A Word and Memorial Day

Going to Houston a while back I was embarrassed for the owners of Gay Pontiac. This last year there was an article in Opinion Journal, WSJ's free site. The article was about a law proposed by George Murtha that the president should certify, before any forces left for combat that they were 'properly trained and equipped.' The article highlighted how laughable, from a distance, was the equipment and training of the Navy's torpedo bombers. Yet it was they who brought the Japanese fighters down to sea level and allowed our other planes to successfully dive bomb the Japanese fleet at Midway sinking three carriers and breaking the Imperial Navy's Carrier offense. It seems like I recall Star Wars as being conceptually derived from that battle (Midway). George Gay was the one survivor of the attacking torpedo plane force. After his active involvement, he watched the battle from the water. So here's to veterans and those who never left the service alive, who even rescued the name 'Gay.'

Annika likes the Heckler & Koch Universale Selbstladepistole, aka the HK USP, discussion of which begins at the bottom of page 3, 'Like Goldilocks'.

Reflecting on a woman retaining a French identity

The tenor of female liberation in the U.S. has been on doing those serious things that men do, that 'daddy,' sometimes real and sometimes borrowed, prohibited. Delacroix in Liberty Leading the People gave a different Enlightenment and French ideal for a woman, that of one, in the picture bare breasted, who could initiate by her sexuality and not merely be responsive or guide by traditional passive aggressive means, that is by the man failing until he did what the woman wanted. This feminine liberty may include having 4 children without being officially married as the recent French woman Socialist presidential candidate Royal. It also included the intellectual aggresion of Mme Curie and the first Frau Einstein.

As part of the New York Times support of the death instinct, it did not publish the following news: the Horror in Knoxville.

Thanatos, the death instinct, is a controversial idea of Freud's. It was interesting to see this, an example of it in a basic biologic process.

Acts 15: 'A lawful marriage'

There are several interesting things about the Gospel passage from Acts 15 this last Sunday. The first is that there was the question of the possible necessity of becoming a Jew before, or as part of, becoming a Christian. The Jews are seen as an arrogant, insular people but this implies it was quite accepted by them to become one which kind of dilutes the characterization. Another is the idea that, to be a Christian, you had to abstain from eating idol blood sacrifices and 'have a lawful marriage.' So the Catholic Church 'obsession' with sexual sin happened at the time things changed from purely the teachings of Jesus/ relationship to him to a religion. Freud said that Christianity is the 'religion of the son.' The Pope in his recent trip was wont to define what portion of sexuality the sons/daughters were now due, to me analogously to how the poor, deprived of oral satisfaction, were to be given a portion with the killing/subjugation of the producers/ owners. The degree of repression his superego representation demanded however seemed out of step with what the Brazilians seem to have needed.

Arguing for Bush Derangement Syndrome

A minority of us apparently feel that Mr. Bush is a serious, courageous guy who is doing his best which isn't to say that he shows typical dazzling brilliance. That makes him easy to 'misunderestimate.' He has been able to admit mistakes, viz. his choice of General Petraeus and a new strategy in Iraq. Another view is hard to miss. I have felt that his giving the Medal of Freedom to George Tenet suggests that doing the metaphorical Lewinksi to him is the best policy. Thus Bush has virtually demanded that a criteria be created in your mind to whit, 'Bush not serious,' to which this item be given as an example; thus enrolling himself in those who have 'Bush Derangement Syndrome.' Ron Rosenbaum has comments on Tenet, as usual, when he comments, the best.

Lovers' Astronomy

Megan McArdle has a recent blog post re: her reticence to get married and have children. To which:

Dear Megan:

Bishop Sheen's book title 'Three to get Married' may provide a useful metaphor. Lovers wish, before they commit, that their ardor won't cool. This may imply that there are 'three to get married' in the sense that, in an older Catholic word, concupiscence should be part of the alignment. Nothing brings an end to history of course, with or without marriage. In marriage what arises from ardor is often a baby which brings, in a different, but also attachment provoking sphere 'three to get married.' It is like those medieval pictures of a Ptolemaic universe turning and a different sphere emerging. The sphere containing concupiscence has it's own clock and will return however and perhaps having more than one 'three to get married' may help the revolution of the spheres.