Not that I always agree with everything Orson Scott Card writes, but he nailed it perfectly with Why We Should Not Rebuild on the Site of the World Trade Center :
The place where six thousand people were slaughtered all at once for no other crime than being at work in an American skyscraper is no longer just real estate.
It is holy ground.
…
Whether we like it or not, that pile of debris is their grave. And I, for one, believe it would be wrong to haul the entire thing away and dispose of it as landfill.
…
One of the reasons our enemies who did this thing despise us is because they believe we value making money more than we care about anything else. More than we care about each other. More than we care about God.
To erect a commercial building on the site of the two towers, to continue to make money there, would, I believe, prove that our enemies were right about us. [Emphasis mine]
Too bad this is advice unheeded.
Greg Popcak points out that Serious Researchers™ are investing Serious Research™ into something that Nancy (veteran of many day care centers, elementary schools, and Mommy of four small snifflers) knew already: Day Care Makes Kids Sick While Breeding Superbugs.
Like so many things, the solution is simple: Stop pressuring families to be dual-income. Kids belong with at least one parent.
A less radical solution: Get employers to recognize that Kids Get Sick. Get daycares to stop insisting on “24 hours on antibiotics” as a return-from-illness criterion.
But then, nobody asked me. Or Nancy.
For example, being able to do for yourself without depending on foreign sources? Pat Buchanan has an interesting article, The Hollowing Out of America, discussion the collapse of our manufacturing base and the Third-Worlding of our economy.
The little ones made it from sessile embryos to free-swimming fry! Go, little ones, go!
Now, if we can just make the transition to them eating (and without being eaten), maybe we can raise this batch.
Doug has reminded me that the proper term is “People’s Republic of Ann Arbor”.
Spent most of the day gardening today. Bliss!
And the angelfish that hatched yesterday are still doing fine. They aren’t much to look at right now, just little white yolk blobs with a madly beating tail, but we’ve got hope for them. This is the first batch in several spawnings that have made it this far, so it’s very encouraging.
I’ve been completely successful in not thinking about work all day. Other than to think “this is so much better than being in the office.”
I need more days like this.
A Ballade Of An Anti-puritan
They spoke of Progress spiring round,
Of light and Mrs Humphrey Ward–
It is not true to say I frowned,
Or ran about the room and roared;
I might have simply sat and snored–
I rose politely in the club
And said, `I feel a little bored;
Will someone take me to a pub?’
The new world’s wisest did surround
Me; and it pains me to record
I did not think their views profound,
Or their conclusions well assured;
The simple life I can’t afford,
Besides, I do not like the grub–
I want a mash and sausage, `scored’–
Will someone take me to a pub?
I know where Men can still be found,
Anger and clamorous accord,
And virtues growing from the ground,
And fellowship of beer and board,
And song, that is a sturdy cord,
And hope, that is a hardy shrub,
And goodness, that is God’s last word–
Will someone take me to a pub?
Envoi
Prince, Bayard would have smashed his sword
To see the sort of knights you dub–
Is that the last of them–O Lord
Will someone take me to a pub?
This is one reason why I love G. K. Chesterton.
Are parents boycotting public schools?, asks Wendy McElroy. We sure are. So are many of my coworkers and neighbors. My highly unscientific and ancecdotal take is that many is becoming most, at least in my circles.
Wow. Orson Scott Card sure looks prophetic:
[I]n Afghanistan, there were many who remembered how America helped them win their independence from the Soviet Union’s attempt to rule them. But they saw that America was willing to violate their sovereignty and bomb their land … for Monica’s dress.
Mr. Bill made a hero out of Osama bin Laden. Monica’s dress was the best thing that ever happened to him. Mr. Bill’s most terrible legacy may be this: He has raised out of obscurity the charismatic leader who may be able to do what no other has been able to accomplish: unite Islam in holy war against us. When Muslims look at bin Laden, the man who can blow up American ships and laugh at American missiles, and at Bill Clinton, the man who kills foreigners and breaks oaths and plays sex games in the White House … no wonder so many of them believe that God is on their side.
… And when your enemies and your friends have contempt for you, the world is an infinitely more dangerous place. They now will dare what they would never have dared before, because they have seen how soft and selfish and scared we are…
This was written almost a year before 9/11.
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