I find that morning sickness, like temptation, is best dealt with by firmly supressing the idea of it the moment it surfaces. Only by resolutely refusing to give in do I emerge victorious. If I start to waver ("Well, if I get sick now, at least it will be over with..."), it's all over, and I end up feeling disgusted. I can't always keep it under control, especially when I'm at home, but I can put myself a bit out of temptation's way by refusing to step into the bathroom until the urge has passed. The very proximity of a basin seems too powerful for a weakened system to resist. However, giving in doesn't make me feel better -- in fact, I always find myself wondering why anyone in her right mind would get herself into this situation. (I have these same thoughts during labor too, but that can't be stopped by refusing to think about it.)
The most successful strategy for avoiding unpleasantness is to stop talking immediately. This got us through a grocery shopping last week without incident, although it created the mildly odd effect of me having to communicate with Darwin by pointing and mumbling, "Hm." Better by far to look a bit silly than to succumb to the baser urges of nature, what? St. Francis threw himself into a thorn bush to avoid temptation; all I have to do to is stand still and be silent.
As Lent is a penitential season, perhaps I should just offer it up, but it does seem a bit uncalled for to have to give up foods twice.
Wednesday, February 6, 2008
Tuesday, February 5, 2008
Taking Some Time in the Wilderness
To many of the folks over at NRO's The Corner, the prospect of a McCain sweep today is being looked at rather like a hangman's noose. Some have gone so far as to suggest that the conservative movement would be better off spending 4-8 years "in the wilderness" under a President Hillary than under a President McCain. The theory is, that with a clear foe in the White House, conservatives would have to go off and re-group and come up with new ideas.
While I normally enjoy National Review a great deal, I've been having an oddly distant feel reading their election coverate lately. Perhaps part of this is that while many of their regular writers seem to have latched onto Romney as the best way of avoiding McCain, I'm unclear in my mind as to whether Romney would actually govern noticably more conservatively than McCain. Yes, he's running to the right of McCain at the moment, but given he re-invention over the last couple years, I'm not sure how solidly I believe it. President Bush has not governed as a movement conservative, and I suspect that Romney would, if anything, be even less so than Bush.
Now, McCain is clearly not a movement conservative either. The difference is, everyone seems pretty clear on that. Given the fits they're having about him at the moment, it seems to me that conservative writers should be motivated by a McCain presidency to go off, do some thinking, and come up with some direction which has in many ways been lacking since the days of the Contract With America. With a President Romney, on the other hand (assuming he could even win the White House, which I kind of doubt) I fear we'd have another case of conservative writers spending much of their efforts running cover for a president who is not actually governing that conservatively.
In other words, couldn't we spend our time in the wilderness under a President McCain rather than a President Hillary?
Call me crazy, but I think McCain would do much less damage to the country than Hillary would. And unlike the prospect of a Giuliani presidency, I don't think that McCain winning would do long term damage to the political alignment of the Repulican party. McCain is made possible by the unique blend of his biography, his perceived (and sometimes real) centrism, and his clear representation of a break with the unpopular current administration. (With disapproval ratings for Bush around 65%, there are clearly Republicans who don't think he's doing a good job as well as Democrats.)
That said, since we don't vote here till March 4th, I'm currently sitting and waiting to see what will happen by then. My interest in a McCain nomination is partly a reflection of not being greatly impressed with any of the candidates.
While I normally enjoy National Review a great deal, I've been having an oddly distant feel reading their election coverate lately. Perhaps part of this is that while many of their regular writers seem to have latched onto Romney as the best way of avoiding McCain, I'm unclear in my mind as to whether Romney would actually govern noticably more conservatively than McCain. Yes, he's running to the right of McCain at the moment, but given he re-invention over the last couple years, I'm not sure how solidly I believe it. President Bush has not governed as a movement conservative, and I suspect that Romney would, if anything, be even less so than Bush.
Now, McCain is clearly not a movement conservative either. The difference is, everyone seems pretty clear on that. Given the fits they're having about him at the moment, it seems to me that conservative writers should be motivated by a McCain presidency to go off, do some thinking, and come up with some direction which has in many ways been lacking since the days of the Contract With America. With a President Romney, on the other hand (assuming he could even win the White House, which I kind of doubt) I fear we'd have another case of conservative writers spending much of their efforts running cover for a president who is not actually governing that conservatively.
In other words, couldn't we spend our time in the wilderness under a President McCain rather than a President Hillary?
Call me crazy, but I think McCain would do much less damage to the country than Hillary would. And unlike the prospect of a Giuliani presidency, I don't think that McCain winning would do long term damage to the political alignment of the Repulican party. McCain is made possible by the unique blend of his biography, his perceived (and sometimes real) centrism, and his clear representation of a break with the unpopular current administration. (With disapproval ratings for Bush around 65%, there are clearly Republicans who don't think he's doing a good job as well as Democrats.)
That said, since we don't vote here till March 4th, I'm currently sitting and waiting to see what will happen by then. My interest in a McCain nomination is partly a reflection of not being greatly impressed with any of the candidates.
Monday, February 4, 2008
On Holding Impractical Opinions
When we first moved out to the San Fernando Valley, my Dad re-registered to vote in our new district via a voter signup booth being run by a local Republican group. When asked for his political affiliation, he told them, "Tory". When his voter registration arrived in the mail a few weeks later, it listed him as "Republican". Opinion was divided on whether the booth worker had known that the conservatives in Britain are called Tories and figured that Republican was the closest equivalent, or if she was simply trying to sign up as many Republicans as possible.
I grew up among a set of people who read a great deal, and so I was used to a wide range of sometimes quixotic political beliefs being expressed. The father of my best friend growing up proclaimed himself a monarchist. One of the set insisted he was a marxist -- though others sometimes appended the modifier "high-school" to that appellation. Others were known to give kind words to agrarianism, distributism, or the suggestion that little worthwhile had happened since 1500. All of this could make for a lot of interesting conversation, and occasionally encouraged people to talk about moving out to some sort of rural homeland, or make minor lifestyle changes like milling all their own flour from grain. Still, in general it was a congenial group, and people's intellectual eccentricities helped provide them with a healthy distance from their own place and time.
However, I'd always taken these sorts of beliefs to universally be, as they were in the set that I grew up around, more a set of intellectual affinities than beliefs which were, to use the business buzzword, actionable. What does it mean to be a monarchist in the modern US and to prefer a generally feudal civic order?
It seemed to me, personally and from early experience, that the answer was clearly that feudal convictions might form how one thought about family property, how one treated any employees, etc. There is, short of a complete societal breakdown and reconstruction, simply no way for the US or parts of it to become feudal. So however much one might think that feudalism represented a desirable set of civic relationships. Thus, I would expect to see a "feudalist" espousing certain solutions that were "feudal-ish" to societal or political problems, but not really expecting to see a feudal monarchy springing up here any time soon.
However, such calm reason is not universally found among those holding unusual political/economic beliefs. A while back, I read someone demand of his virtual audience, "What are you personally doing to bring an end to capitalism?"
Leaving aside any jokes about how the holder of such convictions is likely to be contributing towards his goal via under-employment and lack of possessions, what exactly does such a demand mean? Admittedly, there any man who believe outrage itself to be an action, and so perhaps feel that by railing against "capitalism" they are doing something to end it. The owning of property/capital by private institutions is something so vast (which developed so gradually) that I am unclear how exactly one works to end it.
Or to take something I actually have a certain, though limited, affinity for: One of the main things that I appreciate about medieval feudalism is that it developed organically, as a system of duties and privileges which, when it worked well, tied all members of society together in an interconnected net of obligation. And yet, precisely this quality means that one could not simply enact a feudal society. Enacting it would violate all the better aspects of its nature.
Similarly, one may recognize the sense of reality which comes with the direct connection between work and product in a craftsman or agricultural society, yet at the same time recognize that our modern culture and technology simply cannot be pushed into the mold of a society made of up farmers and craftsmen.
Perhaps it is in part due to my temperamental conservatism, but while I see great value in appreciating the good points of cultures and polities other than that of our current time and place, I have a great distrust of any suggestion that society or polity be suddenly and radically restructured. Not only do I find it unlikely to happen, but it seems to me that the attempt could be highly destructive in ways that no one could imagine before hand.
This often puts me in the odd position of distrusting figures who advocate doing things that I, in principle, support. For instance, I find Huckabee's suggestion that the IRS be abolished in favor of a national consumption tax a simpler and more egalitarian approach to taxation. And yet, I find his suggestion that this be done in one fell swoop a mark against him.
I grew up among a set of people who read a great deal, and so I was used to a wide range of sometimes quixotic political beliefs being expressed. The father of my best friend growing up proclaimed himself a monarchist. One of the set insisted he was a marxist -- though others sometimes appended the modifier "high-school" to that appellation. Others were known to give kind words to agrarianism, distributism, or the suggestion that little worthwhile had happened since 1500. All of this could make for a lot of interesting conversation, and occasionally encouraged people to talk about moving out to some sort of rural homeland, or make minor lifestyle changes like milling all their own flour from grain. Still, in general it was a congenial group, and people's intellectual eccentricities helped provide them with a healthy distance from their own place and time.
However, I'd always taken these sorts of beliefs to universally be, as they were in the set that I grew up around, more a set of intellectual affinities than beliefs which were, to use the business buzzword, actionable. What does it mean to be a monarchist in the modern US and to prefer a generally feudal civic order?
It seemed to me, personally and from early experience, that the answer was clearly that feudal convictions might form how one thought about family property, how one treated any employees, etc. There is, short of a complete societal breakdown and reconstruction, simply no way for the US or parts of it to become feudal. So however much one might think that feudalism represented a desirable set of civic relationships. Thus, I would expect to see a "feudalist" espousing certain solutions that were "feudal-ish" to societal or political problems, but not really expecting to see a feudal monarchy springing up here any time soon.
However, such calm reason is not universally found among those holding unusual political/economic beliefs. A while back, I read someone demand of his virtual audience, "What are you personally doing to bring an end to capitalism?"
Leaving aside any jokes about how the holder of such convictions is likely to be contributing towards his goal via under-employment and lack of possessions, what exactly does such a demand mean? Admittedly, there any man who believe outrage itself to be an action, and so perhaps feel that by railing against "capitalism" they are doing something to end it. The owning of property/capital by private institutions is something so vast (which developed so gradually) that I am unclear how exactly one works to end it.
Or to take something I actually have a certain, though limited, affinity for: One of the main things that I appreciate about medieval feudalism is that it developed organically, as a system of duties and privileges which, when it worked well, tied all members of society together in an interconnected net of obligation. And yet, precisely this quality means that one could not simply enact a feudal society. Enacting it would violate all the better aspects of its nature.
Similarly, one may recognize the sense of reality which comes with the direct connection between work and product in a craftsman or agricultural society, yet at the same time recognize that our modern culture and technology simply cannot be pushed into the mold of a society made of up farmers and craftsmen.
Perhaps it is in part due to my temperamental conservatism, but while I see great value in appreciating the good points of cultures and polities other than that of our current time and place, I have a great distrust of any suggestion that society or polity be suddenly and radically restructured. Not only do I find it unlikely to happen, but it seems to me that the attempt could be highly destructive in ways that no one could imagine before hand.
This often puts me in the odd position of distrusting figures who advocate doing things that I, in principle, support. For instance, I find Huckabee's suggestion that the IRS be abolished in favor of a national consumption tax a simpler and more egalitarian approach to taxation. And yet, I find his suggestion that this be done in one fell swoop a mark against him.
A Quick Political Prediction
Heading into the Super Tuesday primaries, my prediction (probably not a very original one) is:
On the Republican side McCain comes close to a clean sweep and pretty much makes nomination inevitable. Here's hoping he follows up on that by re-assuring the base by taking a solidly conservative VP. One hears noise about Brownback, which would be great from my point of view. I don't love McCain, but I'm not sure anyone else still in the field is better, and he's the only one making much noise about bringing back some desperately needed fiscal responsibility.
On the Democratic side, Hillary wins most states, but not by an overwhelming margin. Obama carries his home state and perhaps one or two others. The day ends with Hillary ahead, but Obama still viable with a somewhat healthy delegate count and the increasing support of the party leadership. It seems like there's the possibility of a rather sticky situation there, as the activists/leadership seem to universally want Obama (not only because he's a great speaker, but also because it increasingly looks like Hillary would be an instant loser against McCain) and yet Hillary keeps winning more delegates. No idea how that sorts out in the end.
On the Republican side McCain comes close to a clean sweep and pretty much makes nomination inevitable. Here's hoping he follows up on that by re-assuring the base by taking a solidly conservative VP. One hears noise about Brownback, which would be great from my point of view. I don't love McCain, but I'm not sure anyone else still in the field is better, and he's the only one making much noise about bringing back some desperately needed fiscal responsibility.
On the Democratic side, Hillary wins most states, but not by an overwhelming margin. Obama carries his home state and perhaps one or two others. The day ends with Hillary ahead, but Obama still viable with a somewhat healthy delegate count and the increasing support of the party leadership. It seems like there's the possibility of a rather sticky situation there, as the activists/leadership seem to universally want Obama (not only because he's a great speaker, but also because it increasingly looks like Hillary would be an instant loser against McCain) and yet Hillary keeps winning more delegates. No idea how that sorts out in the end.
Saturday, February 2, 2008
More fun with plumbing
You guys! Apropos of the plumbing discussion going on below, TS pointed me to Kohler's series of ads for their toilets and fixtures. I especially commend the ads entitled "Jo's Plumbing" and "The Dilemma" to your attention.
Friday, February 1, 2008
Don't Let the Children Scare You
It is close to axiomatic in the Darwin household that it is possible to do things with children. And given that one of the main things we do is talk, we certainly tend to maintain that it is possible to have good conversation even while the brood is milling about and brooding. Yet lately, with the girls currently aged 5, 4, and nearly 2, even we have been forced to admit that adult conversation is difficult at times.
The oldest two are certainly up to narrating their days, talking about the books they've read/heard or spinning loud and somewhat confused yarns from sheer imagination -- but their attention spans are short and they tend to try to vear any adult conversation off in a direction they can understand. Though we occasionally put in the work to make them keep silent during dinner while we talk, meals are generally given over to kid-level conversation and the two of us talk over dishes or after they've gone to bed.
Talking with guests can work well when they are other families with children. Then the whole pack of young ones can be chased upstairs or outside while the adults talk. But recent times when we've had single visitors (especially people who aren't used to children, like our priests) have been less successful. Perhaps it takes a certain talent or experience to successfully maintain conversation while children run in and out and interject their own questions.
We remain convinced that parenthood does not mean the end of long adult conversations, but for the first time recently we've found ourselves occasionally arranging for one or the other of us to meet with others outside the house if serious talking needs to be had. I'm hoping this is a fairly brief, awkward stage the children are in: not yet old enough to be counted on to stay off playing on their own for protracted periods (or join in at a semi-intelligent level) nor young enough to be placed in a swing or carseat and allowed to drowse off. In the meantime, though, people occasionally remark in shocked tones: Wow, your girls have a lot of energy.
Yes. They do...
The oldest two are certainly up to narrating their days, talking about the books they've read/heard or spinning loud and somewhat confused yarns from sheer imagination -- but their attention spans are short and they tend to try to vear any adult conversation off in a direction they can understand. Though we occasionally put in the work to make them keep silent during dinner while we talk, meals are generally given over to kid-level conversation and the two of us talk over dishes or after they've gone to bed.
Talking with guests can work well when they are other families with children. Then the whole pack of young ones can be chased upstairs or outside while the adults talk. But recent times when we've had single visitors (especially people who aren't used to children, like our priests) have been less successful. Perhaps it takes a certain talent or experience to successfully maintain conversation while children run in and out and interject their own questions.
We remain convinced that parenthood does not mean the end of long adult conversations, but for the first time recently we've found ourselves occasionally arranging for one or the other of us to meet with others outside the house if serious talking needs to be had. I'm hoping this is a fairly brief, awkward stage the children are in: not yet old enough to be counted on to stay off playing on their own for protracted periods (or join in at a semi-intelligent level) nor young enough to be placed in a swing or carseat and allowed to drowse off. In the meantime, though, people occasionally remark in shocked tones: Wow, your girls have a lot of energy.
Yes. They do...
Dirty Minds Behind CleanFlicks?
UPDATE: TS writes to inform us that an update has been posted to the link below, in which CleanFlicks denies that the offender ever worked for or was associated with them. Apparently CleanFlicks has filed a defamation suit against the man.
------
It seems that the co-founder of CleanFlicks has been arrested (along with a business partner) for paying a 14-year-old for sex. (HT: Matthew Lickona) Not only that, but he was apparently using a successor company, Flix Club, as a front for running a porn movie business on the side.
Though I objected loudly to the concept behind CleanFlicks when that was in the news a couple years back, it's perhaps going a bit far to blame the idea that you can make a bad movie into a good movie by removing objectionable scenes for the co-founder's downfall. At the least, though, it would seem that an excessive fascination with objectionable content did him a great deal of harm in the end.
------
It seems that the co-founder of CleanFlicks has been arrested (along with a business partner) for paying a 14-year-old for sex. (HT: Matthew Lickona) Not only that, but he was apparently using a successor company, Flix Club, as a front for running a porn movie business on the side.
Though I objected loudly to the concept behind CleanFlicks when that was in the news a couple years back, it's perhaps going a bit far to blame the idea that you can make a bad movie into a good movie by removing objectionable scenes for the co-founder's downfall. At the least, though, it would seem that an excessive fascination with objectionable content did him a great deal of harm in the end.
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