~ I have always worried about the problems that will probably follow wind farms ("Wind can cause climate change"). I'm sure wind farms are still better sources of energy, but the thing is, we just have the idea that the solution to energy problems never need involve conservation, when conservation is precisely the point.
~ A new Obama biography deals with some of his early relationships. It includes this excerpt from a letter to a girlfriend in which he reflects on T.S. Eliot:
"I haven’t read “The Waste Land” for a year, and I never did bother to check all the footnotes. But I will hazard these statements—Eliot contains the same ecstatic vision which runs from Münzer to Yeats. However, he retains a grounding in the social reality/order of his time. Facing what he perceives as a choice between ecstatic chaos and lifeless mechanistic order, he accedes to maintaining a separation of asexual purity and brutal sexual reality. And he wears a stoical face before this. Read his essay on Tradition and the Individual Talent, as well as Four Quartets, when he’s less concerned with depicting moribund Europe, to catch a sense of what I speak. Remember how I said there’s a certain kind of conservatism which I respect more than bourgeois liberalism—Eliot is of this type. Of course, the dichotomy he maintains is reactionary, but it’s due to a deep fatalism, not ignorance. (Counter him with Yeats or Pound, who, arising from the same milieu, opted to support Hitler and Mussolini.) And this fatalism is born out of the relation between fertility and death, which I touched on in my last letter—life feeds on itself. A fatalism I share with the western tradition at times. You seem surprised at Eliot’s irreconcilable ambivalence; don’t you share this ambivalence yourself, Alex?"
~ Flannery O'Connor's cartoons.
~ Nick at the Phillies! All my friends were at the Phillies game that night--now I wish I had been there, too! I love New Girl, and I can't wait for Jess and Nick to get together.
~ I love theater marquees.
~ George Will writes a touching column about his son, Jon, who has Down Syndrome, and baseball.
7 comments:
No! Nick and Jess can't get together because then the show will lose its main tension!
Jim and Pam made it work!
Maybe Cece and Schmidt can break up?
AH! THIS IS A GREAT POST.
1) they certainly can't get together yet. Nick has to stop being a bum and gain self-respect and earn her a little bit.
2) If only "there’s a certain kind of conservatism which I respect more than bourgeois liberalism" was born out in his politics. very interesting
3) this movie theater is the reason for my love of movies. I saw my first movie there!!!
4)the wind farm thing is sobering--especially since I kind of loved seeing them. I guess xkcd is right again.
ps. This is sooooo right: "we just have the idea that the solution to energy problems never need involve conservation, when conservation is precisely the point."
You're so great, Hopkins--you make me glad I blog.
Aw, if I were Jess, I would take Nick as is;). I mean, he is a bartender, after all. And frugal as all get-out, which is sort of like having a job.
Wait a sec, I feel certain that you once blogged (or at least told me) that you like keeping all the lights on. (Or is that just my guy?)
Ha! Touche. I do love me a lot of lights. And my car...
But I do conserve some things! Mostly because I'm frugal.
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