The Lonely Goatherd Blog And before him shall be gathered all nations: and he shall separate them one from another, as a shepherd divideth his sheep from the goats - Matthew 25:32
Up to the minute notes on the current state of free thinking and free living: Kentucky moonshine - original analysis and reporting from MoreThings, and all round pop culture museum of sight and sound - photo galleries, mp3 and video downloads.
Al Barger and MoreThings - getting people's goats since 1998.
Hostile bearers of unproven and mostly unlikely evil conspiracies tend to come across to me as hateful seekers after cheap self-aggrandizement for the sake of their supposed arcane knowledge rather than actual seekers after truth or the better benefit of the country. Conspiracy mongering doesn't get me hard.
Links
To explicitly state the obvious, these external links go to interesting and provocative websites, but they speak for themselves. I don't necessarily agree with anything they say - especially that no-goodnik Richard Marcus.
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All original content on MoreThings.com copyright 2008 Albert Barger or the respective authors
January 28, 2005
Nature and nurture and gays, oh my! George Will has a column today about Larry Summers and The Women Math Professors Massacre. Of course, the chick's ridiculous display makes easy humor fodder of just the right type for Will's dry, conservative wit.
More interesting, however, in getting to the root of the problem, he makes a particularly good statement of what might reasonably be seen as the most essential bottom-line philosophical divide between liberal and conservative thought:
The philosophy of natural right - the Founders' philosophy - rests on a single proposition: There is a universal human nature.
From that fact come, through philosophic reasoning, some normative judgments: Certain social arrangements - particularly government by consent attained by persuasion in a society accepting pluralism - are right for creatures of this nature. Hence the doctrine of "natural right," and the idea of a nation "dedicated," as Lincoln said, to the "proposition" that all men are created equal.
The vehemence of the political left's recoil from this idea is explained by the investment political radicalism has had for several centuries in the notion that human beings are essentially blank slates. What predominates in determining individuals' trajectories - nature or nurture? The left says nature is negligible, nurturing is sovereign. So a properly governed society can write what it wishes on the blank slate of humanity. This maximizes the stakes of politics and the grandeur of government's role. And the importance of governing elites, who are the "progressive" vanguards of a perfected humanity.
This does seem to summarize many political differences. The best end of conservative thought largely stems from deep skepticism about the ability of any government to make humans not act like mammals just by passing laws.
One counterexample of this nature vs nurture breakdown leaps to mind, though. Modern liberals are typically very adamant that homosexuality is absolutely genetic, that it's purely nature and not nurture. To me, this seems like an awfully convenient exception that happens to serve their political ends. The argument there seems to come down to saying that homosexuals can't help who they are (nature), so you can't judge anyone for homosexuality anymore than you can judge someone for being black or Jewish.
Conversely, though, I suppose you could argue that this might be a convenient exception for conservatives who would look on homosexual proclivities as a matter of choice, rather than nature. However, that would seem likely to represent the thinking mostly of the Christian side of conservatives. I'm not sure how they'd fall on this whole nature vs nurture thing to start with.
That choice idea seems to throw a monkey wrench into the whole nature vs nurture thing, doesn't it?
Referrer logs observation Here's a minor point that struck me as interesting from my referrer logs: Of over half a million possible entries for such a broad term, an MSN search for "campaign funds senate" turns up my archived 2004 senate campaign site as the #1 result.
Groovy White Stripes website and downloads Here's a groovy little fan site for the White Stripes that you may want to check out: White Stripes Net. Someone's obviously putting some time into making a fine site for the discerning fan.
The site features a good download page. For starters, they've got the video for "Portland Oregan," which was Jack White's duet with Loretta Lynn, from the excellent Van Lear Rose album that he produced for her in 2004. It's worth a download. For one thing, it's interesting how do-able Loretta's looking, at every bit of 70 years old.
Among other things, they also have apparently a whole live show from 2002. If you're into nasty, squealing, pig-humpin' blues guitar, you should definitely hear the live version of "Ball and Biscuit."
New album releases, week of 1-25-2004 The pace picks up a little in new music releases this week. Top cool pick for the week: Now That Sounds Kosher!. It surveys the history of Jewish comedy music, going back to good ol' Allan Sherman and Tom Lehrer, and forward through Weird Al. I'm curious about "Man Of Constant Tsuris" by The Soggy Matzoh Boys. That sounds VERY wrong. It also, naturally, includes "They Ain't Makin' Jews Like Jesus Anymore" by Kinky Friedman. If you don't own this classic song, that alone would constitute a good reason to buy this.
Also, I see a new Ladysmith Black Mambazo album (No Boundaries) which might be worth a listen.
Marianne Faithfull generally rates a spin. Her new album Before the Poison features collaborations with PJ Harvey and Nick Cave among others.
Lee Ann Rimes has a new album out, This Woman, which is said to be an actual country album (whatever that means today) rather than the dance pop whatever that she has indulged in the last couple of years.
Kenny Chesney has never made any impression on me, but he's considered big stuff among the country audience. If that's you, you may want to get up on his new Be as You Are (Songs From an Old Blue Chair). I, however, disapprove on grounds that the album cover is not quite gay enough.
CLICK HERE for the complete list of this week's new releases.
Killers Hot Fuss - What's the big fuss? This album really disappointed me. On my first exposure, they looked pretty promising on Saturday Night Live a couple of weeks ago. Indeed, it looks like they now have a hit album brewing in the wake of that performance.
"Looked" pretty promising was unfortunately what it was, though. They sound like nothing. Not "they sound like nothing else," but that they don't sound like anything. There's little or nothing distinctive about this group. They made a slick, emotionless hard rock pop album. The only emotional impact the album had on me was some hint of amusement that such a crass bit of impersonal manufactured corporate product would contain a song claiming, "It's indie rock and roll for me."
They don't even particularly sound like they're copying some identifiable influence. For some kind of comparison, they might be likened unto a bad Cure record, or maybe generic Creed. Folks, if your record sounds generic compared to Creed, you're getting pretty far down the food chain.
Being generous, you could claim that most of these songs have melodies. As my brother said on watching their SNL performance, I've heard worse. Compared to some ignorant trash metal or crappy hip hop, this stuff might look pretty tuneful.
But these compositions are mediocre at best. They have weak melodies. They have very minimal in the way of anything actually catchy going on here. None of these songs have memorable tunes. They all sound just exactly alike. Indeed, I couldn't pick out which ones they played on SNL. Might have been any of them. I defy you to sing back a line or two from any of these songs an hour after hearing the album.
I wanted to recommend one of the songs that almost sounded catchy as I was listening to it maybe just twenty minutes ago, just for something to sample if you think you're interested in this. However, looking back over the song titles I couldn't even pick out the title. Never mind.
I do note that some song called "Mr Brightside" seems to be a big current hit on Billboard's Modern Rock chart. I see that there is a song by that title listed in playlist window that I just listened to.
