Snow Crystal

SNOWFLAKES are ice crystals that form around dust particles or other microscopic matter in the upper atmosphere. A typical snowflake is a conglomeration of crystals, most damaged as they fall from the heights. A hundred years ago, the science of snow was still in its infancy. Since then, the systematic study of snow has advanced rapidly with greater understanding of its properties and classification of crystals and snow packs. The measurement and management of snow are both consuming issues. Though snow is now the stuff of formal expertise, and probably makes for some tedious dissertations for the general reader, who could ever find the subject dull?

Ken Libbrecht is chairman of the physics department at California Institute of Technology and the creator of one of the more interesting natural history sites on the Internet. SnowCrystals.com presents the science of snow with an appreciation for the beauty of its subject matter. I highly recommend it. Read More »

Gabrielle Giffords

FRED OWENS writes:

We should elect old men to Congress — craggy, musty old men. And if they got shot, it wouldn’t feel so bad. Gabrielle Giffords is a pretty young woman, and no doubt she is capable and intelligent, but I feel protective toward her and it hurts me more to think of her critical wounds than if she was a man. Jared Lee Loughner, the man who shot her, is crazy and evil. It matters little whether he is right-wing crazy or left-wing crazy. Read More »

Winter Harmony, John Henry Twachtman, c. 1890

I shall go shod in silk,
And you in wool,
White as white cow’s milk,
More beautiful
Than the breast of a gull.

We shall walk through the still town
In a windless peace;
We shall step upon white down,
Upon silver fleece,
Upon softer than these.

We shall walk in velvet shoes:
Wherever we go
Silence will fall like dews
On white silence below.
We shall walk in the snow.

                                                — Elinor Wylie

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LAWRENCE AUSTER writes here:

Americans, like the British, seem to consider it bad taste, a form of incivility, to reason rigorously and logically. As a result, American conservatives are unable to identify the nature of the leftist dynamic that is steadily destroying our society, or to propose a counter-principle to it. All they can do, in the face of each new leftist victory, is to mutter, “political correctness, political correctness, political correctness…” Read More »

THE JOURNALIST, who in this piece regrets having spent 14 years raising her sons and sees no problem in retrospect with day care for young children, is a typical modern narcissist who fails to utter one word of gratitude. Her husband worked all those years to make it possible for her to care for her children. Yet he receives no thanks from her. In fact, she appears to have divorced him.

Given Katy Read’s presumption that slogging away in a career for decades is only a form of personal fulfillment, it is no wonder she does not acknowledge his efforts. This is yet another legacy of feminism. If career is for self, then career is never for others. Thus a man who is the prime support for his family deserves no thanks. He is really working only for himself.

 In truth, the specialization required of men involves sacrifice by its very nature. As George Gilder wrote in Men and Marriage: Read More »

SHEFALI writes:

I am a long time lurker, first time commentor. Let me first tell you how much I appreciate your site and how helpful it has been to me. Thank you very much for the wisdom you share and your wonderful observations on life.

I am an Indian woman, living in Mumbai. I would like to add to the comments on the Yoga Mail thread. It is appalling how some opportunistic hippies have picked some Eastern practices randomly, twisted them for their own agendas and pushed the packaged product on an unsuspecting public in the guise of the New Age. I have practiced Yoga, learnt it from a teacher here in India and know what is what. I have also read the atrocious, Do It books that are peddled across bookstores by self-styled American gurus on the subject that proliferate book stores across the world. Read More »

I MUST HAVE purchased something over the Christmas season that alerted the marketers of yoga paraphernalia to my existence. I suspect it was a top I purchased for my niece in a store that was heavily scented and had an entryway made out of twigs. Whatever it was, these retailers suddenly care about me in ways they never did before, joining a long list of merchandizers who send me catalogues and never earn a dime in return. I have just received two substantial, glossy mail-order catalogues featuring yoga mats, Zen fountains, exercise pants, Buddha sculptures, compost activators, and meditation chairs. This is strange because I’ve never practiced yoga. I will never sit in the Lotus position in public, not only because I consider it unbecoming, especially for a woman, but in the way of spiritual positions, I prefer kneeling. Read More »

PAT HOLDEN writes:

Salon had an article in today’s edition about a stay-at-home mother who apparently regrets her decision to stay home.  I thought you might be interested and would be curious as to your response, if you are inclined to write one.

 I enjoy your website very much. Read More »

AS DISCUSSED in a previous post, Melanie Thernstrom, the daughter of neoconservative authors Abigail and Stephan Thernstrom, has written of her experience hiring an egg donor and two different surrogates to provide her and her husband with an instant family of two children. This real-life version of Margaret Atwood’s reproductive dystopia in The Handmaid’s Tale is told with a confusing blend of self-awareness and self-deceit. The absence of any blatant coercion in the many contractual arrangements Thernstrom and her husband, Michael Callahan, made with others, including with the woman who supplied breast milk, is chillingly representative of technocratic liberalism.

Liberal society blandly draws people in with a system of material rewards and the appearance of mutual necessity. Thernstrom met with the donor and surrogates in coffee shops, where they held friendly chats and cheerily deliberated. Everyone had something to gain but all self-interest could be couched in altruistic terms. The donors only wanted to help. They weren’t looking for money. Thernstrom only wanted to do something utterly natural – have a family – and do the best for her marriage. She wasn’t shopping for children in the way one might shop for a car.  Read More »

The Adoration of the Magi, Fra Angelico and Fra Filippo Lippi

Arise and be enlightened, O Jerusalem; for thy light is come, and the glory of the Lord is risen upon thee.

Isaias, 60:1

MARISSA writes:

The following words of Mrs. Sherman’s struck a real chord in me:

“Sometimes “free” comes with a terrible price. Teen children need their parents more emotionally than people know, and this is often the time when mothers choose to go to college or to work. Some women lose their own children, spiritually, emotionally, and physically, in order to go after a degree.”

This is exactly what happened between my mother and me. She went back to school to pursue an advanced professional degree when I was around ten or eleven, and finished when I was eighteen. In the intervening years, she lost me, so that when she finally graduated, I wanted little to do with her.

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DEIRDRE writes:

Mrs. Sherman’s remarks touched a nerve. I just wanted to give my account of how it is with colleges and the pressure housewives are under to get an education. 

I’ve been told I will be accepted at a major state university if I want to go. I’ve already got an Associates Degree. I don’t use it as a credential even though it took me four long years of part-time night school to get. Now, I feel tremendous pressure to go back to school. It does not matter that I would likely incur tremendous debt for another useless degree. My in-laws, parents, and everyone else would be so pleased if I would just go. My husband’s bosses would be impressed, my neighbors would be in awe. Read More »

EVERY YEAR, since 1957, Queen Elizabeth II has delivered a televised Christmas message. A comparison of her first address from Sandringham with this year’s message is a study in contrasts and the downward slide of the British monarchy. In the first message, a sober 31-year-old queen reflects on the unsettling pace of technological change and warns of grave moral peril. The habits and principles of the British people, upon which the commonwealth relies, are in danger.

“Because of these changes I am not surprised that many people feel lost and unable to decide what to hold onto and what to discard,” she says. “It is not the new inventions that are the difficulty. The trouble is caused by unthinking people who carelessly throw away ageless ideals as if they were old and outworn machinery. Read More »

LYDIA SHERMAN answers this question here. She writes:

It takes resolute, persistent, tenacious, valiant, undaunted, undismayed, unshrinking, fearless and daring, unmovable determination to be a wise and purposeful homemaker. It is common to be asked: “Don’t you know that our nation is in a financial down slide? Why are you staying home? You are living in a dream world! What about retirement money? What about benefits? What about the future? Why don’t you wake up and smell the coffee?”

All around us, today we see enticing advertising aimed at the housewives, trying to get them into college, and eventually, out working for other people. It is so important to know what you stand for, and not fall for everything that comes along and promises something great. Even if it is free, it does not mean you are obligated to take it.

Sometimes “free” comes with a terrible price. Teen children need their parents more emotionally than people know, and this is often the time when mothers choose to go to college or to work. Some women lose their own children, spiritually, emotionally, and physically, in order to go after a degree.

ITALIAN women, with a total fertility rate of 1.32 children, are among the most un-fruitful women in the history of the world. Why are Italian women so infertile? Because they are spending their prime years preparing for jobs, looking for jobs, and bemoaning the lack of jobs. Judging from this article on the economic crisis in Europe, Italy will fall because women found it more interesting to work in offices, and search for the Holy Grail of jobs, than raise the next generation. If longtime readers of this site cannot peruse this article and instantly see what is wrong with it, and one obvious solution for the problems mentioned, then either I am a very lousy teacher or you all deserve to flunk.

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JESSE POWELL writes:

The National Center for Health Statistics recently released the Final Birth Data for 2008 and the Preliminary Birth Data for 2009. The most important news from these reports is that the economic crisis appears to have caused a period of social stress. This period is in some ways similar to the time from 1994 to 2003 when the growth in out-of-wedlock births radically slowed. Looking back on those years, which I earlier dubbed the “cultural conservative revival,” I have discovered that while it is true the growth in the out-of-wedlock ratio slowed markedly during that period, it is also true that the decline in the proportion of women of childbearing age who were married accelerated. Risk aversion, not a renewal of the traditional family, appears to explain both this increased preference for having children within marriage and reluctance to marry.  Read More »

MODERN-DAY CHRISTIANITY, in its noxious embrace of egalitarianism, is at war with hierarchy. To the liberal Christian, hierarchy in human relationships is evil. We are one undistinguished mass of humanity, with none naturally given to lead. 

In the recent issue of Touchstone magazine, Steven D. Boyer examines the film remakes of C.S. Lewis’s Narnia books. He contends the films undermine Lewis’s orthodox vision of a hierarchical world. Boyer writes:

So hierarchy, by its nature, is fundamentally good. And Lewis follows the overwhelming majority of the Christian tradition by going further, by believing that the goodness of hierarchically ordered relationships extends all through the world that God has made. Relationships of all kinds are ordered, Lewis thinks, with an appropriate kind of giving and an appropriate kind of receiving. When that order is respected, real joy and freedom are the result. Read More »

THE GATES OF VIENNA recently featured a long piece by Michael Mannheimer, “Eurabia: The Planned Islamization of Europe” that is well worth reading. He wrote:

In 1960 only 600,000 Muslims lived in all of Europe, today, however, there are already over 30 million, and the greatest mass immigration in the history of man continues unabated. Read More »