The rise and fall of classical music… In response to the question, "How exactly did classical composing wither away?" MPC poster Balkan Bonehead writes:

As the mercantile class emerged as a cultural force in its own right, the focus shifted from opera to other spectacular forms - the piano recital, the concerto, and the symphony. This shouldn't be taken to mean that the middle class loved opera, qq.v. the scene at the opening of Galsworthy's The Man of Property, the vicious competition among opera theaters in 19th-c Paris, Verdi's celebrity status in Italy, the huge volume of Italian opera in general, etc. The public just loved classical music, and no wonder - it was exciting stuff. The stiff concert atmosphere of today didn't apply at the time. People used to eat in the theater, talk, play cards, etc., after all, it was a show. 

More at My Posting Career.   

Servants and wives… The news story about Arnold's love child drifted into a somewhat more interesting discussion about the role of servants and some philosophizing about the nature of women.  I wrote,

You go back to first principles. What does the nature of woman suit her for? What are her qualities, biological, psychological, etc. Of course there are exceptions (happy or not). What exactly does a woman do with her life when she has servants raise her children? What kind of mother is she to her children then? What does modern education, required for a modern career, do to her way of thinking? Simple questions. I don't think you can critique the modern family without addressing them.

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Fighting vs. Paying… It's sometimes helpful to look at the world as being divided between two types, those who will fight vs. those who will pay. This approach is used by criminals, a quick means of assessing who their most profitable victims are. To be willing to pay means a desire to seek passive solutions that involve either shared or individually borne expenses, a form of social amortization. Generally speaking, those who pay end up paying those who fight. People who fight are by nature driven to resolution through conflict.

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The nerd and his umbilicus… In a recent Sailer post, Steve relays a reader's anecdote about discovering a conclave of Wikipedia editors in a food court.  A commenter remarks:

These are the heroes of our age. I wouldn't want to hang out with them, and definitely wouldn't want to catch some of their social stigma, but they definitely offer a lot of good to the world. We could do worse than killing everyone alive except for wikipedia editors to create an improved human race. [emphasis added]

Obviously I'm not going to take that sort of thing lying down.  More at My Posting Career.   

Coming soon to a theater near you: Fag Christ… You might want to wait until Easter is over before reading this one.  Tis the season to fuck with Christians!  (Tis always the season.)  More at My Posting Career.   

A reality based look at...sluts… When a study shows a strong relationship between number of non-marital sexual partners and stable marriage, what do "reality-based" people do?  Mostly they seem to argue that reality must be stupid.

What is most interesting is to observe the intersection between deeply implanted myths and a starkly countervailing reality. One example of these myths is that sophisticated, smart people do not get hung up on sex, and it's always sensible to do a "trial live-in" so that you know what to expect. When such myths are implanted deeply enough, it takes decades to destroy them, and that is assuming the subject is at all willing to take a second or third look at what he believes. (Presumably people who score highly on "openness" would be willing to do this, however…)

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Wop says don't worry about nonwhite America… Michael Barone asks a stupid question–will the Republican Party survive with a white minority?–and gives a stupid answer:  sure, Mexicans are just like you and me!

Barone whistles in the dark about the true question, what does a white minority America mean for conservative or even pseudo-conservative interests. You are going to get looted, you dumb fool, in fact the looting is already underway, and has been for years in the form of affirmative action, "civil rights" lawsuits against police exams, official racism in government contracting, etc. Only a complete fucking idiot–one with little awareness of the outside world–would argue that we have nothing to worry about America with a white (i.e. productive) minority.

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Presidential IQ… What is most telling about IQ obsessives, and this comes through in the comments to Sailer's recent pieces on Obama's possible IQ, is how inconceivable it is to them that certain people are only of modestly above average intelligence. IQ has become a kind of totem, the key to the managerial elite's right of rule. Because we are smart, we are the best people to organize national affairs–and vice versa. This leads to the assumption that someone could not possibly do well in college or in politics by dint of hard work.  More at My Posting Career.   

Politics as addiction… South Dakota passed a law requiring a three day waiting period for abortions.  Rather than comment on the relevance of such a law, I would like to point out that this type of stunt legislation is similar in effect to an endorphin release–it temporarily relieves the pervasive anxiety state of a dysfunctional and stress-inducing society.  The more stressful modern life becomes, the more people are addicted to these partisan endorphin releases.

But the real thing to be wary of here is that it causes the disaffected to maintain a weak partisan identity and prevents them from committing to real change (assuming positive change is possible in an overscaled society). In this case it is a tactic used by the Republican Party to ensure its own survival, which is to say the survival of the managerial class' backup team.

I think this is the key to understanding modern politics–it really is specifically designed to trigger a compensating pleasure state, and you are left dependent on partisan rhetoric and partisan policy gimmicks to feel that next surge of endorphins. Politics as addiction!

More at My Posting Career.   

David Brooks and Unconservatism… David Brooks is an idiot–a Thomas Friedman who plays less golf with technology moguls and skims his first draft before submitting it. The only thing of note Brooks has ever written was an early parody of Buckley (another superficially conservative pundit who became worse and worse as he grew older). But the grimmest thing you can say about the state of conservatism is this:
 

Ottawa Citizen commentator David Warren has identified Brooks as the sort of conservative pundit that liberals like, someone who is "sophisticated" and "engages with" the liberal agenda, in contrast to a "real conservative" like Charles Krauthammer.

Remember, the crucial difference between these two "conservatives" is that Brooks advocates for gay marriage, while Krauthammer is agnostic.

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Stop me before I pundit again!… [T]he opening of the Daily Howler piece plays up one of my favorite pundit tics, and I sometimes actually see it happening as I read their editorials. Some disembodied factoid or Harper's stat drifts into their field of view, and automatically–almost as a function of their autonomic systems–the pundits immediately begin thinking in opinion column blurbs, taking this unconnected information (which has no logical place in their cloudy worldviews) and immediately babbling about it, like a cocktail guest who simply must say something even on subjects unfamiliar to him. This is I suppose what makes them become columnists, as no normal human being functions this way.

There is no internal censor that says to Brooks, "If I write about this absurd comparison between completely dissimilar things, I will sound ridiculous." Instead, that inner voice says, "Hmm, fascinating. Just the other day I–" Incontinent of thought, he quickly begins pissing it everywhere.

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12,000 deadbeats protest in Madison… People sentimentalize teachers because they are exposed to them as adult parent substitutes?most of my teachers were mediocre, a few decent, the balance completely worthless.  More at My Posting Career.   

Do not hide your Kaus under a bushel! Sarah Palin!… Where is Mickeeeeeeeeeeeeyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy Kaus?  His last Kausfiles entry is dated February 2.  Read My Posting Career.  (Bonus SEO: Sarah Palin!)   

Escape from Poz Island… A news item on a planned development for senior gays (you're paying for their AIDS medicine, bigots) turns into speculation about a dystopian future where Snake Plissken must rescue the president from a dangerous citadel of queers.  Read My Posting Career.   

True Grit… In the Coen brothers' two attempts at the quasi-western they remind us that an outsider will always try to translate what he sees into more familiar cultural lingo. Elements which are alien become ambiguous or meaningless, the narrative adopts the outsider's perspective. Fittingly, both No Country For Old Men and True Grit are themselves translations of literary works, as if the Coens hope to cope with their limitations by doubling their remove from the material.  More at My Posting Career.
   

A review of Windows Phone 7… The pluses and minuses of Microsoft's cell phone do-over, at My Posting Career.   

Anatomy of a troll… When yet another teenage suicide led to a hysterical (and, as it turns out, premature) limpout over bullying, I decided it was time to troll, and troll hard. More at My Posting Career.   

An error in multiculturalism… A common mistake liberals make is they look at the one or two Ethiopians (or Chinese, or Mexicans) who were in their Montessori school and their only thought about this is, "More, please!" What, after all, could give a liberal greater frisson?

But this orgasmic feeling is never calmed by experience and wisdom. Thus they assume that where one or two exceptional minorities (surrounded by white faces) were obedient and hard working, that taking their number times ten will magnify the ecstacy. It does not occur to them that ethnic minorities behave differently as their numbers increase–even if by some miracle you could ensure that they all shared the same qualities and upbringing (which of course you can't).

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SARPALIN KILLED GIFFORDS!… Words cannot really do justice to the deranged frenzy that has gripped America since the Arizona shooting.  It looks as though Congresswoman Giffords will survive in some capacity (no one really knows if she will be able to resume duties in Congress, or if a replacement will have to be appointed).  It also looks as though our discourse is now permanently insane, perhaps nuttier than Jared Loughner.  More at My Posting Career.