Submitted by Jim Aune on June 27, 2009 - 12:29pm
--An interesting story from The Economist about the problems facing German universities. What I found most fascinating is that until recently German universities were mostly equal in quality/programming so students tended to choose ones closer to home.
--My political angst at the moment is well-captured by Ezra Klein in the WaPo: "We have a political system that most observers can confidently predict will be completely unable to avert the fiscal or the climate crisis. That's like a police force that can't respond to emergency calls, or a fire department unable to put out fires. I think that analytically honest political commentators right now should be struggling with a pretty hard choice: Do you try to maximize the possibility of good, if still insufficient, outcomes? Or do you admit what many people already know and say that our political process has gone into total system failure and the overriding priority is building the long-term case for structural reform of America's lawmaking process? Put another way, can you really solve any of our policy problems until you solve our fundamental political problem? And don't think about it in terms of when your team is in power. Think of it in terms of the next 30 years, and the challenges we face." For a long time I thought that the Madisonian system of blocking majoritarian democracy was a major source of the stability of the US. Now, as I realize that the South has fulfilled Calhoun's dream of concurrent majorities, with a veto on every necessary reform, I repent in dust and ashes.
--And the latest thug to earn the support of the world's Hard Left, Hugo Chavez, shows his true colors by defending the Iranian election results as well as stepping up attacks on Venezuelan Jews. No calls for boycotts by the Left, of course, since only Israel is the fount of all evil in the world.
--For now, my only life strategy is:
Robert, Frost, A DRUMLIN WOODCHUCK
One thing has a shelving bank,
Another a rotting plank,
To give it cozier skies
And make up for its lack of size.
My own strategic retreat
Is where two rocks almost meet,
And still more secure and snug,
A two-door burrow I dug.
With those in mind at my back
I can sit forth exposed to attack
As one who shrewdly pretends
That he and the world are friends.
All we who prefer to live
Have a little whistle we give,
And flash, at the least alarm
We dive down under the farm
We allow some time for guile
And don't come out for a while
Either to eat or drink.
We take occasion to think.
And if after the hunt goes past
And the double-barreled blast
(Like war and pestilence
And the loss of common sense),
If I can with confidence say
That still for another day,
Or even another year,
I will be there for you, my dear,
It will be because, though small
As measured against the All,
I have been so instinctively thorough
About my crevice and my burrow.
so you're the one who's been stealing my raspberries and destroying my lupine and delphiniums? i really thought pouring concrete under the shed would solve the problem....
klein's words are very useful to me and will be useful in classes this fall and next spring.
as much as i am being the burrowing whistle-pig myself these days, this is the frost that came immediately to mind as a bookend for what you offered (wise to read frost when one is melting):
I Will Sing You One-O
It was long I lay
Awake that night
Wishing that night
Would name the hour
And tell me whether
To call it day
(Though not yet light)
And give up sleep.
The snow fell deep
With the hiss of spray;
Two winds would meet,
One down one street,
One down another,
And fight in a smother
Of dust and feather.
I could not say,
But feared the cold
Had checked the pace
Of the tower clock
By tying together
Its hands of gold
Before its face.
Then came one knock!
A note unruffled
Of earthly weather,
Though strange and muffled.
The tower said, "One!'
And then a steeple.
They spoke to themselves
And such few people
As winds might rouse
From sleeping warm
(But not unhouse).
They left the storm
That struck en masse
My window glass
Like a beaded fur.
In that grave One
They spoke of the sun
And moon and stars,
Saturn and Mars
And Jupiter.
Still more unfettered,
They left the named
And spoke of the lettered,
The sigmas and taus
Of constellations.
They filled their throats
With the furthest bodies
To which man sends his
Speculation,
Beyond which God is;
The cosmic motes
Of yawning lenses.
Their solemn peals
Were not their own:
They spoke for the clock
With whose vast wheels
Theirs interlock.
In that grave word
Uttered alone
The utmost star
Trembled and stirred,
Though set so far
Its whirling frenzies
Appear like standing
in one self station.
It has not ranged,
And save for the wonder
Of once expanding
To be a nova,
It has not changed
To the eye of man
On planets over
Around and under
It in creation
Since man began
To drag down man
And nation nation.