Although I am sure this will incur the derision of one of my blog compatriots, Niall Ferguson will do the marathon 3 hour interview for C-SPAN's Book TV this Sunday at Noon. You could spend your time in worse ways.

The first road map? A Stanford University computer helps peice together a 1,186 bit jigsaw puzzle that was once a massive stone map of Rome.

This article depresses the hell out of me, bluntly explaining the nature and state of the humanities Ph.D. Here's an exciting career opportunity you won't see in the classified ads. For the first six to 10 years, it pays less than $20,000 and demands superhuman levels of commitment in a Dickensian environment. Forget about marriage, a mortgage, or even Thanksgiving dinners, as the focus of your entire life narrows to the production, to exacting specifications, of a 300-page document less than a dozen people will read. Then it's time for advancement: Apply to 50 far-flung, undesirable locations, with a 30 to 40 percent chance of being offered any position at all. You may end up living 100 miles from your spouse and commuting to three different work locations a week. You may end up $50,000 in debt, with no health insurance, feeding your kids with food stamps. If you are the luckiest out of every five entrants, you may win the profession's ultimate prize: A comfortable middle-class job, for the rest of your life, with summers off.

Yikes, well, there is some truth there. I've just broken through the adjunct ceiling (I prefer "lecturer"; it sounds more dignified) into tenure-track nirvana, but so much of this is true. Yet those who opt for the academic life are rarified souls, dedicated to a different life, and are very often willing to give up much to live the life of books and thought. Yes, the debt is appalling, but as an adjunct at two colleges I managed to earn a pretty high wage with benefits. Yes, writing the dissertation was a bear, but in the four years since I acquired the doctorate I published it as a book. And I always remind myself, as I look at same-aged friends who decided on other careers and are materially better off then me, that I am being paid to read, research, think, and talk about a subject I adore; I rarely pay for my books any more and never pay for trips to conferences; I have a group of people who deliberately take my classes because they enjoy my presentation and are genuinely interested in what I have to say. So, while the toils are great, the reward is greater. For me.

Don't go to the bathroom after dark. You are waking up the neighbors.

It's not just good; it's offal!

Thanks to the genius of Marcella Hazan I make a very fine tripe myself. And M. Louis Diat opened to me the door to the bliss of ris de veau. Merci!

Grade Inflation

I am all agog to hear the academics' take on the news out of Princeton, an apparent smack down of grade inflation.

Truth be told, I wouldn't care so much about grade inflation in colleges per se, if I didn't think it related to this.

Whingeing Oxford aspiring college students, go fend for yourselves. Face the fact that if you can't earn a 3.5 on merit you really aren't as smart as you think you are and stop expecting 3rd graders in Alabama or Washington, DC or Idaho to grow in ignorance so that you can go spelunking through the dreaming spires.

And a good article on the fight against malaria by one of our company in today's NRO. Well done, Jennifer.

Yesterday was General John Stark Day in New Hampshire. Stark rallied his troops at Bennington with the line, There are the redcoats, and they are ours ... or this night, Molly Stark sleeps a widow. More famously, his toast at a battle commemoration years later became the state motto: Live free or die. Death is not the worst of evils.

Spot on, Jennifer. I tinkered with the answers, changing some of them that I could answer two ways (can't I give people hell and debate?), and came out mostly with St. Augustine. But once (agast) I came out as John Calvin. Can you be a Roman Catholic Calvinist? Yikes.

Which Theologian?

Bunnie Diehl's already taken the quiz and is stunned to find out that she's Luther. I guess the planets won't veer of their courses today after all.

I'm happy to say I'm Augustine, even though the fact that I did not come down as Luther may get me drummed out of the LCMS.

"God will not suffer man to have the knowledge of things to come; for if he had prescience of his prosperity he would be careless; and understanding of his adversity he would be senseless."

You are Augustine! You love to study tough issues and don't mind it if you lose sleep over them. Everyone loves you and wants to talk to you and hear your views, you even get things like "nice debating with you." Yep, you are super smart, even if you are still trying to figure it all out. You're also very honest, something people admire, even when you do stupid things.

What theologian are you?

A creation of Henderson


I am all agog to hear how fellow bloggers come down. I predict Dr. C. will teeter on the brink of Calvin but come out as Augustine instead (unless Aquinas lurks somewhere admist the answers). Albert's so going to be Augustine. Dr. Potomac...

Oh dear, I forsee a blog full of Augustines. I shall strive to shake things up from now on by being...Erasmus. (Although if this is what Erasmus was like, no wonder why he and Luther couldn't stand each other. (Stand by for a Dr. C diatribe in defense of Erasmus.))

"It is the chiefest point of happiness that a man is willing to be what he is."

You are Desiderius Erasmus! You have great love for others and will do just about anything to show it to them. You are tolerant and avoid confrontations, so people generally are drawn to you. You are more quiet and reserved in front of strangers, but around some people you open up. When things get tough, you like to meditate alone. Unfortunately you often get things like "what a pansy," or "you're such a liberal."

Peace activist in scrum over mulch

Here's a good one: the peace activist wife of Democratic senator Max Baucus of Montana beat up a woman at a DC gardening center. Apparently the dispute was centered over mulch. Reports the Montana News:

‘‘It's not exactly clear what happened, but at some point it appears Ms. Baucus was loading bags of mulch in her vehicle,'' D.C. Metropolitan Police Information Officer Joe Gentile said.

Gentile added that in the process of loading the mulch at Johnson's Garden Center, Wanda Baucus placed a bag of mulch in the path of another woman's car. The other woman's car was then blocked and prevented from backing out.

He said ‘‘words were exchanged,'' and then Wanda Baucus allegedly assaulted the other woman.

The other woman suffered bruises to the face and scratches on her shoulder, according to Gentile.

And, to add that delicious dash of irony:

This is not the first time Wanda Baucus has attracted media attention recently. A year ago, she was the subject of a gossip column in The Washington Post, after she posted a ‘‘Peace is Patriotic'' sign in the window of their Georgetown home.

‘‘I want the people in Iraq to have peace — the people whose lives are in turmoil because of the war, the children, their mothers, the farmers, the grandmothers and even the camels that are out grazing,'' Wanda Baucus told gossip columnist Lloyd Grove.

She is a painter and anthropologist and also expressed concerns about cultural artifacts.

‘‘When we watch the bombing on television, we really don't seem to understand or appreciate that some of these places are sacred. . . . I disagree with those who say that Saddam Hussein doesn't think about this,'' Wanda Baucus told Grove. ‘‘He cares about these places and their people.''

Sure, right. But would Saddam have beaten someone up over mulch?

Oh Frabjuous Day

The recent edition of The (London) Spectator looks to have quite a good set of articles this week, but I could care less because as I scrolled down the page, I saw that the "Diary" was written by Alice Thomas Ellis, and I lost all interest in anything else.

Those of you who are not acquainted with the work of Alice Thomas Ellis, should go get acquainted at once. She is one of the finest writers I have ever had the pleasure to read. I'd try to give a description of her work, but am apt to get gaga over it and so shall spare you the pain of that. Plus, everyone feels differently about a writer's prose so you should probably go draw your own opinion. At once!

Oh never mind, I'll say it anyway. If you like magic realism (Gabriel Garcia Marquez for example), Jane Austen, ikebana, and scotch, you'll love Alice Thomas Ellis. Her fiction writing varies between a practical, spare take on magic realism with a nice kick to it and a practical, spare take on life with a nice kick to it. (The kick is never optional.) Her Home Life columns, which used to be a regular feature in The Spectator, are simply a hoot.

Turns out Welsh Corgis, my faithful companions since the unripe age of seven, have royal connections dating back to the ninth century. British archaeologists from Cardiff University have found corgi-like bones at a royal site and are testing them with current-day corgis to establish a link.

NR's Corner tipped me off to this one -- from the latest Onion:

Libertarian Reluctantly Calls Fire Department
CHEYENNE, WY—After attempting to contain a living-room blaze started by a cigarette, card-carrying Libertarian Trent Jacobs reluctantly called the Cheyenne Fire Department Monday. "Although the community would do better to rely on an efficient, free-market fire-fighting service, the fact is that expensive, unnecessary public fire departments do exist," Jacobs said. "Also, my house was burning down." Jacobs did not offer to pay firefighters for their service.

And speaking of Dr. Pepper, Baylor University has just celebrated the 50th anniversary of the "Dr. Pepper Hour." To mark this blessed event...

...Baylor Dining Services served a variety of finger foods, each containing Dr Pepper as an ingredient. While some of the foods were appropriately sweet, like Dr Pepper cake, Dr Pepper snow balls and Dr Pepper peanut brittle, others were a little more daring. Some more creative appetizers included Dr Pepper shrimp dip and Dr Pepper bean dip.

“I tried all of the food, but I really loved the bean dip. I didn’t know you could make so many different things with Dr Pepper,” said Denise Sando, a Richardson senior.

Neither did we, Denise. Neither did we.


Dr Pepper Peanut Brittle

1 ¼ cup sugar
¾ cup butter
1 ½ tsp. salt
¼ cup Dr Pepper
2 cups raw peanuts, shelled
½ tsp. baking soda

Place all ingredients except soda into heavy saucepan. Boil, stirring often until temperature of 290 degrees is reached. Remove from heat; stir in baking soda. Pour into 15 X 10 inch pan. Cool and break into pieces.
Makes 1 ¾ pounds.

First Jennifer trolls for the absent Doc by posting about revolting Dr. Pepper cocktails, and now the Doc strews an particularly appetizing chum of Libertarian Wackos, World War I historiography, Crypto-Kaiser Advocacy, and the most charming historian in the West, Niall Ferguson. Wow. Quite a combo.

But I refuse to rise from the depths to assault such a delightful melange. Me, I am thinking about eating squirrel.

It was none other than Roger Scruton, like Niall a member of the Doc's British Pantheon, who brought to my attention his own favorite method for grilling squirrel, along with a whole load of other wonderful countryside culinary advice. It's such a rich treasure-trove of stuff I hardly know where to begin that wouldn't lead me to quoting the whole thing in entirety. Let me confine myself to Dr. Scruton's advice for grilling the grey squirrel:

The squirrel should be skinned and eviscerated. You should leave the head on, not only because the cheeks are a special delicacy, but also because it serves the same ornamental function as the head of a sea bass or a woodcock. Don't take out the eyes, but leave them to cloud over like opals in the heat of the fire. Marinate the squirrel for a few hours in olive oil, with salt, pepper and a squeeze of lemon juice; then skewer the length of its body and grill on both sides.

To which I say, yum. But even better is an ancient family recipe that calls for the squirrel to be skinned, beheaded (naturally you will have shot the little blighter right in the head, thus avoiding any harm to the meat), and quartered. It can be rolled in peppered flour, if you like that sort of thing, or seared directly in a little olive oil. Lower the heat, toss in some garlic, wait until said garlic is golden, then add a rough red wine, and herbs to your taste...I like a little rosemary. Lower the heat way down, and go away for an hour. What you will have, eventually, is a delightful squirrel fricasee. This must be served over golden, steaming mounds of polenta. It is simply superb, and if people knew how good it was, there would be a heck of lot fewer squirrels in America's suburbs.

Dr. Scruton is also very sound on the question of deer:

As much a pest as the rook and the squirrel is the deer. During my first years of settling in the country, I took Wallace Stevens's view that these delicate creatures, arising from the grass like a sudden visitations, are part of earth's glory: "Deer walk upon our mountains, and the quail/Whistle about us their spontaneous cries."

However, our mountains are merely the top of a hill, and the copse that we planted there is being steadily consumed. One day, when we had discovered a whole spinney vandalised and were at our wits' end for a remedy, Mervyn presented himself.

Dressed in baggy camouflage, with a large knife at his waist and an assortment of guns across his shoulder, Mervyn is the one you turn to for the gruesome jobs - skinning, gutting, or the coup de grâce. A man of few words but fierce loyalties, Mervyn is typical of the new countryman. He commutes in his battered Subaru from Swindon. He does not respond to your call; like the weather and the wildlife, he occurs. And there he was, just when we needed him.

Let our motto be: Every One Their Own Mervyn. David Brooks has been writing a lot lately about the soothing enclaves of Sprinkler City, whose eponymous hero he has dubbed Patio Man. This denizen of exurbia frequents Home Depot, has a deck with more square feet than his house, and grilling utensils of the complexity of an ICBM control board. It is a soft life, comrades. Enliven it by putting up a tree stand in your backyard, taking lessons with a bow, and shafting Bambi right through the neck as he leans down to take a drink from the pool. That will show the little beggar. Get the hell of my lawn, you damn deer!

Tastes great grilled, too. Mervyn Man will not need to completely forsake his past existence.

Thoughts on the Great War

I notice that Ralph Raico over at the Ludwig Von Mises Institute has a short "review of recent literature" on World War One. In this review, he looks at five relatively recent attempts at understanding the war, disparages some, applauds others. Let me throw my two cents into this, since I've been tackling the same literature recently.

Raico loathes Sir Michael Howard's small but ambitious attempt to explain the war , as mistake-ridden and ripe with questionable (or arguable) interpretations. I would pull back a bit on that and, despite some questions on Howard's clear advocacy of the Allies' self-evidently righteous cause, nod approvingly at the book for taking on a very difficult task and doing it tolerably well. I actually read the book in one afternoon, waiting at the airport for a flight and later on the plane, and would certainly advise those who know little or nothing of the war to begin with this book. It seldom breaks new ground or achieves any startling new depth of analysis, but that was never the book's intention. It's essentially World War One for Dummies. To paraphrase Bill Parcells, it is what it is.

He also knocks down Thomas Fleming's Illusion of Victory as unoriginal and marred by bad economic logic, the last hardly surprising since Mises devotees measure the world with a stiff Austrian economic ruler. I haven't read Fleming's effort, but I have read his other recent book on FDR and World War Two called The New Dealer's War, a dreadfully-written thud of a book. If he kept that style in the WWI text, I'll stay clear.

Raico aims particular venom at Niall Ferguson's Pity of War, an ambitious revisionist take on the war, suggesting through a series of counterfactuals (one of Ferguson's favorite methods of analysis) that Britain should not have entered the war and Europe (and the world) would have been better off had Germany won. That's the main thesis, but it goes much deeper, hitting down a number of myths and assumptions on the origins of the war and its impact. Raico finds Ferguson "an up and coming academic hustler" and the book "gimmicky," and his opinions do not improve after reading Ferguson's more recent Empire which suggests the British Empire was a positive development in world history (imperialism and empire are naughty words in Mises' circles). I must register a hearty disagreement, no doubt earning the snickers of my blog compatriots who think me a Ferguson shill. Pity of War is a daringly original book, thoroughly researched (I know, I know, much of that done by subservient grad students), and full of new interpretations that cannot simply be waved off as "gimmicky." If students want to understand where the current scholarship of WWI lies, Ferguson is certainly on the short list of important texts. I don't know how you can avoid him.

Raico finally turns positive on two books, neither of which I have read: Richard Gamble's The War for Righteousness and Hunt Tooley's' The Western Front. I bought Tooley's this winter, but haven't read it yet. To quote Raico on Gamble's thesis: The theme of the book is how the "forward-looking clergy [progressive Protestants] embraced the war as a chance to achieve their broadly defined social gospel objectives." Thus, the situation Gamble describes is, in a sense, the opposite of the one today, when it is the leaders of "fundamentalist" Protestantism that are among the worst warmongers. In both cases, however, the main contribution of the clergy has been to translate a political conflict into apocalyptic spiritual terms. You can see how libertarians would like Gamble.

Tooley comes in for praise for mastering the historiography and clearly explaining the complicated set of events before and during the war, apparently a victory for research and writing. Interesting that Raico also likes Tooley because he uses Murray Rothbard, late libertarian demi-god, as a source on WWI and economics.

Let me add to this list three further books.

First, take a peek at John Mosier's Myth of the Great War, a revisionist attack on the Allied war strategy. It can be quite annoying at times, flipping through desperately searching for maps to help you locate towns and battles, but on the whole it is an interesting and (if you stick it out) rewarding read. He even suggests that First Marne was not an Allied victory, but a carefully planned propanganda campaign to make it appear a victory. Stimulating and well-researched stuff.

Second, if you can afford it (or just get it via ILL), you must read Hamilton and Herwig's Origins of World War I, an edited collection of essays that discuss the years leading up to the war, and the decision to go to war, through the eyes of each country. There are essays on the major participants (Germany, Austria-Hungary, Britain, France, Russia), the smaller players (Japan, Ottoman Turkey, Bulgaria, etc.), and the later comer (USA). In addition, the historiographical introduction is first-rate, laying out where the history has been, where it is now, and where it should be going. In supplying context and nuance, this volume is masterful.

Third, although I haven't read it yet, I've seen two positive reviews of David Fromkin's Europe's Last Summer. I wonder just how original his thesis is, however, considering he is clearly within the "blame Germany" camp. I also have not seen mention of how he answers Ferguson's rather compelling thesis of the legitimacy of the Central Powers' worries and gripes. Still, it's the latest big splash and should be looked into.

That should keep you busy.

Dr. Potomac's Memo

Delightful numbers this morning. The ABCNews-Washington Post Poll has President Bush leading the junior Senator from Massachusetts by 48 to 43 percent which is a reversal of fortune in the past month. Additional good news can be found in what the public now views as the most important issues in the coming election: the war in Iraq and the economy are tied. (Gentle readers are reminded that in a recent post Dr. Potomac advised the Democrats to lay-off the Iraq issue as it tends to focus voters' minds on Bush's greatest strength and the Democrat Party's greatest weakness: national security. Fortunately, they ignored my advice. And why, pray tell, did Kerry use Ted Kennedy as his primary mouthpiece on this issue? How many caught Rep. Dana Rohrbacher's riposte to Kennedy's charge that Iraq was "George Bush's Vietnam"? "Perhaps," said the Congressman from Southern California, "but it isn't his Chappaquidick.")

The really wonderful news is that it is probably impossible for Kerry to undo the damage to his stature on national security issues. Kerry seems to have lost votes on both his right and left flanks and addressing one problem would tend to make the other worse. Doubts have been sown among swing voters who don't know much about Iraq or terrorism but know Bush is doing everything possible to keep the country safe while Kerry stands for... what, exactly? On national security, there are two things swing voters cannot tolerate: indecision and appeasement. Kerry seems firmly lodged between these two points.

The damage on his left flank is probably equally severe and more difficult to remedy without further alienating the right-ward edge of his coalition. The ABC-Post poll shows Nader doubling (!) his support in the past month from 3 to 6 percent. Dr. Potomac's educated guess is that this has much to do with Kerry's waffling on Iraq ("I was for it before I was against it, and now I'm for it but in a different way") which is not the way to endear oneself with the hard Left. The only way to get these Naderites back would be to try to scorch Bush on Iraq by calling for a precipitous withdrawal or similar foolishness further undercutting his standing with swing-voters (see above). The mother of all electoral catch-22s, and one that is likely to get worse as the economy recedes as an issue and voters become even more focused on the Iraq war.

Bugging out

Yes indeed, if you live on the East Coast and haven't heard that the cicadas of the ominously sounding Brood X are set to emerge SOON (SOON! ALMOST RIGHT AWAY!), than you are obviously one of those said cicadas and are still pushing your way up through the topsoil.

Here in the greater DC area the Washington Post is all a-twitter about the event. In lunch rooms, people drone on endlessly about what the last emergence was like, and women hop about squeaking about the horror if one of these creatures might land in your hair. Or on your shoulder or indeed anywhere within 20 feet of one's persona, which, if the Post articles are even 50% accurate, is going to be a pretty hard for a cicada NOT to do. (I'm sorry, dear readers, but it is always my fair sex that says these things, and we at Dr. Curmudgeon believe in accuracy in media. )

I have been a bit confused by these recollections/fears, because I was not only alive and sentient during the last emergence in 1987, but I also take a general kindly interest in the bug world. Surely I would have noticed if the earth started swarming with cicadas. I can only conclude that we were in a low cicada density pocket or all the critters in the country ate them. Either or indeed both are possible.

In any case, I am rather looking forward to this cicada action. I doubt it will be a patch on something really daunting, like the locusts in Australia, yet reports of a 1.5 million cicadas per acre are rather stimulating. Perhaps excessively stimulating. Cicadas can be rather loud.

Many thanks to Jennifer, my good blogging compatriot, for taking up the slack while I was away for the weekend. No, not playing cards with the Veep (although I am always open to that, stout fellow) but attending the christening of my twin neices in Cleveland. Which reminds me, do most call it a baptism or a christening? For some reason I err toward christening, as it sounds more (duh) Christian.

My brother-in-law told me that cicadas invade Cincinnati in biblical proportions every 17 years, and this is year 17.

People who drink Dr. Pepper cocktails are also the types who like vodka martinis. Disgrace. Remain indoors and do not show your face. You are unfit for polite company.

That's about all I have energy for -- after a good night's sleep, I'll be my old prickly self tomorrow.

Yummy!

The cicadas are coming, and the French at least aren't going to take it lying down. No they're going to get a bit of their own back and cook the little beggars. Also they (the cicadas, although the French possibly are as well) are apparently Atkins friendly, so the carbo-obsessed need not worry. They can have their bugs and eat them too.

In other news, eating Marmite repels mosquitoes. It repels a lot of humans too.

An Undisclosed Location

As the bit on the Dr. Pepper "cocktail" didn't smoke him out, Dr. Curmudegon must be off playing gin rummy with Dick Cheney. Double or nothing, Doc, double or nothing.

Man Cannot Live by Sex and Shoes Alone
From today's WSJ:

THE COSMIC COSMO: It's not exactly a road-to-Damascus experience. But the British edition of Cosmopolitan--the single girl's bible for sex and shopping--has just inaugurated a new spirituality column designed to fill a void reported by many of its readers. Reuters says that the new column will deploy "Cosmo friendly language" to cover everything from Kabbala to Chinese meditation. As Hannah Borno, Cosmo's new spirituality editor, writes in the March edition: "I've come to the painful realisation that men and shoes are not enough to make me happy."

Well, duh, Hannah darlin', but I don't think "Cosmo friendly" spirituality is going to fill your void either.

On the other hand, I suppose it fits right in with a prayer a friend of mine heard at a "young adult" oriented worship. It was one of those lengthy Protestant evangelical type prayers that we of liturgical traditions always find a bit disconcerting. (Or rather let me speak for myself, I find them a bit disconcerting. I am often reminded during them of the statement of one of the great old lions of my educational career. "When I go to church, I go to talk to God." The lengthy corporate prayers of the evangelical type are often so personalized to the speaker of the prayer that I often feel that he or she speaks not for me, and it's terribly disconcerting for me to keep a critical running double commentary up with God at the time when I am supposedly to be concentrating on Him. "Yes, I'm praying for that." "Um, no, I can't really say, I'm aboard with THAT. Can You strike that bit from my petition, please?" )

Anyway, somewhere around minute number 21 of the prayer, the petitioner started addressing the innate greed of human beings, saying that we always want more than we should want. " We want more" he prayed, and then plunged into a long list of things of which we want more, but shouldn't. Around minute 24 he hit this phrase: "We want more, more sex, more shoes, more doctrine," he said, and then droned on. My friend was stunned and once she confirmed that he had put doctrine in with sex and shoes, deeply grieved.

But now we see that he could get a gig with Cosmo!

Speaking of the Weird (and the downright horrifying)

Two more things from USA Today.

First, the mildly disturbing gardeners are worried about carbs. So worried that Burpee's, the venerable seed producer now has a vegetable carb count chart on their site.

That's madness, but this is downright horrifying:

"Bars are evoking childhood memories with potions that incorporate booze with classic candies, soda pops and/or pop-culture references. Luna Park restaurants in Los Angeles and San Francisco have introduced the "You're a Pepper" Dr. Pepper cocktail ($8) based on a soda from Dublin, Texas called "Texas Original" Dr. Pepper. (It's said to be the predecessor to today's familiar sweeter version.) Customers are presented with a doily-covered silver tray containing an 8-ounce bottle of the soda, a small glass of Absolut Vanilla vodka, a small glass of Monin's Organic Vanilla Syrup and a handful of Dr. Pepper-flavored Jelly Bellies. Imbibers are encouraged to mix their own.
'This is a celebration of the independence of being an adult for newly minted adults,' explains restaurant co-owner A. J. Gilbert.
Ok. Anyway, the trend is spreading: In Los Angeles, Blue on Blue bar offers drinks called Purple People Eater and A Walk in Space, and Lola's features the Red caramel Apple. Chicago's Bistro 110 has Le Pop Rocks Martini. And the New Twist in New York sells a Times Square Tootsie."
-Jerry Shriver, USA Today print edition

Reading things like this makes this adult stagger for the celebration of adult independence found in a stiff snort of the Cragganmore. I don't care if it is before noon. It's medicinal.

More Like It

The natural order was restored when I saw this article in USA Today. Yes, indeed, that sounds more like New Jersey. Not my part of New Jersey, but definitely parts of New Jersey.

Is it because it's Easter Week?

Twice in one week I find myself agreeing with the New York Times, or rather I find the New York Times agreeing with me. First on the crucial DDT and malaria issue and now on pork barrel spending. What other wonders lie in store?

Perhaps this. One of my friends who works in the rarefied world of federal reporting (DC is full of small newspapers/newsletters, etc. that focus on a discrete interest area. These news delivery vehicles often have quite good in depth reporting and are put out at some ungodly hour of the morning so staffers have something to read over their morning coffee.) passed this story along to me, because it claims New Jersey eats the least amount of federal pork. Personally I find this hard to believe, but I'll report and you decide.

CAGW Annual Pork Barrel Awards Go To Stevens, Grassley
Once again, Senate Appropriations Chairman Stevens has come up the big winner in the annual pork barrel derby sponsored by Citizens Against Government Waste. The organization cited Stevens today in its "Pig Book" for getting the most money per capita for his state -- a total of $524 million, or $808 for each person -- in FY04. This was 26 times the national per capita average of $31. Hawaii, represented by Defense Appropriations Subcommittee ranking member Daniel Inouye, followed with $494 million, or $393 per capita. New Jersey slipped to last place on the list -- it had been No. 42 last year -- getting $101 million, or $11.70 per capita. Not only did Stevens get the big spender prize, but he was also criticized by the citizens group for getting $2 million to improve recreation at the city of North Pole, Alaska, which has a population of 1,570. Stevens responded with this statement: "We are Americans -- we need schools, libraries, airports, water and wastewater facilities. There is no pork in the money I have sought and received for investment in Alaska's future." Thomas Schatz, the president of Citizens Against Government Waste, said at a news conference that Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, got the biggest project in the FY04 omnibus spending bill -- $50 million for an indoor rain forest in Coralville, Iowa. Schatz said this was only a down payment on a "$225 million tropical boondoggle." Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., said at the news conference that "this system has lurched out of control" and called for procedural changes to prevent projects being inserted into conference committee bills "in the dead of night" without floor votes. Appropriations ranking member Robert Byrd, who has long been celebrated for his ability to bring federal money to his West Virginia, was found to have brought home $238 million, or almost $132 per person, ranking the state No. 5.
The citizens group listed 630 of the "most egregious pork barrel projects" in its "Pig Book," which made up a smorgasbord of projects that included the likes of wild turkeys and shrimp farming. For FY04, the organization said 10,656 projects were listed in the 13 appropriations bills, a 13 percent increase over the 9,362 projects in FY03. The total cost was $22.9 billion, or 1.6 percent over the $22.5 billion appropriated the year before, the group said. "Today, rather than devote every penny to protect the nation, members of Congress continue to protect their incumbency," Schatz said. "In fact, Sept. 11 and the war with Iraq have become excuses to spend money on just about anything." The full report is on the group's Web site, www.cagw.org.

If you're fascinated in budget issues, I heartily recommend the above mentioned CAGW Pig Book and also the work of AEI's Veronique de Rugy, formerly of Cato.

Disrespectful Yobs

According to The Spectator, professionals get no respect these days, and teachers are the canaries of that particular coal mine. Dr. C will doubtless empathetically fulminate as he reads this piece.

Gastropubs?

The name sound slightly obscene, but epicurious.com assures me that Britain is in the throes of a "gastropub revolution." This means that the food being served in British pubs is now not only edible but occasionally even delectable.

To this I say: show me the data. One Michelined starred pub does not a revolution make. Even 289 gastropubs do not a revolution make. They're more the exception that proves the rule, because in the land ten thousands pubs shilling the tuna and sweet corn jacket potato, you need a heck of a big revolution.

While I could get behind a gastropub, and fully intend on making that Pedro Ximenez Sherry Cheesecake at the earliest opportunity, what I really fancy are just the unassuming pubs that do pub standards right. Thus, props...nay rather...Maximum Respect to the sticky toffee pudding (The steamed pudding is Britain's great contribution to the culinary Pantheon, and Britons would do well to remember it.) and the bangers and mash at the Rose and Crown in Oxford and to pretty much anything at the Stein Inn on Skye.

Addendum:

It occured to me that cosmopolitan though Dr. Curmudgeon readers are, perhaps they are wondering as what exactly is a jacket potato. When the fellow blogger Albert was early abroad he sent out a piece to his Stateside correspondent called "Bottom Feeding" in which he mused upon the lower echelons of English cookery and touched lightly upon the jacket potato. I had thought just of extracting the jacket potato portion and posting it by way of explanation, but when I read through the piece trying to find that bit, I realized I was doing Dr. Curmudgeon readers a grave disservice if I didn't post the whole thing:



BOTTOMFEEDING

A horror story is almost obligatory at the beginning of a report
on the darker parts of British cooking. So here it is.

A reliable source informs me that when he was an undergraduate at a college which legal advisors have told me should remain nameless, the food there was exceedingly bad, and not only in the gustatory sense but in terms of actual nutritional content. Indeed, it was so bad, that the following occurred. One of his classmates while home for Christmas break met his family's general practitioner in the street. The GP said, "My, you don't look so well. Why don't you stop in to the office, and I'll have a closer look at you?" When this meeting came about, the GP was a little baffled at first before he eventually was able to make a diagnosis; you see, he had never before seen a case of scurvy. After that, my reliable source informs me, he and his fellow undergraduates took most of their meals in neighboring pubs.

Well, it says something about the nutritional state of affairs at X College that its undergraduates felt obliged to seek well-balanced meals at, of all places, pubs. For I cannot imagine any Director of the FDA walking into an English pub, having a look about and saying, "Right, this is just the place where someone can get a well-balanced and nutritious meal." If, to revert to the nutritional ideas of my youth, we divided pub food into the food groups we would have: the beer group, the fried things group, the green peas/salad group. Salad?, you ask. Well, don't get too excited. Salad is a garnish of lettuce- ambitious and gastronomically advanced pubs liven it up with a slice of cucumber, but it's still a garnish. It's not, you know, a salad.
To be fair, however, one could imagine a pub that had good food.

It would, however, require good ingredients and a pub owner dedicated enough to cooking to want to use them. If you hear of such a place inOxford, do let me know.

The problem with English food is that it's so simple. What is an abomination of God's creation at one restaurant might be, in another restaurant, something they serve on Thursdays in Paradise. English food is more or less completely dependent on the quality of its ingredients. It does not mass-produce. But then, what cuisine does? But mass production is exactly how the food in most pubs is prepared.
I imagine that there are factories Tyneside where, shipbuilding having moved to Japan, steak-and-ale pies are stamped out in vast industrial presses to feed a hungry nation. This supply does of course meet demand. No pub owner wants to cook when they could be serving beer.

Instant mashed potatoes are a further example of this economic drive.
The instant mashed potatoes of the American school cafeteria are, in comparison, light and fluffy, creamed perhaps with a bit of white truffle. Instant mashed potatoes over here are hefty and weighty, they drop down almost instantaneously into the depths of your belly, and cause you to think rude thoughts about the French.

Rather than go on in this vein, I shall provide you with a short non-alphabetical guide to pitfalls, real and apparent, in Oxford eating:


Sweet Corn- what is it with the English and sweet corn? It's everywhere. It's a topping for your pizza. It's a topping for your Jacket Potato (see below). It is always a garnish, never a side dish. Do they crave yellow things? Does it remind them of the departed sun? It seems more or less an exotic item; perhaps because it is a starch of
a color other than white?

Baguettes- Everyone serves baguettes; we call them "rolls", on which you put something civilized like cold-cuts or meatballs. Here they put just about anything on them. Even Kebab Vans (see below) serve baguettes, and when kebab vans serve something you know that it has reached maximum distribution within the proletariat. Is it, perhaps, that they got tired of calling sandwiches "buttys"? (See below) Your correspondent does not know the answer to this; he can only advise you that a place serving baguettes in England is almost certainly not a French restaurant. These baguettes look vaguely like the real thing; I think they are probably extruded from machinery once used to make steel cable, and then reheated in restaurant ovens. I note with some apprehension the increasing trend to also serve "ciabatta's" as a roll option. This custom has not yet reached the kebab vans; it is only a matter of time.

Department Store Restaurants- England still has them, and they wage war in the streets with sidewalk placards advertising the best £1.99 lunch. You get what you pay for, alas.

Sandwiches at the Chemist's- Here is a sentence that should, I hope, make no sense to you. "I think I'll run over to the chemist's for a sandwich." Translated this means, "I'm going to the drugstore to buy a sandwich." What a country, eh? Can you imagine Eckerd's or CVS selling sandwiches? But that's the sort of thing that goes on over here. And they are the best and most economical sandwiches you can buy in a dizzying variety: roast chicken, roast beef, hummus and red pepper, ploughman's, cheddar and coleslaw, etc., etc. That is, as long as you buy them at Boot's, a national chain. SuperDrug, the other national chain, sells sandwiches whose packets don't bear opening. (Mind you, they have the cheapest prices on all the actual drugstore things.)

Jacket potatoes- we call them baked potatoes. Just about every pub and miscellaneous casual eatery proudly advertises the fact they serve jacket potatoes in large bright letters; it seems to be something of a status item, but I may be wrong about that. Certainly you can't seem to run a respectable cafe without jacket potatoes on the menu. Your Correspondent has sampled a variety of local delicacies in the interests of this being a full and factual report. But I could not bring myself to try these. I don't know why. It really is just a baked potato.
Perhaps it's the toppings I've seen on them. One that comes to mind is tuna and sweet corn. I saw someone eating this combo with revolting gusto; the tuna almost but not quite preserving the shape of its can, the sweet corn sort of studding the tuna like raisins in something more appetizing. It's odd, I know, but I have been unable to tolerate the thought of jacket potatoes ever since.

Cornish Pasties- you may not know it, but the food critic of the New
York Times almost created an international incident when he had some very unkind things to say about the pasty (pronounced, you'll be entranced to know, like the word describing what's already happened),the culinary treasure of Devon and Cornwall. Well, Cornwall, really; or so the Cornish Senior Tutor here informs me. But he may be a bit biased.
The NYT food critic said that pasties were bland and unexciting. Far from regarding this as a compliment, the Cornish began burning copies of the New York Times (who knows where they found them) and inundating the fax machines of the Grey Lady with invitations to "come on over and have me mum's, next time." Like all great artistic critics, upholding the freedom of speech, etc., the Critic would not knuckle under to the mob, or shade his opinions in the slightest. At last-you could imagine him exulting-he's as unpopular as an art critic! Food critics usually just anger restaurant owners, but he had made war against an entire English region!
Well, he's wrong about pasties, except when he's right. There's a little place in the Covered Market here in the center of Oxford where pasties are all they make, and they seem to me to do a pretty fine job. I mean, how can you go wrong if you have a good thick stew inside of good pie pastry? You can't. And that's just the "traditional"; they also have "luxury steak", "cheese and mushroom", "chicken tikka" (q.v.), and a lot of others which I can't remember and haven't tried. I've only had the "traditional", to be perfectly honest.
But if you buy a cellophane packet of "Ginster's", a commercially produced pasty (from former steel rolling mills in Sheffield, I believe), then you are getting yourself into a world of hurt. Imagine a world in which Hostess or Tastycake made meat pies. Imagine the meat equivalent (and I use the word forensically) of the Twinkie. Right. Not a pretty thought. Let's leave it at that.

Chicken tikka-the prevalence of Indian cuisine at a popular level in
England is one of the most striking things about looking at a menu.
Take chicken tikka. There does not seem to be a place in business where you cannot get chicken tikka on something or in something: baguettes (q.v.), jacket potatoes (q.v.), ciabattas, regular sandwiches, even in pasties (q.v.). It is truly ubiquitous. What it is precisely, other than spicy chicken, I couldn't tell you. But it is everywhere.

Lardy Cake- sounds awful, doesn't it? I throw it in because it's actually pretty good, but sounds really awful. An Oxfordshire specialty, lardy cake is puff pastry with sugar and raisins, an English peasant baklava. And I think the puff pastry is made from lard, but there are worse things put in people's mouths around here.

Kebab Vans- The Doner Kebab is...well, I'm not sure I know what a Doner
Kebab is. But there are lots of them sold in downtown Oxford after 8:00 pm. They are sold from the kebab vans, little food trucks that pull up at about 7:45, turn on the generator, and fire up the deep fat fryers. This leads to hundreds of undergraduates swarming out of their colleges and clamoring for jacket potatoes (q.v.), baguettes (q.v.), chicken curry on chips (figure it out), and the doner kebab.
The meat for the doner kebab has been very aptly described by one of my students as "Spam on a stick". It is an enormous tube of lamb/mutton product revolving around on a vertical skewer in front of an electric grill, also mounted vertically. From time to time the denizens of the van take strange tools, doubtless designed specially for the task in top-secret Scottish laboratories, to shave off long strips of meat, which they then place in steam tables. It ain't the most appetizingthing to watch, I'll tell you that.
In the interests of truthful reporting, I have had exactly one doner kebab. This was done after some time observing these establishments as I walk around Oxford at night. Should for some reason you find yourself in Oxford craving a doner kebab, my advice to you is to avoid those vans with the word "gourmet" in their name. Stay far away from the van whose overly optimistic owner calls himself the "Elegant Gourmet." The gourmet vans seem to be the dirtiest and foulest smelling. It's the ones called "Fast Food" that seem to put a premium on cleanliness; owned by former McDonald's managers striking out on their own, perhaps.
How does it taste? Well...pretty much as you'd expect; lots of this meat stuff, some "salad", some onions on top of that. The coleslaw they heap onto it is a bit strange, though, especially when combined with the red-hot chili sauce. The two of them make an particularly common modern English combination, the bland and the exotic paired uncomfortably together.

The Chip Butty- last, but not least, the chip butty. Even though I knew what it was, I decided to try it out anyway. You know what it is too, if you break it down: "chip", meaning "french fries", and "butty", meaning "roll", in combination signify...
Yes, it sounded revolting to me as well. But anthropological research is an arduous task, which is why most anthropologists prefer these days to interview suburban housewives or college students on their own campuses, I suppose. And some of my native guides have spoken rather fondly of this combination. It reminded me of stories of my grandfather spending most of his time in the First World War eating potato sandwiches, and for all these reasons I decided to "give it a go, then."

So I went into a local establishment and ordered up a chip butty.

"I'll have the chip butty," I said without even looking at the menu, feeling sort of crazy and dangerous.
The waitress was unmoved. "Right", she said, scribbling it down. Then she looked up, rather expectantly. Ah, I thought, this is the secret part that they didn't tell me about.
"Would you like coleslaw or chips with that?"
"Excuse me?"
"Coleslaw or chips with that?"
"This is a chip butty, right? With chips on it?"
"Yes."
"But I could have even more chips, if I wanted them? On the side?"
"Riiiight."
"Well," I said, feeling a little weak, "no thank you. Neither, please."
Well, it was as you might expect french fries on a soft white roll to be; the ketchup and brown sauce didn't help much either. If there is an archetype of English bottomfeeding, the chip butty is it.

I've seen several articles and posts about John Kerry and Catholicism, highlighting (1.) his taking of communion at various churches, not all of them Catholic, (2.) the Catholic hierarchy telling Kerry not to present himself for communion because of his support for abortion, and (3.) various and sundry bits on who is the "real Catholic."

To take the last one first, Catholicism is a religion determined by adherence to doctrine (time-tested, Heaven-approved), not self-determination by parishes and freelance Catholics. This aspect of Catholicism is its great strength, when matched up and compared to non-hierachical faiths who struggle with various factions and no definitive voice on doctrine (just ask the Episcopalians). It did not begin as a democracy (Jesus did not ask for a show of hands at the Last Supper) and it has not been a democracy throughout history. Nor should it begin now. "Real Catholics" are determined by adherence to doctrine. To deny that doctrine and still call yourself Catholic is akin to calling yourself a bird because you want to fly; it is to be something you cannot, and to privilege your own wishes above the institutional, doctrinal, historical Church. How egotistical can you get?

Second, the hierarchy is perfectly within its authority to decide who can and cannot receive the Eucharist, and does so all the time. I was appalled to read Cardinal McCarrick's remarks on MSNBC: "I would find it hard to use the Eucharist as a sanction," he said gently. You don't know what's in anyone's heart when they come before you. It's important that everyone know what our principles are, but you'd have to be very sure someone had a malicious intent [before denying him communion.]" Considered in its context, the Cardinal is saying the Church would have to know if Kerry's pro-abortion voting record and clear advocacy of abortion is driven by "malicious intent." Apparently, if the Senator was pro-choice and not driven by malicious intent (I guess this means abortion with a happy purpose), that would be fine with the Church?

Third, some have said that considering the priest abuse scandal, the Church should keep its mouth shut, not attempt to discipline prominent Catholics like Kerry who advertise both their liberal views and Church membership, and play the public relations game. Go along and get along. Melinda Henneberger on MSNBC says:

A few Sundays ago, Robert S. Bennett, who chaired the independent lay review board investigating the crisis, came to my parish in Georgetown to field questions about the group's final report, which found that at least 10,000 children had been abused over half a century while bishops consumed by the fear of exactly the kind of scandal they eventually created consistently protected the predators. Of course, the place was packed for that meeting, and Bennett gamely took one hot question after another on celibacy, homosexuality, the role of women in the church. Yet somehow, on Easter morning, I looked around the same space, which was once again completely filled, and saw an Easter people, singing "The Strife is O'er" like they meant it. And after all we've been through, they all looked like "real" Catholics to me.

Yet the Church has every right to regulate and police its leadership and membership. They failed in the priest abuse scandal to adequately do this, and are now beginning (and could do much more) to filter out those priests with self-destructive and socially destructive behavior. The public applauds this and wants the Church to do more, as they should. But when the Church turns to its membership and begins scrutinizing their ideas on Church doctrine, suddenly the equation changes and no one wants to be told what to think and do. On one hand the Church hierarchy was too weak in identifying malevolents, on the other they are too strong in identifying miscreants -- keep out the pedophiles, but don't tell me how to be Catholic. How can one be Catholic and not believe in Catholic doctrine? So I can be Catholic just by saying so?

Somehow it is appropriate that the Paulist Center Kerry attends in Boston was described by (of all papers) the New York Times as a kind of New Age church that describes itself as "a worship community of Christians in the Roman Catholic tradition" and that attracts people drawn to its dedication to "family religious education and social justice." Christians in the RC Tradition? What the heck does that mean? Sort of like saying we don't live in the house but just around the corner.

What the World Needs Now Is DDT

So sayeth the NY Times in a great article by Tina Rosenberg in the Sunday Magazine. I couldn't agree more. Go check out the article and see if you do. If so check out the website of Africa Fighting Malaria which currently has a petition demanding that the World Health Organization rethink its current practice of discouraging DDT use.

Dalrymple's thoughtful article on the problem with Islam demands a close reading. In a nutshell, he asserts that Islam is brittle by its rigidity and violent because of weakness.

The unassailable status of the Qu’ran in Islamic education, thought, and society is ultimately Islam’s greatest disadvantage in the modern world. Such unassailability does not debar a society from great artistic achievement or charms of its own: great and marvelous civilizations have flourished without the slightest intellectual freedom. I myself prefer a souk to a supermarket any day, as a more human, if less economically efficient, institution. But until Muslims (or former Muslims, as they would then be) are free in their own countries to denounce the Qu’ran as an inferior hodgepodge of contradictory injunctions, without intellectual unity (whether it is so or not)—until they are free to say with Carlyle that the Qu’ran is “a wearisome confused jumble” with “endless iterations, longwindedness, entanglement”—until they are free to remake and modernize the Qu’ran by creative interpretation, they will have to reconcile themselves to being, if not helots, at least in the rearguard of humanity, as far as power and technical advance are concerned ...

the problem is that so many Muslims want both stagnation and power: they want a return to the perfection of the seventh century and to dominate the twenty-first, as they believe is the birthright of their doctrine, the last testament of God to man. If they were content to exist in a seventh-century backwater, secure in a quietist philosophy, there would be no problem for them or us; their problem, and ours, is that they want the power that free inquiry confers, without either the free inquiry or the philosophy and institutions that guarantee that free inquiry. They are faced with a dilemma: either they abandon their cherished religion, or they remain forever in the rear of human technical advance. Neither alternative is very appealing; and the tension between their desire for power and success in the modern world on the one hand, and their desire not to abandon their religion on the other, is resolvable for some only by exploding themselves as bombs ...

Islam in the modern world is weak and brittle, not strong: that accounts for its so frequent shrillness. The Shah will, sooner or later, triumph over the Ayatollah in Iran, because human nature decrees it, though meanwhile millions of lives will have been ruined and impoverished. The Iranian refugees who have flooded into the West are fleeing Islam, not seeking to extend its dominion, as I know from speaking to many in my city. To be sure, fundamentalist Islam will be very dangerous for some time to come, and all of us, after all, live only in the short term; but ultimately the fate of the Church of England awaits it. Its melancholy, withdrawing roar may well (unlike that of the Church of England) be not just long but bloody, but withdraw it will. The fanatics and the bombers do not represent a resurgence of unreformed, fundamentalist Islam, but its death rattle.

The music at our parish tends to be, well, dirge-like. No matter the season, joyful or mournful, the music (organ and soloist, organ and choir) remains the same: slow and sad. Yesterday, my wife leaned over to me during one of the choir's normal sorrowful numbers and said, "I'm not at all cetain the choir is happy that Jesus has risen."

I had a difficult time keeping in the laugh.

Easter Wings

LORD, who createdst man in wealth and store,
    Though foolishly he lost the same,
        Decaying more and more,
            Till  he  became
                Most poor :

                With  thee
            O  let  me  rise
        As larks, harmoniously,
    And sing this day thy victories :
Then  shall  the  fall  further  the  flight  in  me.


My  tender  age  in  sorrow  did  beginne :
    And still with sicknesses and shame
        Thou didst so punish sinne,
            That  I  became
                Most thinne.

                With  thee
            Let me combine,
        And feel this day thy victorie,
    For,  if  I  imp  my  wing  on  thine,
Affliction  shall  advance  the  flight  in  me.


-George Herbert

Hither and yon

One British gardening expert says television "gardening makeover" shows (of the 1/2 hour variety usually) create absolutely dreadful messes and "give gardening a bad name."

Could you really live with the results of most of their ideas? A bit of Zen here; a bit of suburban Humphrey Repton there. Gertrude Jekyll, Capability Brown and Andy Warhol thrown in for instant effect ... The people who make those wall-to-wall programmes are pleasant, talented, generous with their advice and sincerely trying to introduce us to new ideas. But what doesn't come easily to them is an acceptance of the real tradition of gardening.

The television gardeners' retort is fairly predictable. Such charges stink of elitism: There is nothing wrong with trying to get people interested in gardening by different means. You can't be snobbish about gardening.

Working within traditions equals snobbery, as everyone is no doubt aware. What we do can't be expensive and 99% of the people we design for think that the end result is brilliant. So what? That's like saying supermarket tabloids get people interested in reading and thus promote literacy. Yes, but...

And how about this one: We have misunderstood Judas Iscariot. Don't listen to Dante, because JI was a hellava guy. I'm not saying Judas is a saint, but we owe him an enormous debt for having helped Jesus to accomplish God's will. My oh my. I suppose we also must "give the Devil his due" because without him (using the law of opposites) there would be no such thing as good.

Suppose your boyfriend wants to go on vacation, yet your parents' disapprove of him. You do not want to disappoint either of them. What do you do? It's obvious isn't it? When your perspective and mental horizons are as big as your fingernails, you do this.

As the High Priest asked what further need he had of witnesses, we might well ask what further need we have of words. Peter in a panic repudiated him: 'and immediately the cock crew; and Jesus looked upon Peter, and Peter went out and wept bitterly.' Has anyone any further remarks to offer. Just before the murder he prayed for all the murderous race of men, saying, 'They know not what they do'; is there anything to say to that, except that we know as little what we say? Is there any need to repeat and spin out the story of how the tragedy trailed up the Via Dolorosa and how they threw him in haphazard with two thieves in one of the ordinary batches of execution; and how in all that horror and howling wilderness of desertion one voice spoke in homage, a startling voice from the very last place where it was looked for, the gibbet of the criminal; and he said to that nameless ruffian, 'This night shalt thou be with me in Paradise'? Is there anything to put after that but a full stop? Or is anyone prepared to answer adequately that farewell gesture to all flesh which created for his Mother a new Son?

It is more within my powers, and here more immediately to my purpose, to point out that in that scene were symbolically gathered all the human forces that have been vaguely sketched in this story. As kings and philosophers and the popular element had been symbolically present at his birth, so they were more practically concerned in his death; and with that we come face to face with the essential fact to be realised. All the great groups that stood about the Cross represent in one way or another the great historical truth of the time; that the world could not save itself. Man could do no more. Rome and Jerusalem and Athens and everything else were going down like a sea turned into a slow cataract. Externally indeed the ancient world was still at its strongest; it is always at that moment that the inmost weakness begins. But in order to understand that weakness we must repeat what has been said more than once; that it was not the weakness of a thing originally weak. It was emphatically the strength of the world that was turned to weakness and the wisdom of the world that was turned to folly.

In this story of Good Friday it is the best things in the world that are at their worst. That is what really shows us the world at its worst. It was, for instance, the priests of a true monotheism and the soldiers of an international civilisation. Rome, the legend, founded upon fallen Troy and triumphant over fallen Carthage, had stood for a heroism which was the nearest that any pagan ever came to chivalry. Rome had defended the household gods and the human decencies against the ogres of Africa and the hermaphrodite monstrosities of Greece. But in the lightning flash of this incident, we see great Rome, the imperial republic, going downward under her Lucretian doom. Scepticism has eaten away even the confident sanity of the conquerors of the world. He who is enthroned to say what is justice can only ask: 'What is truth?' So in that drama which decided the whole fate of antiquity, one of the central figures is fixed in what seems the reverse of his true role. Rome was almost another name for responsibility. Yet he stands for ever as a sort of rocking statue of the irresponsible. Man could do no more. Even the practical had become the impracticable. Standing between the pillars of his own judgement-seat, a Roman had washed his hands of the world.

G.K. Chesterton, The Everlasting Man

A New Eastertide Tradition

From the obligatory entertaining Peeps article.

"The newest Peeps craze is Peeps jousting, according to DeLuca. To see two Peeps joust, insert a toothpick into the chest of each, place them 11/2 toothpicks apart in a microwave, and nuke them for no more than 10 seconds . "

I am certain that at the establishment where I shall be celebrating Easter, Peeps jousting will not only be practiced but taken to new heights. I see in my mind's eye a row of lady Peeps in henins distributing favors...

In fewter they cast their spears! Honor to the brave! Glory to the brave!

Triduum Stuff


The Agonie.

PHilosophers have measur’d mountains,
Fathom’d the depths of seas, of states, and kings,
Walk’d with a staffe to heav’n, and traced fountains:
But there are two vast, spacious things,
The which to measure it doth more behove:
Yet few there are that sound them; Sinne and Love.

Who would know Sinne, let him repair
Unto mount Olivet; there shall he see
A man so wrung with pains, that all his hair,
His skinne, his garments bloudie be.
Sinne is that presse and vice, which forceth pain
To hunt his cruell food through ev’ry vein.

Who knows not Love, let him assay
And taste that juice, which on the crosse a pike
Did set again abroach;1 then let him say
If ever he did taste the like.
Love in that liquour sweet and most divine,
Which my God feels as bloud; but I, as wine.

-George Herbert

War Stuff

David Warren has an excellent piece on the Battle for Fallujah and what people would call the "Easter Offensive" if it wasn't offensive to someone or the other.

This, I think, is the best summary of the current crisis in Iraq:

But this "uprising" -- which has emphatically not been joined by the Shia masses -- is that enemy's best shot. The good news is that they came out shooting now, rather than waiting until after the handover of power to the Iraqi provisional government on June 30th. They have exposed themselves, at a time when the full strength of U.S. and allied military power can be applied to them. The break-out could alas have been prevented if the Americans had been more ruthless, earlier. There will be a lot of bloodshed putting it down over the next few weeks, and anger over civilians caught in the crossfire. But no time can be wasted now, nor punches pulled.

The now seemingly perennial New York Times Sunday Magazine contributor and object of the Doc's almost girlish affection, that is, Professor Niall Ferguson, has an interesting essay in the NYTSM entitled "Eurabia?" Ferguson begins with a quote from Gibbon, his musings on what would have happened if the Arab armies had won at Poitiers in 732. Gibbon's conclusion was that the Koran would have been the subject of study in Oxford, and minarets would be features of the Oxford skyline, not steeples. Feruguson then surveys the growing strength of radical and moderate Islam in Europe, and concludes:

...it is hard not to be reminded of Gibbon -- especially now that his old university's Center for Islamic Studies has almost completed work on its new premises. In addition to the traditional Oxford quadrangle, the building is expected to feature ''a prayer hall with traditional dome and minaret tower.''

When I first glimpsed a model of that minaret, I confess, the phrase that sprang to mind was indeed ''decline and fall.''

I tried that country quiz again, put in "warm weather" as it is cold and rainy in Virginia today, and ended up in Spain.

Wonder how many different countries it's possible to be...

And then there's the "Which New York Times columnist are you?" quiz...will these quizzes never end?

Should we develop our own? "Which fusty conservative philosopher are you?" "Which Great Historian are you?" "Which Nobel Laureate epidemioligist are you?" "Which famous political fixer are you?" Etc., etc.

I think I veered away from Ireland when (sick of the New Hampshire winter), I opted for mild and tropical climate rather than cold. Too bad I couldn't have combined them, like Singaland, or Ireapore.

People are sometimes afraid of me ... wants to hit people with a cane (get off my lawn!) ... slightly menacing ... likes to drink at the pub ... uses potatoes as condiment and spice ... chatty with a glimmer of luck in me eye...

I went back and changed a couple of answers that could have gone either way for me, and came up with Vatican City. That's more like it, although Papal States would be more pleasing.

So Ashamed...

You're Ireland!

Mystical and rain-soaked, you remain mysterious to many people, and this
makes you intriguing.  You also like a good night at the pub, though many are just as
worried that you will blow up the pub as drink your beverage of choice.  You're good
with words, remarkably lucky, and know and enjoy at least fifteen ways of eating a potato.
 You really don't like snakes.
Take the Country Quiz at
the Blue Pyramid

I think I will have to hang my head for a few weeks. This should have been the Doc! Instead he is an authoritarian city-state where chewing gum and jaywalking recieve harsh penalties.

I'm not so sure -- it said I was Fahrenheit 451. I've never even read Ray Bradbury.

Bah. That quiz is flawed. I took it a few weeks ago, and I am still reeling from the shame of being... the UN. If I only knew how to ski, I would be Switzerland. I must learn to ski AT ONCE.

The book quiz is MUCH better.

Have you taken the Country Quiz? Apparently, I am Singapore:

You're small but well-built and people are a little afraid of you. You might even walk with a cane that people find somewhat menacing, rather than seeing it as an aid to your mobility. You like an urban lifestyle, with little time for nature or the more rural pleasures of life. This fast-paced lifestyle suits you, and you wish everyone around you would just shape up.

Except for the urban bit, I'll take it. Thanks to Bunnie Diehl for this link.

A nice overview and commentary from Midwest Conservative Journal on a recent Harvard Passion of the Christ forum. All the usual suspects were there, saying all the usual things. My favorite was this, from Frothingham Professor of the History of Religion Francois Bovon:

The Gospels are history and interpretation ... The Gospels are not our best sources to the history of the passion of Jesus.

There are times in life, even for loquacious types like yours truly, where words seem to fail and one is left almost speechless. This is one of those times.

Isn't it fascinating that mind-bending remarks like these have become the orthodoxy, and movies like the Passion have become countercultural, a challenge to accepted opinion (at least in the halls of academe)? Said Irving Babbitt in 1908, the time will soon come when the only way left to be original will be to make a modest plea for the traditional good sense of the world. Understanding the life of Jesus through the Gospels would seem rather sensible. What a commentary on our time that it causes such angst among the intelligensia.

This might win the best headline of the day: Angry Druids Hunt Down Vandals.

A vast anti-druid conspiracy painted the ancient Rollright Stones a bright yellow, and the pagans who use and value this site are quite upset.

The Pagan Federation is to offer £1,000 to help police find the vandals.

Karin Attwood, spokeswoman for the federation, said that the pagan community was doing everything in its powers to find those responsible.

Mrs Attwood, who is also a member of the trust overseeing the ancient site, told BBC News Online: "I know that the whole of the pagan community is reeling from this one.

"It's comparable to someone doing something like this to Canterbury Cathedral or the Wailing Wall.

Yes, just like Canterbury Cathedral or a synagogue, that's what I was thinking.

"If the power of magic and the power of prayer works the people who have done this should start to feel very uncomfortable," [a pagan leader] said.

I guess Zeus or Thor or whomever will help and hunt these dastardly demons down. Call David Copperfield, he's a great magician.

In fact, the more I look at the headline it looks like it came from a mythical ancient newspaper. Frontpage of the Imperial Roman News, in large print, Angry Druids hunt down Vandals! Below the fold, Christians lose again at Forum; Winless in Ten Matches.

Good news from England -- Anglicanism is making inroads in the British secondary school system. Apparently, parents are pushing for religious education that instills discipline, respect, and faith in their kids, and government-run schools do not do this. Imagine that.

Of course, considering what has been happening to Anglicanism recently makes one wonder about what kind of "religious education" these kids will be getting. Will it be the wishy-washy/"tolerant of everything but intolerance" variety (in which case a "religious education" will make zero difference from the secular), or a grassroots, doctrinally-founded, traditional variety (in which case the kids will know who they are, what is right and wrong, and why they believe what they believe)?

The secondaries that are in the process of becoming voluntary aided Church schools - Eastbourne Comprehensive in Darlington; Summerbee School, in Bournemouth; and Whitburn Comprehensive, in Durham - have been spurred by examples such as Wyvern College, in Salisbury, Wiltshire.

The boys' school has seen admissions soar since joining the Church of England last year and putting more religion on the curriculum. Although most parents with children at the school were not regular churchgoers, they supported the conversion, as did 85 per cent of the staff.

Glynis Seddon, the principal, said that the school had decided to convert after inspectors said that it needed to improve pupils' spiritual development and tackle pockets of unruly behaviour. "We were improving but we thought, what more can we offer our boys? We wanted to develop the school's ethos and values, and although it had no connection whatsoever with the Church, we decided that becoming a Church school was the best way to move forward."

Frank Sweasey, the chairman of the governors, said that parents welcomed the introduction of Christian ethics. "They understood the idea of a Church school and perceived the advantages in terms of discipline and respect for others," he added.

Peter Smith, a business analyst whose son Harry attends the school, was one of the parents who backed the change. The 62-year-old, who described himself as a practising Christian, said: "I felt that the ethical element has been disappearing from schools over the last 20 or 30 years.

"Although parents have to put ethical sense into their children, I think it should also be supported by the school. Harry is now 15 and I think the school has improved in every sense since he started, in results, behaviour and ethos."

Thanks to Relapsed Catholic for the UK Telegraph link.

The War Continues

The Doc is, quite rightly, incensed by the atrocity in Fallujah. It's not just that the contractors were part of an effort to bring in electricity and water, as the Doc says quoting the Derb. In fact, they were actually bringing in food, as Peggy Noonan points out this morning. That is why they were attacked. It is because of the attention to the ordinary needs of Iraqis that wins the war against the insurgency. All they can offer the population is fear, the fear of being blow up in bombings that are increasingly aimed explictly against civilian targets. Remember that this comes after four days of fighting in Fallujah between recently arrived Marines and insurgents that left literally dozens of terrorists dead, terrorists who thought that the Marines would be an easier target than the 82nd Airborne. Killing four contractors was the best that they could do in reprisal. It's like a mini-Tet in Fallujah. We just gutted the insurgency in street battles, they hack up some burned American bodies and get all the news time they could possibly want.

So let's not get too incensed and too vengeful. If reprisals like that were carried out, then we lose the game just as much as we would if we decided to withdraw in a month...or set any sort of arbitrary date for an American withdrawal of forces.

No Iraqi or foreign insurgent will now dare to fire directly upon US military forces. They know they will be killed. Even their bomb attacks have become much less sucessful and frequent than they were in November. We adapt, improvise, and innovate; and due to our Vietnam experience, there are a lot of general officers who realize from first-hand experience that by innovating faster, we stay "inside their loop", to use a hip military phrase of the moment.

This means that the best the terrorists inside Iraq can do is strike at the population. And this is done because they fear the future. As strategypage.com puts it, "Sunni Arabs, who have ruled Iraq for centuries using such brutal methods, are terrified at the prospect of what will happen to them when an Iraqi government is formed by a democratic vote. Wander into any market or coffee shop in Sunni areas and you'll hear talk of "war crime" trials and revenge attacks from Kurds and Shia Arabs (and Christian Arabs, and Turkomen and even Iraqi Jews). The Sunni Arabs have a lot to be scared about, and the attack on the four Americans in Fallujah shows why. The video of the four Americans murdered in Fallujah will be shown throughout Iraq. Sunnis will see it as a victory over the invaders. Most other Iraqis will see it an another example of Sunni Arab cruelty..."

And based on the extensive polls reported upon in the last two weeks, it doesn't seem to me that the majority of Sunnis' will see it as a victory over the invaders. But realize that in June, things will get worse. If there isn't an outbreak of bombings and violence of the sort that happened in Fallujah as a way of swaying the transition of power from Coalition to Provisional Government, then that means in the next two months the insurgents will have been broken. Even with considerable success in the counter-insurgency effort, however, some of the bombers will still get through. We have to be ready for that.

John Derbyshire had a satisfying "solution" to the Fallujah problem in yesterday's NR Corner: Given that these civilian contractors and their colleagues have been brought in to, among other things, get essential services like water, electricity, and sewerage working, I suggest that the Coalition authorities make sure that none of these utilities is available in the city of Fallujah until the bombers are handed over.

Embargo the city. No one in, no one out. Starve the city out if need be. The Coalition needs to stop thinking about what the liberal Western press will say about them, and begin thinking (taking the long view, and thinking about how insurrections have been suppressed throughout history) about what will work.

These atrocities yesterday were committed because the Saddam loyalists do not think (1.) the American soldiers will counteract with similar or necessary brutality, and (2.) that the American public can "take" such images and will push for an immediate abandonment of Iraq. Pull a page from General Sherman's book and make Fallujah howl. Apparently it is the only message they understand.

Or as Richard Brookhiser said, also on the Corner: Fallujahns are saying that Fallujah is the graveyard of Americans. Time it became the graveyard of some of those Fallujahns responsible for today's brutality.