The Anger of Compassion

Greatest. Educational Videos. Ever.

You can learn a lot from the right teacher. Now, even on my worst days I'm not normally opposed to gratuitous depictions of French maids -- but this is good stuff.

You can learn how to video podcast. How to perform CPR. How to barter online. How to register a domain name.

And who wouldn't be inspired to learn these topics?

Watch the videos. Then, of course, you'll want to, er, celebrate each of your new skills.

Recycling: An Evil, Wasteful Superstition -- coming to El Paso

According to this El Paso Times story, recycling is coming to our fair city. Oh boy. God knows we don't have enough politically correct nonsense being shoved down our throats. Yet. But efforts are being made to bring us more.

We're going to get these big blue containers delivered to our homes, as a way of celebrating Earth Day. I'm not making this up. And, according to the story, I'll have to call the city to have the damn thing removed from my property if I elect not to participate in the recycling program. See, participation in the program isn't going to be mandatory, according to Ellen Smyth, our "Environmental Services Director."

Hmm...wonder where they got the scratch to buy these bins, and to distribute them? How about funding for operating the program? Seems to me I'm already "participating," and it sure as hell wasn't my idea. So Ms Smyth and I have to agree to disagree, I guess, on the meaning of "mandatory."

Also, according to the story, the program is expected to bring in $ 2 million in revenue to the city. If that is the case, I suspect it won't be long before participation in the program is mandatory.

This episode from Penn and Teller's Bullshit (hat tip: Radley Balko) is about the "evil, wasteful superstition (their term, with which I quite agree)" of recycling.

Balancing and Blades

Well, I did some cleaning on some old safety razors, as I mentioned below. And I've used three of them in the last few days. But there's more to it than that.

First, a correction: I do not possess three vintage Schick Injectors, as many fanatic wetshavers do. I was wrong there.

I have four of them.

But I stand by my claims that I have but three Gillette Super Speeds and one GEM Micromatic, and only two brushes (one boar, one badger). Nor do I have an untoward number of mugs or scuttles (in fact I do not own a scuttle at all, and have never used one), and there are but three unopened soaps in my shaving shack.

I will admit to my readers, as is only fair, that this afternoon I found myself, of my own volition, in an establishment in a certain neighborhood of El Paso, said location a known and notorious purveyor of antiques of all kinds...and I snatched up a Star by Kampfe Brothers -- America's first safety razor ever -- and a Special Cross Daggers, a lovely straight razor from Sheffield, England's own H. G. Long & Co., since 1846.

The Star was purchased for collecting and, to an extent, business, reasons, and I doubt I'll ever attempt a shave with it. I haven't even figured out how to open the head yet.

That Long straight, however, awaits only cleaning, honing, and stropping. And then it's on.

And yeah, I like referring to it as a "Long straight."

(UPDATE 11/26/2006: As noted in an update below, I actually have five Injectors. But I haven't bought any safety razors or straights since yesterday afternoon.)

Walt Whitman, Hart Crane, and Me

Well, my entire family is from New York (College Point, in Queens). And I was born there myself -- right outside the city, actually, at Mitchel Air Force Base (now Merrick). So I was amused by this one:

You Belong in Brooklyn

Down to earth and hard working, you're a true New Yorker. And although you may be turning into a yuppie, you never forget your roots.

Where Should Your Inner New Yorker Live?

Brooklyn's right next to Queens, anyway. I'd take some pride in living in New York's least fashionable borough, and that is certainly Queens...but I could do Brooklyn.

And my grandfather, a native of Long Island City, knew a guy who sold the Brooklyn Bridge. Twice, I think.

(Hat tip to Alexandra at Out of Lascaux -- who probably does belong in Soho.)

From "Starving Time" to Cornucopia: Thanksgiving in America

Their destination had been Virginia, but they were now, after a voyage of over two months, badly off course. They were the "Pilgrims," and they chose to land anyway because, according to William Bradford's account, "We could not now take much time for further search, our victuals being much spent, especially, our beer."

Their beer.

So these adventurers, these Separatists, many of them, from the Church of England (they wouldn't be described as "Pilgrims" for almost two hundred years), landed in Massachusetts, just in time for winter, and named their colony New Plymouth after their port of sail.

What came to be called New England can be, at that time of year, a bit, er, brisk, so it's doubtful that much could have been done via agriculture to replenish their "victuals." But the colonists, most of whom were in their twenties, pressed on in a spirit of Christian optimism.

Determined to live good, pious lives, and to repay their sponsors within the contractually- stipulated seven years, they established a system of communal property and communal effort, an early version of "From each according to his ability, to each according to his need." All land, all livestock, all production was commonly owned, managed, and stored: they saw themselves, again in Bradford's words, as pursuing a "common course and condition."

And they produced the same results as good communists everywhere: they began to die. The governor was one of the first to go (the long-serving William Bradford was actually the colony's second governor).

It wasn't just that New England's harsh winters made agricultural efforts difficult: city dwellers all, they didn't have any idea what they were doing anyway. So they planted little or nothing, and according to legend caught one fish and no game in that entire time. They were the worst hunter-gatherers since the dawn of civilization and by the spring of 1621 half of them were dead.

But spring is the season of rebirth, is it not, and one fine day the colonists, among whom only three married couples had so far survived, were surprised by a visitor: an Indian who, astonishingly, addressed them in their own language: "Welcome, English. I am Samoset. Do you have beer?"

Beer. Again. I could suspect a trend.

Samoset had learned the language from the crews of English fishing ships. Apparently he had also acquired a taste for English beer. He introduced the settlers to another Indian, Squanto, who spoke even better English. Squanto, a member of the Patuxet tribe, had been kidnapped by sailors and had lived and worked in England. Meanwhile his tribe was wiped out by smallpox, and when he returned to North America he was "adopted" by the Wampanoag tribe.

So were the Pilgrims. Squanto introduced them to the leader of the Wampanoags, Massasoit, and the tribe began teaching the newcomers how to plant crops native to the area, as well as how to fish, catch eels, harvest oysters, and more. Life became a bit less bleak for the settlers, and October 1621 brought an occasion for joy when another ship arrived from England, carrying fresh provisions and more settlers. Bradford invited Massasoit to a feast. Massasoit arrived a day early, with ninety of his braves bringing along five deer.

This was not the first Thanksgiving, as myth would have it. It was a celebration, to be sure, but this was not the day Bradford declared a day of Thanksgiving, not the day we recognize, because that communist system of meager property and, therefore, minimal product, was still working against the best self-interest of the Plymouth settlers -- against their very survival. I'm sure the feast was joyous, but I doubt that their first harvest was substantial. Apparently not much of it was produced by the settlers themselves. As evidence, consider the history, which records that the main course was venison. Remember: Massasoit's braves brought with them five deer.

The Pilgrims were still dependent on the charity of the Wampanoags.

Subsequent events at Plymouth bear out my suspicions, too: there was no Thanksgiving feast celebrated the next year, 1622.

So it's no wonder the colonists gave thanks in October 1621: without the help and tutelage of the Wampanoags, and the arrival of that additional English ship, even more of them would have perished. But acts of charity weren't enough to allow the colony to flourish: communism didn't work any better among the Pilgrims than it later did among the Russians, the North Koreans, or the Cubans. In fact, new arrivals in the spring of 1623 found little fish, lobster, or even water among the colony's stores, and no bread at all. The "common course and condition" arrangement clearly wasn't working, and settlers were dying as a result.

After consulting the other leaders of the colony, Governor Bradford established a system of private plots of land, allowing each family or individual to work those plots as they themselves saw fit. The result? An explosion of productivity, with magnificent harvests of corn and other vegetables, and Bradford declared November 29, 1623 a Day of Thanksgiving.

It is reasonable at this point to ask: giving thanks for what, and to whom? Bradford later wrote about rejecting that early American form of communism — "that conceit of Plato's," as he referred to it — in which brotherhood and community were thought to be fostered by making all responsible for all, "that the taking away of property and bringing community into a commonwealth would make them happy and flourishing." The attitude of today seems to be that it is appropriate to give thanks to God; Bradford, on the other hand, seems to be thankful for the industry of his fellow colonists.

And Bradford's fellow settlers had their own term for that "common course and condition," for the period characterized by "that conceit of Plato's": they called it "the starving time."

Throughout history, everywhere, there have been harvest festivals: the Hebrews had their feast of Tabernacles, the Bradford-Massasoit party in 1621 certainly was a harvest festival, no doubt a joyous one for the English settlers, and the Canadian Thanksgiving holiday to this day is basically no more than a harvest festival itself.

But the American Thanksgiving is different. Its recognition in 1623 was no less than a response to the success of human productivity and industry, and was therefore a celebration of the results of purposeful, productive effort.

And freedom of effort benefits all — not just Pilgrims — in America and elsewhere, including lands now delivered from decades of communism. For the unfortunate North Koreans, by contrast, it is still "the starving time."

And things have changed since then, to be sure. Massachusetts has become prosperous, with the New England Conservatory of Music, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (and that World War II-winning invention, radar, and its descendant, the microwave oven) the Boston Red Sox, the New England Patriots, and more.

What then might qualify as an appropriate celebration, an appropriate Thanksgiving? That answer must be your own. The traditional answer — thanking God as we now say the Pilgrims did — won't do. God let half the original settlers starve, didn't he? It was no God — it was the productive efforts of individuals which allowed the survivors to prosper. Are you watching and enjoying a Thanksgiving Day Parade, or a football game? Or both? Are you reading The Anger of Compassion, one of America's finest blogs, or cooking with products and ideas from The Gilded Fork? Or both? Are you, perhaps, updating your own blog? Great: the blog is an American invention, based on American technology. Knock yourself out.

You have produced the results which count as your life — celebrate that productivity, yours and that of others, your own way.

And damn it, Samoset deserves to have a beer named after him. Samoset Stout, perhaps?...and maybe I'll brew it myself. Now there's a way to give thanks.

For a detailed history of the origins of Thanksgiving, see Rothbard's 1975 history, Conceived in Liberty, Vol. 1, Chapter 18: "The Founding of Plymouth Colony."

(Original version edited by Andrew Schwartz and published November 27, 2003 at The Atlasphere.)

"A Smooth Glide"

The infamous Corey Greenberg's wetshaving segment on the Today Show. This segment isn't even linked to from Corey's own blog, Shaveblog, and I'd never even seen it before this evening.

And just why is Corey Greenberg characterized, here, as "infamous?" Why, you'll just have to check out the world of wetshaving if you want to find out. But for one thing: if you've ever wondered why Schick Injectors which cost a buck in the Forties go for what they do on eBay, you can thank Corey.

(For the record, I like Shaveblog. A lot.)

Guys: if, like me, you've spent a good part of your life hating your shaving routine, you need to give the single-blade experience a try. I have an easily-irritated neck beneath a barbed-wire beard, and I am, these days, quite the happy camper.

I spent part of this weekend acquiring and cleaning up an Eversharp-Schick Injector from the early Fifties, and a GEM Micromatic from (probably) the Thirties, which means I now have, as usable shaving instruments, three Gillette Super Speeds, three Schick Injectors, and the GEM. So there's an imbalance there, in that I have four razors (the Injectors and the GEM) which use single-edge blades and only three which use the double-edge type (the Gillettes). But then there's that modern Feather from Japan coming in this week, which is a DE. And a Weishi to test before Christmas. So I'll need to balance things out yet again, probably by trying a straight razor shave for the first time.

Not that I'm any kind of fanatic or anything.

(UPDATE 11/26/2006: My mistake, I actually have five Injectors, not three.)

Wet Work What?

So, tonight I boiled a safety razor. Pretty exciting, right?

Well, actually it is. This one may date back to the 1930s, and I'm looking forward to trying it. Meanwhile, I've also purchased a Feather razor and some Feather blades. Feather blades are sharp, the sharpness of legend, I mean Groucho Marx sharp, and I've never tried them. The Merkur blades from Solingen, Germany, yes, and the Gillettes made in Sweden for the European market, yes. Love 'em both for their sharp edges. But Feather...well, in terms of sharp they're supposed to be top o' the food chain, so there's much anticipation here.

Hello. My name is Craig, and I'm a wetshaver.

What am I talking about? Well, if you watch the Today show on TV, you might recognize the name Corey Greenberg. He's an enthusiastic wetshaver, and he wrote about it here, for msnbc.com. There's also a nice, and more detailed, introduction here.

Take a look, also, at this video, for another introduction.

More tomorrow. Oh, and tomorrow, I'm not only cleaning this old safety razor, I'm also testing a new shaving soap which isn't even on the market yet.

Which South Park Character Am I?

More on the Upcoming Elections

Objectivist Michael Hurd has come in on the side of voting (in general) for the Democrats, as has Edward Cline over at The Rule of Reason. Both are more in favor of gridlock and punishing the Republicans than of rewarding or supporting Democrats.

Any Objectivists interested in voting for Kinky Friedman as governor of Texas?