TENTH
ANNIVERSARY OF BLACK MONDAY
On the stereo, Air, Moon
Safari, "La
Femme D'Argent"
Kevin
Michael Grace,
2.45 pm, 31 March 2007►
THOUGHT
FOR THE DAY
Other
countries do not exist to provide broad open spaces in
which we can exercise our constipated, under-used
consciences. It is incredibly easy, and rather enjoyable,
to rail against tyrants and injustice a long way away. The
tyrants cannot get at you, and if you travel to these
places on a Western passport, the worst you are likely to
face is expulsion. But it is so much harder, and less
glamorous, to challenge the power-grabbers and would-be
tyrants, and petty but persistent injustices, in your own
home country
—
where your targets can take revenge.
—Peter
Hitchens
Kevin
Michael Grace,
10.24 am, 23 March 2007►
THOUGHT
FOR THE DAY
Silence
is important because humans are permanently threatened by
waste of music.
—Ralf
Hütter
iPod: The
enemy in the pocket
Kevin
Michael Grace,
3.18 am, 22 March 2007►
THOUGHT
FOR THE DAY
The
age of science and commercialism is here. There is no
sound reason for wishing it otherwise. The wise desire is
not to destroy it, but to use it and direct it rather than
to be used and directed by it, that it may be as it should
be, not the master but the servant, that the physical
forces may not prevail over the moral forces and that the
rule of life may not be expediency but righteousness.
—Calvin
Coolidge, from his address to
the the American Classical League, 7 July 1921
Coolidge:
Translated Dante, you know
Kevin
Michael Grace,
1.02 pm, 21 March 2007►
HONI
SOIT QUI MAL Y PENSE
Seven years ago I writing an Alberta
Report cover story when I was told to stop
that and do something
else. Specifically, I was to compile a list of nice things
I had written about Jews. So I spent several hours going
through five years of old magazines. I forwarded the list
but was then told it wasn't current enough: what was
needed was a list of all the nice things I had written
about Jews in the past 18 months or something
like that.
I was somewhat irritated, as
I was on deadline, and the cover story was a defence of Dr
Laura Schlessinger against those
who would silence
her. Why must
I do this, I asked. Because David Radler thinks I'm an anti-Semite.
And who's David Radler when he's at
home, I asked. Why, the second
most powerful man in Canadian journalism, I was told. And when David
Radler says, "Grovel!" you say, "How
low?"
Well, you once did. Or
your employers did. So I compiled my second list and sent
it off. I never heard from David Radler, but I did manage
to keep my job for another couple of years. In a curious
coincidence, I did hear shortly thereafter from a young
woman called Melissa Radler, who turned out to be the
daughter of the second most powerful man in Canadian
journalism. And to what do I owe this honour, I asked.
Well, she explained, she had heard from her friend Ersatz
Levant that I was an anti-Semite and wanted
to talk to me about it. The result was an
article in the Forward,
a Jewish newspaper in New York City, explaining that I
hated Jews very much. I forget exactly how much, as it's
been some time since I read it, but as I recall it was
probably as much as David Duke but perhaps not as much as
Dr Mengele.
In the seven years since then
both the Radler and Grace families have suffered reversals
of fortune. Mine has been chronicled extensively in this
space, but I must note in all honesty that his has been
harder and more public. Specifically, Radler père
has admitted
to being a crook and has agreed to spend 29
months in prison and pay
over US$90 million in criminal and civil
penalties. Radler
fille, meanwhile, appears to have abandoned
journalism for a life of scholarship
and good works. I am pleased to note that
my old friend Ersatz Levant remains a child of felicity.
Radler: Don't forget your
toothbrush
Kevin
Michael Grace,
1.29 am, 21 March 2007►
PENSÉE
The Second Vatican Council:
From error has no rights to error without end.
Vatican II: Generation of vipers
Kevin
Michael Grace,
8.30 am, 19 March 2007►
THOUGHT
FOR THE DAY
There
was never a magazine surer of itself than the Economist.
It makes the Daily Mail look positively racked with
doubt. There is no problem in the world, no looming
difficulty, to which the clever clogs perched in their
ivory tower in St James's do not have an instant solution
that has somehow escaped the rest of dumb humanity.
—Stephen
Glover
The know-all's breviary
Kevin
Michael Grace,
8.04 am, 19 March 2007►
ERIN
GO DRUNKH
My five
rules for St Patrick's Day: I do not
1. Drink green beer.
2. Listen to cod "Celtic" music.
3. Wear "funny" hats, vests, buttons, etc.
4. Care to be around idiots who do.
5. Or idiots maundering about the Famine, the "Troubles," etc.
Which is
why I shall break my fast this afternoon at home in the
company of a Scotsman.
Green 'beer': Shall never
foul my lips
Kevin
Michael Grace,
11.42 am, 17 March 2007►
THOUGHT
FOR THE DAY
Our official arbiters of culture have lost the gift of
being able to comprehend a work of art that does not
reflect their immediate experience; they have become
afraid of genuine art. Art-phobia is now the dominant
sensibility of the official culture…
Genuine art makes you stake your credulity on the
patently counterfeit. It takes you by surprise. And for
art to take you by surprise, you have to put yourself in
the power of another world—the work of art—and in the
power of another person—the artist. Yet everything in
our society, so saturated with economic imperatives, tells
us not to surrender our interests even for a moment, tells
us that the only forms of cultural expression we can trust
are those that give us instant gratification, useful
information, or a reflected image of ourselves. So we are
flooded with the kind of art that deprecates
attentiveness, tells us about the issues of the day, and
corresponds to our own personalities. And if a genuine
work of art appears that has none of these qualities,
critics impose them anyway, for they fear that if they
surrender themselves to the work's strangeness, they will
seem vulnerable and naive and intellectually unreliable.
—Lee
Siegel, “Eyes
Wide Shut: What The Critics Failed To
See In Kubrick’s Last Film,” Harper’s,
October 1999
Kevin
Michael Grace,
11.37 am, 17 March 2007►
THOUGHT
FOR THE DAY
Only
the owner and master of a thing has the right at pleasure
to destroy it or expose it to the danger of destruction.
But man is not the owner and master of his life; it
belongs, instead, entirely to his Creator. Now man can
only call that his property and treat it as such which is
intended in the first instance for his benefit, so that he
has the right to exclude others from the use of the same.
Man, however, is not created primarily for himself but for
the glory and service of God. Here below he is to serve
his Creator and Lord as long as the Lord wills and thus
attain his own salvation. For this end God has given man
life, maintains it for him, and has bestowed on him the
instinct of self-preservation. But if man is not the
master of his life, he has not the right to expose it at
pleasure to destruction or even deliberately to seek such
danger. In order rightfully to expose the life to danger
there must be a justifiable reason, and even then the
risking of life is only permissible, not the end to be
sought in itself. What is said of one's own life applies
also to the life of one's fellow man. Every man has the
right in case of necessity forcibly to defend himself
against an unlawful attack on his life, even if it cost
the life of the assailant; this is a requirement of public
safety; but apart from such defence no man has the right
as a private individual to injure the life of his fellow
man or at pleasure to expose his own to similar danger.
—From "Duel"
by V Cathrein in the Catholic Encyclopedia (1909)
Duel: Vengeance is mine; I will repay, saith the Lord
Kevin
Michael Grace,
6.57 pm, 16 March 2007►
BACK
IN BUSINESS, SORT OF
Well,
I got this site working again, but my archive links don't
work anymore, and I'm not sure I know how to fix them. Or
if I'll bother. Nah, I probably will, kicking against the
pricks being the speciality of the house.
[Update,
5.35 pm: Seem to have figured it out. But the fix
involves changing thousands of post links one at a time,
so this will take a long time. Damn that Bill Gates.]
Gates: You'd better pray
Kevin
Michael Grace,
5.25 pm, 16 March 2007►
