What are you currently reading?

[Fëanor]

...

Personally and theoretically I admire the Scandinavian model more than the US one but I am fully aware that neither the former nor the latter have any chance of materializing on Romanian soil. I want my country to progress not by a servile - and futile - import of foreign models but by a pragmatic fusion between modernity (about which both Scandinavia and US offer valuable insights) and our national traditions (which in their turn can offer valuable insights to a modernity that more often than not seems to have lost its spiritual compass).

Sure, but what you say ends up sounding like just another assertion of the American Myth and American Exceptionalism.

Don's say that some of us are suggesting that Amercians adopt (with servility and futility) some foreign model -- that's 'straw horse' argument.  So take for example universal healthcare, a rational solution to assuring everyone protection at reasonable cost.  There is no single formula for this, and each country has it's own model.  Let the USA get on and formulate its own model for universal care rather than just resist everything on the basis that it's un-Amercian.

[Ataraxia]

Someone here referred me to Montaigne's essays but I'm reading this first (dunno why). Anyway, I am enjoying it very much and want to thank whomever it was who put me on to this fellow in the first place.
[asin]1590514254[/asin]

I'm learning a lot and having a good time so this is one of those rare occasions when the book will be returned to the shelf and not sent out the door.

[Bogey]

[Bogey]

More of a "reference" than a straight read for the new 10 dvd set I hope to net at Christmas.....many thanks, Kevin P.

[Papy Oli]

just finished; served itss purpose very well - does exactly what it said on tin :




now onto :



part 1 - Sounds and symbols
part 2 - Harmony and counterpoint
part 3 - musical forms
part 4 - instruments and voices
part 5 - scores and score-reading

halfway through part one - very clearly explain so far.

[Kontrapunctus]

[Ataraxia]

[asin]1848630611[/asin]
[asin]0857660160[/asin]

[coffee]

I'm not sure that there's anything more satisfying in the arts than pushing through one's own prejudice and being rewarded by the discovery of something life-enhancing and new.

I looked at this in the bookshop. Put it down. Picked it up again; admired it as an artefact - approached just as a piece of book design, it's brilliant, even dazzling; but again I put it down. Picked it up again; it had been signed by the author, which just gave it an edge, and it didn't cost much. So I bought it after all, thinking it would likely end up in a charity bookshop somewhere.

I started reading it; wasn't at all sure about the author's excessive use of the short paragraph for highlighting. It just scraped through the 50-page test (that's where I usually decide whether it's worth continuing or not). By 100 pages I was up and running. By the time I completed the book I was enchanted, charmed, and fully persuaded, against all my initial misgivings, that this book made the world a better place by being in it. I suspect it's a love it or hate it book. If you want a novel with some basic sense of realism, with characters that develop along with the plot, then forget it. This isn't for you. (I'm not sure it's a 'novel' at all.) But if you want to suspend disbelief and enter a world where one delectable vision after another is opened up, a world which will leave you haunted by mental images of great beauty despite their dark side, then you could do worse than this. For all its faults (to list them would miss the point), it's the most memorable fiction I've encountered in the last five years.

[I gather it's received enormous publicity in the US - I didn't know about any of that when I bought it, or when I read it. For me it was just another book.]

Sounds innarestin'! Good post.

[DavidRoss]

Are you actually a consumer of Fox News yourself?

EDIT: that seems to be a snarky question, but it isn't meant as one.   I was merely curious whether David actually watched the network with any regularity, because I can't imagine that someone as cultured as he seems to be actually does.

I've seen it...might have watched a dozen or so hours of it over the past ten years.  From what I've seen it is far more objective than the mainstream press and actually does substantial interviews with persons from all points on the political spectrum, similar to PBS newshour, letting them speak for themselves rather than taking soundbites out of context and maliciously charactering them. I haven't watched enough to have an opinion as to whether they slant the news to the right to the same degree as the media mainstream slants it to the left (via story selection and framing, mostly).

Of course the stuff you want is a little different: you want to invade courtries rather than provide healthcare for your own people, but the financial consequences are similar.

Sheer nasty bigotry.

Currently some Japanese poetry from after the most gruesome of U.S. atrocities.

And more of the same.

"Tis a pity that honor and integrity are in such short supply.

[DavidRoss]

I missed Alan's recommendation of this earlier.  Thanks for calling it to our attention, coffee!

[Karl Henning]

Pretty good so far:

[Daverz]

I've seen it...might have watched a dozen or so hours of it over the past ten years.  From what I've seen it is far more objective than the mainstream press

Fascinating.  At least I'm forming a better idea of where your head is at, David.

Sheer nasty bigotry.

What you're responding to seems to be a simple statement of fact.

And more of the same.

True, the U.S. has committed more gruesome atrocities, just at a slower pace.

"Tis a pity that honor and integrity are in such short supply.

Now you're just being a jerk.

[chasmaniac]

I read the label on a bottle of Worstershire sauce recently. Seems there are anchovies in that there condiment. Learn sumfin every day!

[DavidRoss]

Fascinating.  At least I'm forming a better idea of where your head is at, David.

What you're responding to seems to be a simple statement of fact.

True, the U.S. has committed more gruesome atrocities, just at a slower pace.

Now you're just being a jerk.

You call Feanor's false and hateful characterization of Americans as "wanting to invade other countries rather than provide healthcare for your people" a fact. Either you know better and are just trying to pull my chain, or you are just as hateful and bigoted as Feanor.

Likewise, for Philo to characterize America's war-ending nuclear strikes on Japan as "atrocities" is an equally vicious and hateful mischaracterization of the event and its circumstances. If you want to read about atrocities, I suggest reading The Rape of Nanking or Auschwitz: A Doctor's Eyewitness Account.

Those with no regard for the truth, who are willing to distort facts in order to slander others and bear false witness against them, or to demonize an entire people with bigoted stereotypes, have no integrity.  And those who lack integrity likewise have no honor.

[Fëanor]

You call Feanor's false and hateful characterization of Americans as "wanting to invade other countries rather than provide healthcare for your people" a fact....

I call 'em the way I see 'em, DR ... but I suppose you'd say the same.  Oh well 

...
Those with no regard for the truth, who are willing to distort facts in order to slander others and bear false witness against them, or to demonize an entire people with bigoted stereotypes, have no integrity. And those who lack integrity likewise have no honor.

Your pompus indignation is tedious as well as misplaced.

[DavidRoss]

I call 'em the way I see 'em

That's not a defense against bigotry, but rather a justification for it. An honorable person, when informed that his statements reek of bigotry, would investigate them to see if this is so, and upon discovering that it's true, would acknowledge his fault and then remedy it. In the case at hand, the hateful bigotry of your statement regarding Americans is bloody obvious and you would have to be an extraordinary dunce not to recognize it.  You are not a dunce.
 

Your pompus indignation is tedious as well as misplaced.

Your characterization of my response to Daverz, explaining the linkage he claims not to see between honor & integrity and malicious slander, is just more of the same nasty BS that's becoming your stock in trade.

And now, given the turn this discussion has taken--starting with bigoted insults attacking an entire nation, which when objected to then turned to bigoted insults attacking the whistle blower--it seems there is no good likely to be served by my continuing participation. 

[Karl Henning]

Mr Magoo as an umpire calls 'em the way he sees 'em, too.

[Daverz]

An honorable person

You're the only honorable person here?  The only one with integrity?  Go to hell.

There's a discussion that could be had here over whether the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were atrocities (they quite clearly were, and I'd make a larger point about the Allied policy of bombing civilian populations in WWII).

There's a discussion to be had about American foreign policy vs. domestic policy. 

But clearly you're more interested in pearl-clutching and making ridiculous squealing noises than having a discussion.

As Barbara Bush would say, "I'm through with you."

[ibanezmonster]

You call Feanor's false and hateful characterization of Americans as "wanting to invade other countries rather than provide healthcare for your people" a fact. Either you know better and are just trying to pull my chain, or you are just as hateful and bigoted as Feanor.

Change that to American government and it's true. Of course, the government fails at so much that health care would probably be a pointless waste by now, too.

[Fëanor]

....
And now, given the turn this discussion has taken--starting with bigoted insults attacking an entire nation, which when objected to then turned to bigoted insults attacking the whistle blower--it seems there is no good likely to be served by my continuing participation.

More self-righteous, self-delusional huffing & buffing.

Is it false & bigotted to say that "Americans prefer invading other peoples's coutries rather than providing their own people with health care"? Rather than name-calling, explain to me how the preceeding is not a statement of fact?

Obviously not every single American supported invading Iraq or opposes universal healthcare, but the USA in purportedly a democracy so the population has to take collective responsibility for what the government does.

~~~~~~~~~~

I'm currently reading ...

Chris Hedges: Death of the Liberal Class