the same. Sometimes I find a new world in a book or a song to distract me, but usually there is a sense of suffication. Wanderers used to be able to escape the sense of sameness by perilous dangers into unknown forests and oceans, but now there is no unknown besides the void of space. Sure, there're drugs and booze and sex, but how long does it take for those things to get old or kill you? Why bother becoming callous to yet another world?
You can say that I'm to introverted, that I don't think about God enough, but God and Love and Transcendent Ideals aren't constantly invading your eyes, your ears, your mouth, your nose. If I put out my eyes so I don't see the big plastic M at yet another intersection, I won't be able to see the lightening flashes either. I've never liked television adaptations of the classics because when I read there are pictures in my head that are better than the ones on the screen. It's kind of hard to see God in my head except as a stereotype. I have a hard time not seeing Jesus in flannelgraph, with a blue robe and a white arian face. My earthly senses make me miserable because they keep me from focusing on the transcendent but they also provide such large compensation with beauty in music, in faces, in trees.
Sometimes I think I am a bad Christian because my life seems to go in circles. The older I get, the more everything that I see and hear and smell seems the same. Sometimes I find a new world in a book or a song to distract me, but usually there is a sense of suffication. Wanderers used to be able to escape the sense of sameness by perilous dangers into unknown forests and oceans, but now there is no unknown besides the void of space. Sure, there're drugs and booze and sex, but how long does it take for those things to get old or kill you? Why bother becoming callous to yet another world?
You can say that I'm to introverted, that I don't think about God enough, but God and Love and Transcendent Ideals aren't constantly invading your eyes, your ears, your mouth, your nose. If I put out my eyes so I don't see the big plastic M at yet another intersection, I won't be able to see the lightening flashes either. I've never liked television adaptations of the classics because when I read there are pictures in my head that are better than the ones on the screen. It's kind of hard to see God in my head except as a stereotype. I have a hard time not seeing Jesus in flannelgraph, with a blue robe and a white arian face. My earthly senses make me miserable because they keep me from focusing on the transcendent but they also provide such large compensation with beauty in music, in faces, in trees.
Wednesday, August 04, 2004
Book Review - The Hunchback of Notre Dame
My favorite character is most definitely the goat, Jolie. Of course, I have successively owned and killed 7 goats, all of whom I loved very much. Despite my bias, however, I find her the most amicable character.
I am not a huge fan of the Romantic school, particularly when it descends into the mawkish and fantastic, as this book occasionally does. Hugo, like his Romantic counterparts, uses gypsies, monsters, and lecherous priests for his main characters instead of the two-bit scholars and common folk who are much more compelling.
In the beginning Hugo painstakingly describes Paris and Notre Dame. This would be very useful but he does not paint particularly good word pictures, in my opinion. His description of the 14th century mob is much more interesting but, again, he ignores this in order to write about crazy women immuring themselves because their baby daughter got stolen by gpysies.
Again in line with his genre, Hugo nurtures his plot with large doses of unrealistic sentiments between men and women, hinting at sex but never being so bold as to discuss it realistically. Esmerelda goes about dancing, thereby raising the priest's lust, but she is never described in erotic terms. Quasimodo, a young man despite his deformity, possesses an unreal platonic affection for the gypsy girl. The only normal loves in the story, those of the soldier and the philosopher, are disparaged because they are not "strong" enough.
In nuce, Hugo's mixture of the fantastic and the tragic ends up being merely maudlin.
I am not a huge fan of the Romantic school, particularly when it descends into the mawkish and fantastic, as this book occasionally does. Hugo, like his Romantic counterparts, uses gypsies, monsters, and lecherous priests for his main characters instead of the two-bit scholars and common folk who are much more compelling.
In the beginning Hugo painstakingly describes Paris and Notre Dame. This would be very useful but he does not paint particularly good word pictures, in my opinion. His description of the 14th century mob is much more interesting but, again, he ignores this in order to write about crazy women immuring themselves because their baby daughter got stolen by gpysies.
Again in line with his genre, Hugo nurtures his plot with large doses of unrealistic sentiments between men and women, hinting at sex but never being so bold as to discuss it realistically. Esmerelda goes about dancing, thereby raising the priest's lust, but she is never described in erotic terms. Quasimodo, a young man despite his deformity, possesses an unreal platonic affection for the gypsy girl. The only normal loves in the story, those of the soldier and the philosopher, are disparaged because they are not "strong" enough.
In nuce, Hugo's mixture of the fantastic and the tragic ends up being merely maudlin.
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