Category Archives: Social Commentary

The Burden Of Things

A post from Lileks with which I can strongly identify:

…what of the objects? You know, the things to which you apply Meaning simply by owning them for a while? That’s another issue. You have to realize that the meaning changes when you no long own them, which is a kind way of saying “it’s wiped clean when you die, mate.” There are some things whose previous meaning I can infer; my Grandma had a little metal container for pins, with 1893 Columbian Exposition engraved on the cover. It was regarded as junk, I guess, but my mom kept it, and then it passed to me. It’s possible my great-grandfather went. He got out of town from time to time. The fact that it sat on her dresser for seven decades was enough to infuse it with meaning, but that’ll be lost after me; daughter didn’t know her, never saw the farm, never saw the sleek 30s Sears bedroom-set dresser on which it sat. Daughter may see a corner of that dresser in an old photo, because I inherited it. But that’s the end of the chain – after that, it’s a series of facts, not a sequence of memories and emotions.

I’m a pack rat. I keep (and don’t organize) too much stuff. Every time we move, the books are a problem. We’ve been back in California over a year, and they’re still not quite unpacked and shelved. And movers charge by weight. I’m not sure what we would have done if the company hadn’t paid for the move. And I know that there’s not enough time in my allotment, sans dramatic life extension, for me to reread them. But I can’t bring myself (so far) to get rid of them. They contain too many remembrances. Accumulated stuff is the external memory of life, and I feel as though they’re a part of me and my sense of self. When I lose old email in a disk crash I feel partly lobotomized and amnesiac. At some point, though, I have to rationalize my possessions.

I had dinner with Leonard David Wednesday night, and we often talk about his collection of tchochkes and media bags that he has collected over the many dozens of space conferences he’s attended over the past few decades. They’re historically significant, and I doubt there are many people with as extensive a collection as his, but where to keep them all? I have the same problem, on a smaller scale. Someone needs to set up an archive to which such things can be contributed, assessed and put into context, but it takes money.

Boy In The Well

This story seems to be “boy in the well” on steroids. It’s amazing how much press coverage it’s getting. There are going to be a lot of books coming out of it.

[Update a while later]

The president praises America and Americans:

“The tears they shed after so much time apart expressed not only their own relief, not only their own joy, but the joy of people everywhere,” Mr. Obama continued. “From the NASA team that helped design the escape vehicle to American companies that manufactured and delivered parts of the rescue drill to the American engineer who flew in from Afghanistan to operate the drill.”

It happens so rarely, I feel compelled to note, and encourage it.

A Tale Of Two Rallies

I’d also like to see a compare and contrast between the mess left behind by both crowds. It’s a striking metaphor: the vast majority that wants peace and freedom to live their lives, and the small tyranny whose main goal seems to be to deliberately increase societal entropy. There are never as many of them as they want us to think there are — it’s why they come up with duplicitous names like “Bolsheviks.” Or “progressives.”

[Update a few minutes later]

I asked, and via Charlie Martin, we have received:

The bottom line is this–while it’s amusing to look at the pictures of all the trash left behind by the labor unions and left wing socialists, they aren’t going to give up their efforts to win on November 2 just because we’ve proven we are much neater than they are at rallies. Depending on which count you pay attention to, they did manage to persuade somewhere in the vicinity of 30,000 or so to come out on a Saturday. If you look closely, you’ll note that many of the attendees arrived on buses paid for by SEIU and other labor unions. You can bet that these groups will be throwing money around “like drunken sailors” over the next 30 days to get the crowd that littered the Mall Saturday to show up at the polls on November 2. We would be unwise to take our eye off the ball now.

Yes, clearly, neatness is not a value with them. Power is.

[Update late Sunday evening]

Who are you going to believe, us or your lying eyes?

Appropriate, considering it’s from a site called Crooks and Liars

[Monday morning update]

High-school students received class credit for attending the rally.

Did anyone attend this mini rent-a-mob who wasn’t bribed or coerced? And why do I suspect that they wouldn’t have gotten similar treatment for Glenn Beck’s rally?

What Happened To The Chaps?

Entertaining thoughts on the girlie men of Old Blighty:

Whatever happened to the solid yeomanry of England? The obvious answer is to blame the Femi-Nazis. The relentless feminist critique of masculinity that has been blaring out of our schools and universities since the 1960s has taken its toll. Today’s young men have been ideologically programmed to believe that any overt display of masculinity — tucking their shirts in, for instance — would be an endorsement of ‘the patriarchy’. Far better to make common cause with the oppressed by using moisturiser and eating salad.

Fortunately, I suspect it’s cyclical.