This And That

[poliphilo]

Yesterday's high winds lifted the cladding  off the garden wall. It was very ugly cladding and I'm not sorry to see it go. Now I have to dispose of all the rubble.

Judy's father once bumped into Ayn Rand at a New York party. He said afterwards that she was the ugliest woman he'd ever met. I was watching footage of her last night- and I didn't think her ugly; I thought her reptilian. The two things are not the same. Lizards- for example- are very beautiful in their own way.  Rand has never caught on over here; from what little I know of her I'd say it was because she was entirely lacking in a sense of humour.

The French Open is under way. We had the TV on yesterday afternoon. Eurosport runs adverts you don't encounter anywhere else- mostly for airlines. "We are Turkish airlines/ We are globally yours." Such a pretty tune. I have devised a dance to go with it.  I noted, with bitterness, that the sun was shining in Paris. 

Comments

[michaleen.livejournal.com]

I should be curious as well, actually.

Were you watching, "All Watched Over By Machines Of Loving Grace", on BBC-2? I was reading about it this morning. I understand that it mentions how Alan Greenspan, former chairman of the Federal reserve, converted to Randianism. As you probably know, he went on to wreck the world's economy as a more-or-less direct consequence. Fascinating stuff, if you're a fan of psychopathology.

[michaleen.livejournal.com]

Also, speaking of fecking idiots, have you seen this?

Britain is a picture of how politics should work

Bear in mind that, unlikely as it might seem, this is not parody and Brooks is considered a very serious intellectual in the world of US political punditry.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

Talk about rose-tinted spectacles....

[michaleen.livejournal.com]

Poor Bobo could have watched Yes Minister and come away with a better understanding of British politics.

What's worse, it is a remarkably obtuse comparison, as I saw noted in the comments on this essay at The New York Times. The UK is physically the size of Michigan, or so, with a population one-fifth that of the US, with one in seven citizens living in the greater London area and an economy only a bit larger than that of California. Comparing apples to apples, it is amazing that the US gets along as well as it does or conversely it's surprising that the UK isn't better governed than it is.

Also, I suspect that this essay is another example of that old adage, about us being two peoples separated by a common language. It is so very easy for us to look at the UK, and vice versa, and imagine that we actually understand what's going on, politically. For someone like Bobo, who already has a problem coming to grips with demonstrable reality, the results are predictably hilarious.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

Yes, that's the programme. Greenspan was one of the few initiates who stuck by Rand after her coven broke up.

[michaleen.livejournal.com]

For me, it is very difficult to choke back the visceral hatred I have for, not so much the man himself, but Greenspan's willful ignorance and the blind eye that the Serious People turned to this fact. He actually believed that banks, acting solely in their own self-interest, would do right by institutions and share holders. Testifying before Congress, he characterized his "mistake" as “a flaw in the model ... that defines how the world works" -- a model arguably received second-hand from his High Priestess.