Bridges

 Uncategorized  No Responses »
Aug 082007
 

It seems that a lot of folks are so full of hate for George Bush and hate for tax cuts that they’ve abandoned a lot of their values in the wake of the I35-W bridge collapse — just for a chance to do some Bush-bashing and tax-raising. For partisan political gain, they’re allying themselves with the forces of modern development that are turning the earth into a monotonous, bland place and which disconnect us from the environment and from each other.

I’ve blogged about bridges in my bicycle blog: Bridges to Planet Earth where I breathed a sigh of relief that an old bridge in Tennessee is not currently threatened by the safety-efficiency people.

Personal recollection: When we lived in St. Cloud, MN in the mid 70s it was on the opposite side of the Mississippi from the University where I was going to grad school. We lived close enough that I often walked across the bridge to get there — the 10th Street Bridge. It was a rickety old thing that rattled as cars went across, and it couldn’t handle the volume of traffic that some planners thought should be directed through our neighborhood.

In the winter time it was a COLD walk across that bridge. It could be quite a painful ordeal. The river runs north and south there, and the valley acts as a wind channel for the cold north winds. There was nothing on those trusses to shelter you. Brrr. It makes for quite the memories now.

I found somebody else’s blog entry about that bridge: Deep Blade Journal It has photos of the old bridge and of the new one that replaced it. Replacement was always a controversial topic while we lived there. Planners wanted to replace it; those of us who lived in the community didn’t want it replaced, and it was held off for many years. It couldn’t last forever, though, and eventually the safety-efficiency people had their way. There is now a new bridge, a lot of traffic, and the world is a more boring place for it. I’ve been back to drive across the new bridge a few times, always with a sense of loss.

But it’s not all loss. Not until I saw the above blog entry did I see the underside of that bridge. It’s not your ordinary boring Interstate bridge. The designers and engineers could have done a lot worse. Maybe someday people will be just as protective and fond of that one as we were of the old 10th Street bridge.

Main point, though: There’s more to life than safety and efficiency.

Who pays the price

 Bash the Messenger, First Amendment  No Responses »
Aug 072007
 

It followed an unauthorised press conference by members of the Reporters Without Borders campaign group, who called for the release of about 100 journalists, online dissidents and free speech activists who are imprisoned in China. After the event, uniformed and plain-clothed police physically prevented foreign journalists from leaving the area, in some cases for more than an hour, according to reporters present. “If this is going to be the behaviour for the rest of the time until the Olympics, then I think China will be paying a rather high price in terms of its international image,” said Jocelyn Ford, a journalist who was covering the event.

No, not necessarily. It isn’t necessarily China that will pay a high price. If we become complicit in this behavior, putting a tacit stamp of acceptance on it, then we’re the ones who will pay a high price.

Financial times article:  China ‘breaks promise’ on media

One way to get started on paying that price is to do things like putting the words “break promise” in quotes in the headlines. That’s a way of disdaining any responsibility for our own behavior.

Doomed to spend $100 million on history

 School decentralization, Schools  No Responses »
Aug 062007
 

It’s not often that there is anything good to say about Julie Mack’s articles in the Kalamazoo Gazette, but here’s an opportunity: Those who study history are doomed to spend $100 million. She raises some good questions, and does it in a gracious manner, too.

It’s good that school superintendents are making waves over this sort of thing.

And it’s interesting to hear that Sen. Robert Byrd got us a federal law requiring schools to teach about the Constitution on September 17. He seems to have an interesting notion of what the Constitution is about. Maybe we could follow his example, though, and set aside September 18 as a day to honor the 1st Amendment by prohibiting anyone in schools from talking about it. The possibilities are endless.

But if Byrd really wanted to honor the Constitution, he’d dismantle the federal Department of Education and return the money that funds it to taxpayers, who then might be able to afford the next millage request that comes along.

And with extra money those schools that find the Teaching American History program to be the best way to spend their money could do so. Those that need to beef up their programs for at-risk students could do that, instead. And so on.

Earmarks and falling bridges

 Legislative process  No Responses »
Aug 042007
 

The Wall Street Journal explains how Congressional earmarks endanger our nation’s highway bridges: Bridges to Somewhere

The cause of Wednesday’s bridge collapse in Minneapolis isn’t yet known, but that hasn’t stopped the tragedy from reigniting the debate over the condition of U.S. “infrastructure,” which has to be the ugliest word in the English language. It’s even uglier when Congress and the building lobby use it as an excuse to spend more without rethinking their own contributions to the problem.

I predict that reform will be strongly resisted.

We also need a new version of the nursery rhyme. More specifically, we need a two-syllable replacement for London. I’m trying to think of a prominent earmarker…

_________ Bridge is falling down,

Falling down, Falling down,

_________ Bridge is falling down,

My fair lady.

 Permalink  Brave New World  No Responses »
Aug 022007
 

There is an interesting post about abortion and eugenics over at Postmodern Conservative . Here is some of it:

Similarly, all the arguments about the sanctity of human life can remain accurate while still the fact remains that some genetic diseases are so awful that families ought to be able to prevent stricken children from coming into the world. Clearly the issue here is ‘the line’ to be drawn, the ‘gray area’ we blunder into. But we are already in that area. There is no way out of that area. The sanctity-of-life argument is tremendously powerful, but it is finally a moral position, and as such cannot be proven, and has to ‘win’, if it can, on other grounds, grounds outside of proof. I do not see how that can be accomplished at the national level today.

It reminds me of a discussion about abortion on a mailing list several years ago. In answer to a pointed question:

I said: “No, I don’t think abortion is the same as murder.”

She said: “I’m glad you’re finally beginning to see the difference.”

I said: “Similarly, I wish you would begin to see the similarities.”

That’s the way I like to remember it, anyway. I didn’t look through the archives to make sure I got it exactly right, word for word.

Over at Postmodern Conservative, I commented about a comparison with the Amish people. (BTW, a lot of my understanding about the Amish view of technology is what I’ve learned at the Menno-Hof museum in Shippshewana, Indiana.)

I like to ride my bike in Amish country, and when I tell people about such things as encountering a horse-drawn Amish buggy towing a fishing boat that has a small outboard motor, they sometimes act surprised, as though I caught them in some sort of hypocrisy. No, I explain, they aren’t anti-technology per se. They are against things that will break up the family. They don’t drive cars, because once you have cars, you have family members going off in all directions and not spending time with each other. If they adopt too much mechanization of agriculture, then people don’t need to work together in the fields, and they become isolated from each other. And to have control of such a powerful thing as a car will instill a sense of pride in the psyche, which will be harmful to the sense of humility that they value. (They seem to understand the advertising of cars very well.)

It’s not so much a matter of technology = bad, but of what technology will do to them as a community and as individuals. They are very selective in what they adopt. And not all communities make the same decisions about what is permissible and what is not.

Similarly, I think we need to view the abortion issue in the same way. It is not so much a matter of whether or not it falls into the categories known as murder or eugenics, but of whether it is something that could eventually make us into the kind of people who could be capable of murder or Hitler-style eugenics.

But maybe I’m putting too fine a point on it. I have the impression that some Amish people do just take the position of Technology = Bad, Luxury = Bad, without going into any deep agonizing over it. If I were to look for such Amish people, I would begin by making inquires in the community my wife and I encountered here, near Geneva, Indiana.

SCHIP predators

 Welfare-police state  No Responses »
Aug 012007
 

This SCHIP thing has the leftwing chorus singing in harmony, on cue. Here’s an example from a mailing list I’m on:

Leftwing choir member: “I think everyone should have access to health care, but our top priority should be children’s health care.”

My response: “For the same reason that predators pick on the young and infirm of their prey species?”

Maybe the following example can help us think about it. It’s a made-up example, but it’s based on something I heard from a caller on Dr. Laura’s show many years ago.

Suppose you have a family of two boys and three girls, and that you parents are having a tough time of it, financially. Your kids have to do without a lot of the things their peers have, not that it’s keeping you from having a family life together. But you wonder how they’re possibly going to be able to go to college, given that they don’t seem to be doing anything special that would attract scholarships.

Let’s also suppose that the middle daughter is an especially vivacious, pretty one. And the well-to-do neighbor down the street has noticed it, too. He says hello to the family whenever there is an opportunity, and always pays special attention to the middle daughter.

One day he tells you he’d like to make a gift to your middle daughter. He’d like to give her an allowance of $100/week for spending money, set up a fund for her college education, and provide her with a medical insurance policy. He’s not asking for anything in return. It’s a gift just for her, because he’d hate to see her have to do without those things.

You can imagine what Dr. Laura advised the caller to do in a similar situation, and you can imagine why the parent thought it necessary to call Dr. Laura about it in the first place.

But if you’re having trouble thinking about this, and how it relates to SCHIP, here are some questions to get the wheels turning:

1. What would this do to the relationship between parents and middle daughter?

2. What could Mr. Neighbor’s agenda possibly be?

3. Suppose the offer was made for ALL the children, not just the pretty middle one. What difference would it make, if any?

1930s repression

 Historical, Welfare-police state  No Responses »
Jul 312007
 

There is a review of Amity Shlaes new book, “The Forgotten Man : a new history of the Great Depression” in the July 30 issue of The Weekly Standard. You have to be a paid subscriber to read the whole article, but here’s the link anyway.

The reviewer, Stephen Schwartz, says in one place: “While the outcome of the New Deal was perceived as beneficial, and was unaccompanied by repression, it has long been observed that the emergence of the American social welfare state had elements in common with Mussolini’s fascism, Hitler’s state-directed economic revival, and Stalinist compulsory agrarian collectivization and central planning.”

Unaccompanied by repression? Well, it certainly didn’t have repression on the scale of those other examples listed, but something was in the air at the time, world-wide. It wasn’t just Stalin who was doing central planning that resulted in dislocations of populations.

Last year when on a bike tour that passed through one of the TVA projects of the 1930s, I was surprised to learn of the level of resentment that still exists over the human dislocations undertaken in that not-so-successful experiment in central planning. And then I learned there is a literature about it, too.

I blogged about it here: Alabama trip, Day 4, Wednesday March 29, the Trace — Part 1.

I quote here about one of my discoveries on Jstor:

Another is this: TVA and the Dispossessed: The Resettlement of Population in the Norris Dam Area. By Michael J. McDonald; John Muldowny

The AHA reviewer says this: “Using oral-history techniques as well as a vast array of documentary evidence and statistics, Michael J McDonald andJohn Muldowny have skillfully and judiciously analyzed these failures. They conclude that even though the numerous long-run benefits can be cited legitimately as a result of TVA operations, there should nevertheless have been a more active and aggressive planning program…[But, G]iven the circumstances described by the authors, it is extremely difficult to imagine how the adverse impact of relocation on the people of the Norris Basin could have been significantly minimized.”

It sounds as though Amity Shlaes didn’t get into that aspect of the New Deal.

And why is it that these trends seem to cross national borders? This is one reason why it’s so worrisome to see Vladimir Putin and Hugo Chavez eliminating the free presses in their countries. Trends like that have a way of leaking out over the entire world. In our country we already have McCain-Feingold and the recent attempts to reinstate the so-called Fairness Doctrine. What more is coming?

C. Douglas Lummis: Ruth Benedict’s Obituary for Japanese Culture

 Keeper articles  No Responses »
Jul 202007
 

I happened across this one via History News Network:

C. Douglas Lummis: Ruth Benedict’s Obituary for Japanese Culture

Back in the 80s our liberal Congressman, Howard Wolpe, wrote a column for the local paper in which he told about a visit to Japanese factories, how the Japanese workers would do calisthenics together, and how could we as Americans compete with a culture in which people were like that. I presume the implication was that our industries needed the intervention of the state like in Japan. It was a common topic at the time. I wrote a letter to the editor blasting him for treating the Japanese as mindless automatons. I may have said something about how we shouldn’t stereotype others like that.

I was right, but I really had no idea. My wife and I have recently started enjoying Japanese movies together. Ikuru made quite an impression on both of us and taught us that we have a lot to learn. We don’t know what all we have to learn, but it is fascinating, keeping in mind of course that it’s probably as dangerous to learn about Japan from Japanese movies as it is to learn about the U.S. from American movies. Be that as it may, we are learning about things and people we hadn’t known much about before, and much of what we had known was wrong.

It was somewhat in that spirit that I found this Douglas Lummis article to be fascinating.
Here’s a section I found interesting:

Culture patterns then carry a double meaning. When the culture is dead, its pattern has the same beauty Benedict found in the faces of dead people – the aesthetic closure of something reconciled and finished. But for the living, the patterns are a kind of death-in-life, an oppressive, imprisoning force. If the living do not struggle to liberate themselves from them they will never be fully alive.

I sometimes get to wondering why on my bike rides I’m so fascinated with stopping to take photos of dead trees, rusted out bridges, rotted fenceposts, and abandoned farmsteads. One reason of course is that I like an excuse to take a break. Another is that dead things don’t usually mind being photographed. But do I also share an aesthetic with Benedict? I have no idea, nor am I sure how to think about it or whether it’s even worth thinking about.

It’s an interesting article, just the same.

For the sake of one man

 First Amendment, Russia  No Responses »
Jul 192007
 

Good call by Bret Stephens of the WSJ in his article, For the Sake of One Man.

It’s about the fuss Britain is making (for which it deserves our thanks and praise) over the murder of Alexander Litvinenko:

What matters, rather, is nicely captured in a remark by Russian foreign ministry spokesman Mikhail Kamynin regarding Britain’s decision to expel the four diplomats. “I don’t understand the position of the British government,” Mr. Kamynin said. “It is prepared to sacrifice our relations in trade and education for the sake of one man.”

That’s a telling remark, both in its substance and in the apparent insouciance with which it was made: The whole architecture of liberal democracy is designed primarily “for the sake of one man.” Not only does Mr. Kamynin seem unaware of it, he seems to think we are unaware of it. Perhaps the indulgence which the West has extended to Mr. Putin’s regime over the past seven years gives him a reason to think so.

And I would say that not only are we somewhat responsible for creating an atmosphere in which Vlad Putin feels he can get away with his repression of the media, but it works the other way around, too. The more he can get away with, the more it creates a comfort zone for those in the U.S. who want to use the Fairness Doctrine or hate crime laws to quell dissidents’ voices.

Jennifer Granholm’s hostile takeover of townships

 Bash the Messenger  No Responses »
Jul 172007
 

The Grand Rapids Press is promoting a power-grab by the state of Michigan. Reforming townships deserves debate, it says. That’s some debate, if it’s going to use the term “reform” to describe a transfer of township functions to the state. It should really be thought of as disempowering people in exchange for governmental corruption.

The Press says, speaking of those who would object to this hostile takeover, “Fear of lost of control and access are understandable…” I agree that it’s understandable, but the Press either doesn’t understand it, or it does and it doesn’t want to help its readers understand. Or maybe it has forgotten about such concepts as government by the people.

It goes on to say, “… but the need to shrink government should be just as important.” I don’t know who they are trying to fool, but taking government out of the hands of the people and centralizing it in a more powerful entity has never yet in the history of the universe been a way to shrink government.

Think of it this way. Should we remove all the smaller retail outlets in the country except for Wal-Mart, and let that company take over their functions? It would certainly reduce the duplication and redundancy. Is that going to make the retail industry more efficient for us consumers? I think we know the answer.

So if monopolies are bad in the private sector, where individual persons can still vote with their pocketbooks, what makes them so wonderful in the public sector, where people cannot exercise that type of control?

Added title, 23-Jul-2007

 Older Entries  Newer Entries