The Anger of Compassion

"Be sure you extend me the same courtesy..."

Wow, also courtesy of The Cheese Stands Alone's inimitable LeeAnn, I took the following quiz: Which movie villain are you?

Dr. Lecter was, I think, creepier in the book than in the movie: but my reading of the book benefited from hearing Anthony Hopkins' voice for the Lecter dialogue. Both were excellent

And...why yes, I do enjoy fine food and classical music. Thank you for asking, Clarice tender reader dear reader.

But have you read...?

Sometimes I think of myself as being among the elite of the earth, and sometimes I realize that I'm among the delete of the Earth.

But enough about brazenly ignorant savages cutting me from their blogrolls.

Courtesy of LeeAnn at The Cheese Stands Alone, I get to learn what kind of elitist I am.....

You speak eloquently and have seemingly read every
book ever published. You are a fountain of
endless (sometimes useless) knowledge, and
never fail to impress at a party.
What people love: You can answer almost any
question people ask, and have thus been
nicknamed Jeeves.
What people hate: You constantly correct their
grammar and insult their paperbacks.


What Kind of Elitist Are You?
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Books and grammar. Sounds about right. But I absolutely love paperbacks. Always have.

Fresh Cheese

New, sexy look at The Cheese Stands Alone, which is soon to be added to the blogroll. Go take a peek. Tell LeeAnn I sent you.

There oughtta be a law

"There oughtta be a law..."

I've long thought that to be one of the most un-American, and un-traditional, of traditional American expressions. It's the absolute antipathy of traditional American, freedom-oriented, "mind your own business" values.

For that reason, I commend you to the latest interview at Prodos.com Internet Radio, on Prohibition.

Yes, the horrid Eighteenth Amendment was repealed in 1933 and alcohol prohibition is no longer in force (federally, at any rate) throughout the United States. But I shouldn't have to remind you of the "War on Drugs" or the existence of the Drug Enforcement Administration, or of attempts to regulate tobacco or ban smoking, or that many drugs require prescriptions to begin with.

At the interview site, Prodos invites you to click on a Google search for the phrase "should be banned." When I ran that search this evening, Google returned over 139,000 hits.

There oughtta be a law, indeed.

On the other hand, the Bonanno, Lucchese, Gambino, Genovese, and Profaci families, among others, found Prohibition to quite profitable indeed, didn't they?

The Art of Propaganda Posters

Since we're exposed to it all the time, it behooves one to recognize and identify propaganda. There's quite a roundup for you to check out: The Art of the Propaganda Poster at Extreme Web Surfs.

It's not all Leni Riefenstahl or Diego Rivera, is it? Have a look.

"Like America, it was waiting to be discovered"

From the BBC News online:

The story goes that on 28 February 1953, Francis Crick walked into the Eagle pub in Cambridge and announced that he and his American colleague James Watson "had found the secret of life". In fact, they had.

That morning, Crick and Watson had worked out the structure of DNA (deoxyribonucleic acid). They had discovered its "double helix" form, one which could replicate itself, confirming theories that it carried life's hereditary information.

It was a revolutionary discovery, the most significant contribution to science, in the view of many, since Darwin's theory of evolution. It earned Crick and Watson a Nobel Prize.

Francis Crick was 38 and didn't even have a PhD. His studies had been interrupted by World War II during which he helped develop torpedoes for the Royal Navy.

Got that? A man without a PhD had found the secret of life. Was it the most significant contribution to science since Darwin's theory of evolution? I leave that to those more qualified to judge--but for discovering something so fundamental, so essential to knowledge of what life is, I'm glad that Dr. Crick became well-known and admired. He deserved at least that.

"We were lucky with DNA", he once said. "Like America, it was just waiting to be discovered."

Yes, Dr. Crick. It was. But you discovered it. Thank you, and may you rest in peace.

(Hat tip: Arts and Letters Daily)

Man Bites Dog--Not

Jesse Jackson has angered black leaders in Boston with his latest remarks on "racism."

Jackson stoked the Hub's racial fires yesterday as he headed into the FleetCenter on the second day of the Democratic National Convention, saying Boston has yet to live up to its promise as a center of racial justice and equal opportunity for minorities.

``There is such a class gap between the haves and the have-nots,'' Jackson said. ``If you look at inner-city Boston and the suburbs, it's like there is a doughnut and then there's the doughnut hole.''

Jackson added that Boston falls short of being a model for urban democracy around the country.

``Boston must work even more diligently at being the academic center it is, at being the shining light on the hill,'' Jackson said. ``This can be the city with an urban agenda that becomes the ideal for all of America.Boston ought to aspire to no less.''

Reactions?

``Jesse's talking trash and blowing smoke. This is Jesse's showboat,'' said the Rev. Eugene Rivers, chair of the National Ten Point Coalition and one of the city's most respected leaders on racial issues.

and

``Jesse Jackson has never, ever come to me or any of the black clergy that work on the streets of the city of Boston,'' Rivers said. ``Jesse has been too big to actually meet with the black clergy that work in the trenches and have been doing that for years, so we are sort of mildly amused that Jesse has so much to say about something he knows so little about.''

Well.

Jesse Jackson? "Talking trash" and "blowing smoke" over "something he knows so little about?" Really?

Why should today be different from any other day?

And I'm not only a Northern Song...

Okay, so which Beatles album am I?

Abbey Road


Which Beatles Album Are You?
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Does this mean they'll play "Golden Slumbers" at my funeral?

UPDATE: That bit "you feel like you've accomplished a lot" reminded me: this (the Abbey Road project, that is) was the last time the Beatles were in the studio together, and apparently the working title for the album was Everest. But no, it wasn't because they saw themselves as the summit of rock artistry: Everest was the brand of cigarettes constantly smoked by engineer Geoff Emerick. Thought you'd appreciate knowing that.

A Public Service Announcement...with Guitar!

Okay, so my title here is a tad misleading, as this entry has nothing to do with The Clash or with their classic song "Know Your Rights."

Nope, just thought I'd pass on that you should be listening to Norma Martinez on Friday nights, if you like Muddy Waters, Howlin' Wolf, Eric Clapton, Big Mama Thornton, John Mayall, Maria Muldaur, T-Bone Walker, Steve Watt, Roomful of Blues, Tampa Red, and so on: yer blues, man.

Norma's show is Friday Night Blues, which you can catch on KTEP-FM, 88.5 on thy radio dial (digital or analog). If you're not in El Paso, Texas, no problem: pick up the streaming audio here.

I'm not claiming that this blog's influence extends everywhere, but not all of Norma's listeners are in El Paso: they're found in Alabama, New Zealand, and other provinces. Do yourself a favor next Friday night (ten PM, Mountain Time) and listen in.

And, since I am, apparently, John Lennon, according to some, I'll award extra clicks to readers who spot the wily John Lennon reference in this post.

Spice it up? More power!

Just as a change of pace: Which Spice Girl am I?

You are Ginger Spice, or The Artist Formerly Known
as Ginger Spice, to be exact. You've got more
than your share of Girl Power, damn shame the
others can't respect that.


Which Spice Girl are you?
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Actually, I have no idea, although she is perhaps the one who most closely matches my own shagfantasies.

Personal note for the sophisticated language mavens: watched part of the Spice Girls movie one night in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, on a French satellite channel. In the subtitles, Posh Spice's name was rendered as "Snob."

"...and I'm not what I appear to be"

Which Beatle am I?

You are John Lennon! You were a legend until you
were shot to death in 1980. You were a great
guitarist and you wrote some great music. You
are missed everywhere.


?? "Which Beatle are you?"??
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I was a legend? Until I was shot to death in 1980? Thanks, but if that's the case, I think I'd rather be Charlie Watts.

This is the blog of a high-flying bird

We already know that I'm "Sympathy for the Devil." That's all well and good, but, have any of you ever given any thought to...

Which Rolling Stones member are you?

I thought not.

Me?

charlie watts


which rolling stones member are you?
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Sounds about right.

(And extra clicks to anyone who fathoms where I got the title from...)

Communism's Victims: Pop Quiz

Thanks to Jesse Ogden at the Mises Blog, I found this quiz of Bryan Caplan's: Holocaust of Communism Test.

Go ahead. Take the test. I'll wait.

And then think, and try grasping the numbers, the numbers, the numbers. Victims in the millions--and, in case after case, all in one place.

I've been reading, for the first time, the classic espionage thrillers of Eric Ambler. Very well done, all of them. But this struck me: in Background to Danger, the hero is a Brit caught in machinations far beyond his own imaginings, and the only help he receives--at all--is from two dedicated Soviet agents.

The evil, of course, was perpetrated by fascists and by the nefarious machinations of Big Business in the City of London.

Well.

Those are by all means evildoers, are they not? But Background to Danger was written and published in the late 1930s, and yet its villains have their ideological descendents in today's America: as for Big Business, Microsoft has been persecuted for the unspeakable evil of offering its Internet Explorer browser free on both the Windows and Macintosh computer platforms, and Martha Stewart is about to be incarcerated for five months for a "crime" no accuser can quite explain.

On the political side, we have Hitler, Mussolini, Tojo, Admiral Hortha: none of them are admired today; their names and ideals are not fashionable, and it's a damn good thing. The very thought is considered objectionable, and novelists with far less ability than Eric Ambler are able to cash in on such villains.

I have no problem with associating these men's names with ultimate evil.

Why, then, are "idealistic" Marxists considered intellectually and morally capable of teaching in American universities? Why do so many Americans of the entertainment industry persuasion laud the intelligence and "idealism" of Fidel Castro, and the "achievements" of his island Gulag?

It's not recent, either, this bifurcation: Franklin Delano Roosevelt referred to Stalin as "Uncle Joe," and cooperated with Churchill in the pro-Stalin evils delivered at Teheran and at Yalta. British and American lawyers and judges, including an Associate Justice of the United States Supreme Court, took part in the Nuremburg trials, thus making themselves and the Anglo-American legal tradition an accessory to Soviet evil. I myself have seen "idealistic" American protesters march down an American street, chanting simplistic slogans as some among them hoisted images of Ho Chi Minh and a North Vietnamese flag. An unregenerate, unrepentant Stalinist, the "poet" Pablo Neruda, is having his centenary celebrated as I write this.

As I write this...this...this mere blog entry, this solitary, at-the-keyboard activity which amounts to no more than pissing into the cultural wind, PETA activists will fling blood-colored water on those who wear mink or sable, while pleas are entered for understanding the dictators in North Korea and China, and Castro and the remaining, graying Sandinistas are openly lauded as idealists.

Another memory: reading the leaders of the Sandinista junta, interviewed in Playboy, one of whom sobbed that since Ronald Reagan had been elected to the presidency of the United States, he had been unable to write a line of poetry.

Well.

Well, Boo fucking hoo.

A hundred thousand lines of some poseur's pro-prole doggerel do not add up to the value of one honest peasant's life, his one, single, irreplaceable life, whether that life was stolen in Russia or China or Cambodia or Cuba.

Take the test. Take it now. I told you, I'll wait.

Done? Now, try grasping the numbers--some of the smaller numbers, say, the number of Cambodian victims of the Khmer Rouge in the 1970s. Try grasping those numbers, the numbers, the numbers... and...well, let me offer some help:

You have never had that many friends.

Friends, hell: you have never encountered that many people in your life.

You wish you had that many dollars.

You probably haven't ever had that many pennies, let alone dollars.

The pages in the books in your library don't add up to that high a total.

And yet these weren't pages in books, or pennies in a jar: these were individuals, they were human lives snuffed out because they didn't fit with someone's idea of what belonged where on the chessboard. Sons and daughters, parents and grandparents, poets and guitarists and clowns and rice farmers.

Here's the message I recieved when my own quiz results were scored: "You correctly answered 57.5% of the questions. This marks you as an Advanced student of Communist atrocities."

I don't think so.

I know how to read, and I was fortunate enough to have been born in a land where reading is legal. That's it.

Take the test.

I dedicate this
to all those who did not live
to tell it.
And may they please forgive me
for not having seen it all
nor remembered it all,
for not having divined all of it.
--Aleksandr I. Solzhenitsyn, The GUlag Archipelago

Kind of Blue

Which jazz great am I? I would have looked for Thelonious Monk, but, not surprisingly, I'm Miles Davis.

Miles Davis. A layed back, cool cat. Didnt have
much technical skill, didnt use alot of notes,
but the ntoes you do use are melodicly amazing.
You have a hard ass attidue and a real swearing
problem.


Which jazz great are you??
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(Ahem) Some spelling lapses in this one, but I do have to wonder: am I theKind of Blue Miles, or am I the Bitches Brew Miles?

And you'll never hear surf music again

Which Jimi Hendrix song am I? Funny, I didn't end up as "Third Stone from the Sun."

Voodoo Child (slight return)


Which Jimi Hendrix Song Are You?
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Seems about right.

When I was a child, I caught a fleeting glimpse...

Okay, so Sunday evening test-taking for the blog is too much fun to resist.

But I had to know: which Pink Floyd song am I? I found out.

You are....Comfortably Numb.

Emotions? What are those? You've given up on
human feelings long ago. Nothing seems to
bother you these days, and certainly nothing
makes you smile. You've built up your wall,
and absolutely nothing can get in or out,
ensuring that you will never feel pain. The
lips move...BUt you cannot hear what they say.


Which Pink Floyd Song Are You? (The Wall)
brought to you by Quizilla

Well, life's not always pretty, is it. Great guitars, though.

Or maybe Neapolitan

Courtesy of Eric at Classical Values, I tested myself on which flavor of ice cream I am. I've been doing pretty good with the Beatles, Stones, and Dylan songs, so: fearlessly I entered my responses, and...

Your Icecream Flavour is...Chocolate!

You are the all time favorite, chocolate! Turning white kids black since the 1800s. Staining carpets, car seats, and bed sheets for centuries. One thing is for sure, you will never go out of style. You can't go wrong with chocolate!

Yup.

As heads is tails, call me Lucifer

Okay, so I've tested myself as to which Dylan song I am, and which Beatles song. Only one icon of my youth left:

Which Rolling Stones song am I?

You are "Sympathy For The Devil." In my
humble opinion the best fucking rock&roll song
ever written, you are funky yet with a vibe
that sends chills up nearby necks. You've seen
a lot of history but you are still one bad-ass
motherf*cker. Much like the Stones themselves.
:)


Which Rolling Stones Song Are You?
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Good enough.

Nothing you can do that can't be done...

Which Beatles song am I?

I didn't expect this answer (on another, similar quiz, I was "Revolution," "Back in the USSR," and "Getting Better." But this seems pretty much on the mark:

All You Need Is Love


!!!!!!!!!!!!!which BEATLES song are you?!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
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But this is cool: "All You Need is Love" was actually the very first Beatles single I ever owned, and it was in the record jacket shown above.

Shame, Disgrace, and All Dishonor

Poets, Percy Bysshe Shelley told us, are the unacknowledged legislators of the world. Maybe. I doubt there were many Steppenwolf fans among the original circle of Objectivists--nor would the members of Steppenwolf have been fans of Ayn Rand. But, without further comment, I present these lyrics:

"Draft Resister"

Words and music by John Kay and Goldie McJohn

He was talkin' 'bout the army while he passed his pipe around
An American deserter who found peace on Swedish ground
He had joined to seek adventure and to prove himself a man
But they tried to crush his spirit 'til his conscience ruined their plans
And we thought of those who suffer for the sake of honesty
All those who refuse to follow traitors to humanity

Here's to all the draft resisters who will fight for sanity
When they march them off to prison in this land of liberty

Heed the threat and awesome power of the mighty Pentagon
Which is wasting precious millions on the toys of Washington

Don't forget the Draft Resisters and their silent, lonely plea
When they march them off to prison, they will go for you and me

Shame, disgrace and all dishonor, wrongly placed upon their heads
Will not rob them of the courage which betrays the innocent

"Draft Resister" is available here and here.

A Draft is Only Good for Beer

He comes to the right conclusion, but I don't think I agree with too many of Michael Kinsley's premises in his column "What's Fair About a Draft?" He does score a few good points, though:

The country's main reaction to the need for more troops in Iraq is that we should get other countries to help us out. In other words, draft foreigners.

Nice touch.

Kinsley then goes on to deal with questions of the fairness of military conscription:

Unless and until Bush's preemption doctrine has us fighting a half-dozen Iraqs at the same time, the military simply doesn't need most of the soldiers a universal draft would produce. The legendary unfairness of the Vietnam-era draft was more the result of the government's looking for ways to reduce the number of draftees than of actual draft dodging.

Draft enthusiasts have two solutions to this dilemma. One is a universal mandatory service program for young people in which military service would be just one option. This is truly the tail wagging the dog. You start with demographic concerns about the military and end up with a vast new government bureaucracy dedicated to forcing people against their will into jobs that mostly have nothing to do with the military.

True enough, and it would happen just that way. But is that all?

During Vietnam, the columnist Nicholas von Hoffman wrote, "Draft old men's money, not young men's bodies." His point was that in America, when you want more of something -- even soldiers -- the way to get more is to pay more. A draft allows the government to pay less for soldiers than they would cost in the free market. It is, in essence, a tax on young people. Or a pay cut for those who would have volunteered anyway. What kind of triumph of fairness is that?

Now, I enjoy von Hoffman and Kinsley as much as any other reader, and clever, verbally adept fellows they are, to be sure. And yes, yes, a tax on young people it would be, and again, unfair. But by now, it becomes uncomfortably clear that Kinsley isn't going to address anything truly fundamental about the issue of military conscription. I expect few pundits will.

But: back during the preamble to the Summer of Love, precisely those fundamentals were addressed--by Ayn Rand. Compare Kinsley's objections (and again, I largely agree with them) to Rand's fighting words:

Of all the statist violations of individual rights in a mixed economy, the military draft is the worst. It is an abrogation of rights. It negates man's fundamental right--the right to life--and establishes the fundamental principle of statism: that a man's life belongs to the state, and the state may claim it by compelling him to sacrifice it in battle. Once that principle is accepted, the rest is only a matter of time.

If the state may force a man to risk death or a hideous maiming and crippling, in a war declared at the state's discretion, for a cause he may neither approve or nor even understand, if his consent is not required to send him into unspeakable martyrdom--then, in principle, all rights are negated in that state, and its government is not man's protector any longer. What else is there left to protect?

Rand deals with the fundamental issues much more squarely Kinsley does, and therefore much more forcefully. She then handles the "obligation" objection to her argument, and even adresses an important concrete:

Politically, the draft is clearly constitutional. No amount of rationalization, neither by the Supreme Court nor by private individuals, can alter the fact that it represents "involuntary servitude."

Maybe I don't get out much, but I'm not hearing this level of discourse from any of the candidates, or any of the pundits, on the trail, or from any of the critters in Congress. Nor do I expect to.

And for those of you who notice the title of Rand's piece and declare, "Why, I don't recall 'consensus' looming particularly large in the pantheon of values in Ayn Rand's philosophy," I invite you, especially, to read, and to ponder, "The Wreckage of the Consensus."

And then think on the fairness, or otherwise, of the draft.

("The Wreckage of the Consensus" was a speech delivered at the Ford Hall Forum, Boston, on April 16, 1967, and published in the April and May 1967 issues of The Objectivist. It is available in the anthology Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal and in the bound volume The Objectivist, and on The Objectivism Research CD-ROM.)

(DISCLAIMER: Your humble correspondent is neither anarchist nor militarist, and in fact spent twelve years in the U.S. Marine Corps, into which I was not drafted, and which span included a short but hot excursion in lovely Beirut. As I recall, the elimination of Selective Service was one of the first campaign pledges voided by Ronald Reagan upon his assumption of the office of president of the United States.)

(Hat tip: Mises Blog)

One small round of applause for man, one huge ovation for mankind

This entry at Hit&Run reminded me that today is the 35th anniversary of the very first (Armstrong-Aldrin) moon landing. And I do concur with Ronald Bailey when he writes that "Government-financed moon trips were the moral equivalent of building pyramids in space."

There's no telling what economic disruptions were caused by President Kennedy's huge, coercively-financed pet projects--the Vietnam war and the race to the moon--and there's no way of telling how those dislocations are still with us today. For those among other reasons, Kennedy is no hero. But astronauts Armstrong, Aldrin, and Collins were, and deserve thunderous applause for their physical and mental courage in doing what they did. Bailey links to this NASA page, for a start.

To astronauts and cosmonauts everywhere--including those at the privately-financed SpaceShipOne effort--I wish you all fair winds and following seas. And to Messrs. Armstrong, Aldrin, and Collins: happy anniversary, gentlemen. Thanks for the memories.

Richard Pryor Web Site

Thanks to Matt at Extreme Web Surfs!, I learned yesterday that Richard Pryor has a web site.

And I agree with Matt: if you know anything at all about Pryor's life, you'll enjoy going to the site if only for the name.

Live long, Mudbone.

What Woody Guthrie really meant was...

"My problem with the upcoming election," writes Keith Halberman at Liberty and Power, "is that one of these two men, George Bush or John Kerry is going to win it."

Ick.

One solution Keith suggests is humor, and he specifically recommends this. I heartily second that suggestion. Laugh away.

She gets the Gist of It

Eats, Shoots and Leaves was my Christmas present to myself last year, and it has now been published in the United States. If you enjoyed Lynn Truss's take on punctuation, you'll probably like this piece, in the Telegraph. Just the beginning:

More miserable news about language, then. More reason to pop off to the nearest wall and bang our heads against it. According to the publishers of the Oxford English Dictionary, half the people using it these days are stumped by the difference between "reign" and "rein", and "pouring" and "poring".

Point to ponder: what is the preferred hierarchy, the written word over speech or vice versa? Enjoy.

(Hat tip: Arts & Letters Daily)

When Peace Kills

Stephen Green points us to an interview with humorist P.J. O'Rourke.

Enjoy.

(Hat tip: VodkaPundit)

Another victim of the tall poppy syndrome

Dr. Michael Hurd offers his view on why Martha Stewart was singled out for punishment: what our Australian friends would label the "tall poppy syndrome." An Objectivist might call it the hated of the good for being (inconveniently) good. Dr. Hurd doesn't employ either phrase, but he makes his point. Read all about it here.

No tariff on wallabies!

Do you think the USA and Australia should form a free-trade zone? Do you think that both nations might benefit thereby? If so, you'll enjoy the latest interview at prodos.com.

Not another Top Ten list!

Well, yes it is.

Jesse Walker offers ten reasons George W. Bush deserves to lose his re-election bid, as well as a few comments on why a President Kerry wouldn't be any better.

In office, George W. Bush has managed to combine the two worst elements of the Republican Party: the pro-theocratic religious right, and the "Democrat Lite" me-tooism that we saw in Javits, Rockefeller, Nixon, Bush I, and Dole. He needs to be sent home with a soundly spanked ass.

Bush does deserve to lose, and it's also sadly true that Kerry wouldn't be any better at all.

Top 100 Beautiful Women

As reported by the Scotsman, anyway. So in keeping with the spirit of the previous post:

Top 100 Beautiful Women

By Dave Higgens, PA News

Film legend Audrey Hepburn was today named the most naturally beautiful woman of all time by a panel of experts.

The full list is:

1. Audrey Hepburn
2. Liv Tyler
3. Cate Blanchett
4. Angelina Jolie
5. Grace Kelly
6. Natalie Imbruglia
7. Juliette Binoche
8. Halle Berry
9. Helena Christensen
10. Elle MacPherson
11. Cameron Diaz
12. Princess Diana
13. Kate Moss
14. Charlize Theron
15. Scarlett Johansson
16. Isabella Rossellini
17. Nigella Lawson
18. Beyonce Knowles
19. Madonna
20. Jamelia
21. Nicole Kidman
22. Monica Bellucci
23. Audrey Tatou
24. Vanessa Paradis
25. Julianne Moore
26. Jennifer Lopez
27. Marilyn Monroe
28. Julia Roberts
29. Beyonce Knowles
30. Kylie Minogue
31. Estelle Warren
32. Gisele
33. Gwyneth Paltrow
34. Kate Winslet
35. Katherine Hepburn
36. Marilyn Monroe
37. Kiera Knightley
38. Iman
39. Jerry Hall
40. Heidi Klum
41. Ursula Andress
42. Virginie Ledoyen
43. Sophie Dahl
44. Michelle Pfeiffer
45. Uma Thurman
46. Kim Catrell
47. Jennifer Aniston
48. Eva Herzigova
49. Brigitte Bardot
50. Felicity Kendal
51. Claudia Schiffer
52. Jacqueline Kennedy
53. Marlene Dietrich
54. Milla Jovovitch
55. Lucy Liu
56. Penelope Cruz
57. Neve Campbell
58. Sharon Stone
59. Vivien Leigh
60. Sophie Marceau
61. Linda Evangelista
62. Dido
63. Catherine Zeta Jones
64. Jessica Lange
65. Ingrid Bergman
66. Greta Garbo
67. Jodie Kidd
68. Vanessa Paradis
69. Princess Caroline of Monaco
70. Kathleen Turner
71. Rachel Weisz
72. Naomi Campbell
73. Grace Jones
74. Christie Turlington
75. Famke Jensen
76. Catherine Deneuve
77. Cindy Crawford
78. Heather Graham
79. Judy Garland
80. Ginger Rogers
81. Sophia Loren
82. Yasmin Le Bon
83. Kirsten Dunst
84. Sandra Bullock
85. Melanie Sykes
86. Cleopatra
87. Lisa Snowdon
88. Rita Hayworth
89. Katie Holmes
90. Honor Blackman
91. Joely Richardson
92. Joanna Lumley
93. Andie MacDowell
94. Alicia Silverstone
95. Cat Deeley
96. Rene Russo
97. Sienna Miller
98. Rachel Hunter
99. Jade Jagger
100. Kelly Brook

Well, as they say. Can't let this one go by without a comment or two...

On the whole, not an objectionable list, and a few names spelled incorrectly, but as Anger of Compassion readers know, I'm not generally one to complain. But...but...

Does Beyonce Knowles really belong on the list twice? Twice? I think not. Nor does Marilyn Monroe, heavenly though her appeal may be. Not twice. And what in the hell are they thinking: the real Cleopatra makes the list, although no man alive knows what she looked like, but Elizabeth Taylor isn't here? That's just not playing fair.

Pleasant surprises, though: I was glad to see Nigella Lawson, Rene Russo, Joanna Lumley, and Andie MacDowell got enough votes to make the list. And Alicia Silverstone. Yum.

The Miniskirt and the Value of Western Civilization

A wise man once wrote, "Looking is pleasurable, and being looked at is pleasurable. We all enjoy seeing muscles move, whether we are sports fans or not." Marnee Dearman, writing in The Atlasphere, seems to agree:

There is no need to hide your beauty when you have a chance to show it off. Wearing clothes that creatively compliment your body and spirit is a great way to do this. As an avenue for embracing and celebrating your physical form, fashion brings attention to your ideas of style and design relative to the shape of your body. Done well, fashion can express confidence and exuberance toward life.

From my experience, nothing expresses this better than a really cute, hip hugging, miniskirt.

I concur.

There is nothing casual about wearing a miniskirt: it's a statement. There is nothing casual about the effect of a miniskirt on men. And, ladies, believe me: there is nothing at all casual about a man's appreciation of miniskirts and of your legs. I'm glad to see a happy, confident woman writing about this.

I just don't understand why Marnee herself claims no more than five miniskirts: it never really gets that cold in Tucson...

Interface Updates

New looks over at VodkaPundit and at Sasha Castel. Take a look.

Cultural Concurrence

Looked like fun, so I decided to join in and play the Teachout Cultural Concurrence Index game. My score was 82.8%, and worked out as follows (I've indicated our difference in boldface):

TT: If you had to choose

1. Fred Astaire over Gene Kelly
2. The Great Gatsby over The Sun Also Rises
5. Picasso over Matisse
6. Yeats over Eliot
8. Flannery O’Connor over John Updike
9. Casablanca over To Have and Have Not
11. The Who over the Stones
12. Philip Larkin over Sylvia Plath
13. Trollope over Dickens
15. Dostoyevsky over Tolstoy
18. Hamburgers over hot dogs
19. Letterman over Leno
21. Verdi over Wagner
22. Grace Kelly over Marilyn Monroe
23. Johnny Cash over Bill Monroe
24. Kingsley over Martin Amis
25. Robert Mitchum over Marlon Brando
27. Vermeer over Rembrandt
28. Chopin over Tchaikovsky
29. Red wine over white
30. Noël Coward over Oscar Wilde
31. Grosse Pointe Blank over High Fidelity
32. Prokofiev over Shostakovich
35. The Searchers over Rio Bravo
36. Comedy over tragedy
37. Fall over spring
39. The Simpsons over The Sopranos
41. Joseph Conrad over Henry James
42. Sunset over sunrise
43. Cole Porter over Johnny Mercer
44. Mac over PC
45. Los Angeles over New York
46. Partisan Review over Horizon
47. Stax over Motown
48. Van Gogh over Gauguin
49. Steely Dan over Elvis Costello
50. Reading a blog over reading a magazine
51. John Gielgud over Laurence Olivier
53. Chinatown over Bonnie and Clyde
56. Bugs Bunny over Daffy Duck
59. Emmylou Harris over Lucinda Williams
60. Johnson over Boswell
61. Jane Austen over Virginia Woolf
62. The Honeymooners over The Dick Van Dyke Show
63. An Eames chair over a Noguchi table
65. The Marriage of Figaro over Don Giovanni
67. A Midsummer Night’s Dream over As You Like It
68. Opera over ballet
69. Film over live theater
70. Acoustic over electric
71. North by Northwest over Vertigo
72. Sargent over Whistler
74. The Music Man over Oklahoma
75. Sushi: yes
76. The New Yorker under Ross over The New Yorker under Shawn
80. Frank Lloyd Wright over Mies van der Rohe
84. Stravinsky over Schoenberg
85. Crunchy over smooth peanut butter
86. Willa Cather over Theodore Dreiser
87. Mozart over Schubert
88. The Fifties over the Twenties
89. Huckleberry Finn over Moby-Dick
90. Thomas Mann over James Joyce
91. Lester Young over Coleman Hawkins
92. Emily Dickinson over Walt Whitman
94. Liz Phair over Aimee Mann
95. Italian over French cooking
96. Bach on piano over Bach on harpsichord
97. Anchovies: no
99. Swing over bebop

Most of our differences were with music. Check out Terry's excellent culture blog, About Last Night.

(Hat tip: Reflections in D Minor and Sasha Castel.)

Reinheitsgepferdscheisse

The other day I read of a Bavarian brewer who, due to some innovation of which he's probably quite proud, has run afoul of the vaunted Reinheitsgebot, the German purity law, according to which German beer must be made with certain ingredients, and only certain ingredients, as a guarantee of quality and purity. Quite a few American boutique brewers, obviously leaning more to marketing than to history, boast of their adherence to the Reinheitsgebot themselves.

Horsefeathers.

Like most legislation before and since, the law was worthless the minute it was passed. It stipulates that no beer will be made with any ingredients other than barley, hops, and water. Guess they never thought much of yeast--which, in 1516, when the law was passed, they didn't. Nobody had. And although the Egyptians had strains of yeast for making bread, there were no cultured or isolated yeasts available until after Pasteur. Without close control of what types of yeast go into a batch of beer, there is no prospect of any control of flavor or aroma, thus no quality control at all.

Pasteur, um, lived and worked quite a few weeks after 1516. Remember, too, that yeast is native to all inhabited areas of the world, and wild yeasts will make your beer taste like dreck.

The Reinheitsgebot, if strictly adhered to, would mean the end of another fine Bavarian product: weizenbier, or wheat beer. Wheat, you see, is not barley, nor is it hops, nor water.

And a popular variety of wheat beer, ur-weizen is unfiltered, which means it contains yeast, which would answer a potential smart-ass response to this little critique of mine: that yeast isn't an ingredient anyway, since it falls out of suspension during aging, or is filtered out before bottling. Sorry, but even after aging, there are millions of yeast cells floating dormant in your beer, and modern filtering regimes are just that--modern--and before they were adopted, all beers had yeast in them. And don't forget that ur-weizen, all bottles of which contain yeast by design.

Sorry, but all respect for the Reinheitsgebot is misplaced.

New Prodos Interviews

Two more interviews available at the Prodos.com internet radio show: one dealing with the Iranian student uprising, and one with Bettina Bien Greaves, an associate and student of the great Ludwig von Mises.

Since Prodos got me started on that, I'll point you to another interview with Mrs. Greaves, here.

I need more of this like I need a whole in the hed

Latest pet peeve: "wholistic."

There are holes, and a thing can be whole or not. Holistic, too, possibly. But there's no such word as "wholistic," and there won't be.