John & Belle Have A Blog

Little Mai

3.51 kg. (That's about 7.7 lbs.) Mommy and baby are doing very well, thank you. Baby is particularly bright-eyed and savvy. Those eyes say: hey, I wasn't born yesterday, you know. Her older sister was bald as a cue, so young Vi is ahead on that score. And hardly a wisp of downy lanugo. Another sign of maturity. (If I ever write a novel with an idiot man-child protagonist - and with luck and a little hard-work I certainly will - I will remember to name him Downy Lanugo.)

V-E Day (That's Violet Extraction Day to You)

You probably won't be hearing much from us for a while...or at least, nothing from me for a while, as tomorrow we are going into the hospital for a scheduled surgical delivery of baby Violet Mai Holbo. Exciting stuff. I have to admit that the prospect of feeling, not pain, but the sensation of being "unzipped" sounds a bit creepy, but that's why a) they put up a screen so you don't see knives and b) they sedate you. Anyway, this has been the longest 8 months of my life and I am very excited to get a baby out of the whole deal. Everybody wish us all luck. I am ready to see some trailing clouds of glory.

Dreams Anybody Can Have, But Probably Only If They're Nerds

This morning I woke up singing a song to myself which my dream had adapted from an irritating Caillou song about "Big Brothers, Big Sisters." Except in my dream it went like this:

PRIME numbers, PRIME numbers--
They come in all sizes!
PRIME numbers, PRIME numbers--
They're full of suprises!

So, so true.

Pericles

Via BoingBoing, a truly hilarious condensed version of Shakespeare's Pericles (a companion piece for the IM Romeo and Juliet John linked to). Sample:

ACT 2, SCENE 1
Pentapolis

(Enter Pericles, wet.)

(That previous stage direction is verbatim.)

PERICLES: Goddamnit!

(Three fishermen enter.)

FISHERMAN 1: (unintelligible)

FISHERMAN 2: (unintelligible)

FISHERMAN 3: (laughs)

PERICLES: (after five minutes of listening to the fishermen's cryptic babbling) Rustic people certainly are amusing. Hey! Where am I?

FISHERMAN 1: Pentapolis, ruled by King Simonides. He has a daughter --

PERICLES: Who he's having sex with?

FISHERMAN 1: Um, no.

PERICLES: Well...good! Good for him.

FISHERMAN 1: Anyway, he has a daughter, and her birthday is tomorrow, and princes and knights from all over are going to vie for her love.

Really, I'm not sure that it's more ridiculous than Cymbeline, though. Perhaps they are equi-ridiculous.

Mephistopheles of Wall Street

Via Samizdata, I see that one W. Folsom has written a book entitled The Myth of the Robber Barons (scroll down the Amazon page for some good reviews and a humorously instructive list of what customers who bought this book also purchased). Well, as a direct descendant of the most bastardly of all the robber barons, Jay Gould, I'm not taking this lying down. I'll have you know that he fully deserved his monicker "The Mephistopheles of Wall Street", not to mention the evocative nickname "Robber of Widows and Children." Let's just look at some of the highlights of his career:

In 1867 Daniel Drew, treasurer and longtime director of the Erie Railroad, added Gould and James Fisk to the Erie board of directors. When Cornelius Vanderbilt, of the New York Central, sought to buy control of the Erie a spectacular battle ensued. Gould, Fisk, and Drew promptly issued thousands of shares of new, watered stock. When the angry Vanderbilt obtained an arrest warrant for the three, they ferried company headquarters to Jersey City, and Gould rushed to Albany where a pliable New York legislature authorized the stock issue. Eventually peace was made with Vanderbilt, but that gentleman was reported to have muttered that his trouble with the Erie "has learned me it never pays to kick a skunk." Later in the fall of 1869 Gould and Fisk conspired with the brother-in-law of President Ulysses S. Grant to corner the gold market, causing the panic of "Black Friday," September 24, 1869. Gould continued to loot the Erie until his departure in 1872. His role in the Erie War and the attempted gold corner gave him a reputation as the prime financial predator of the age.

Possessing a fortune, Gould turned to western railroads. In the twenty years after 1872 he was a director of seventeen major lines and the president of five. He purchased much Union Pacific stock and controlled that road until 1878. At first Gould improved the management of the Union Pacific but later blackmailed the company by threatening to have the Gould-controlled Kansas Pacific build a nuisance line to Utah. During the 1880s Gould controlled about half the mileage southwest of St. Louis and Kansas City and tried unsuccessfully to expand his western holdings into a transcontinental rail empire to the Atlantic Coast. He also owned the New York World for a time and held major investments in New York City's elevated railways and several large telegraph companies, including Western Union. In his last years Gould suffered from tuberculosis and died of that disease at the age of fifty-seven, leaving a fortune of $77 million to his six children.

Famous quote from old Jay? "I can hire one half the Working Class to kill the other half." Yeah, that's my boy. Well, he built up the nation's infrastructure some, extending rail lines to the west and consolidating Western Union. And, um, robbed people. No, I mean, he was a creative financier. He didn't go in for any of that pussy, reputation-burnishing charity either. Leave that to your guilt-ridden Carnegie and Rockefeller types. Or collecting art; that's for those damn Fricks (I have a personal animus against a certain descendant of Henry Clay Frick who shall remain nameless. Yeah, I'm talking about you, Miss Thing.) You'll be happy to know that his wastrel offspring, after increasing the family fortune to some extent, just pissed the rest away. My own great-grandmother, neé Edith Gould, spent 30 million (depression-era) dollars between about 1925 and 1938 or so. That's commonly regarded as a lot of money. You'd think we'd have all sorts of property and what not left over, but not really. She liked to gamble, and fly all her friends to Paris for parties with champagne fountains, and perishable stuff like that. Anyway, I don't want people blackening the Gould escutcheon with their insinuations. He was a robber baron of the first rank (although, in our NYT wedding announcement, where I had suggested "robber baron" they insisted on calling him "industrialist" Jay Gould. Ha ha.) After squeezing the working class dry, Gould used his money in pointless Gilded-Age extravagances, such as gardening, being the most hated man in America, and dying of tuberculosis. My favorite: playing chess with living people in stupid costumes (including knights on horseback) on a big lawn mown with alternating squares. Well, at least they didn't make the capturing pieces actually kill the captured ones.

Europe Makes the Right Call

I think Europe definitely made the right call, turning down bin Laden's 'if you don't attack me this turn, I won't attack you this turn' offer. Sure, with Europe controlling Europe, Europe is entitled to 5 extra armies a turn. Osama does not control a continent - won't any time soon - so is just looking to pick up a country, probably the Middle East, thereby getting a Risk card. Maybe then he'll turn in cards, if he's got 'em, and attack North America, although he's got to fight all the way to Kamchatka just to have a shot at Alaska. Anyway, in all the confusion Europe might manage to retake Africa for the first time since 1945. But I think Europe is right not to trust this man. Perhaps this is only my painful recent experience talking.

Seriously, wasn't this one of the weirdest diplomatic overtures in a long time? On the other hand, maybe my way of looking at it solves the whole 'why'd we invade if there weren't any WMDs?' puzzle. The neocons were just looking to pick up an easy Risk card right from the start. The Midde-East was not strongly defended, and it's not like you have to hold the thing.

Meet the new boss

Violet will be here soon, so I thought one last Zoëblog while she's still got the world to herself might be nice:

Western Civilization

In hopes of bridging the gap between laa-dee-da, stuck-up sticky-beak high culture and all the simple stuff your average Eddie Action Figure and Suzy Mobile Phone can relate to - I present this and this. (Thanks, Haydon; and Scribbling Woman).

Bad Dreams Only Classicists Have

I have been in a lot of pain recently, which tends to give you really bad dreams. Last night I had a doozy in which I was torn limb from limb and eaten raw by maenads. They were sort of modern-day maenads assembled for a wedding in Scotland, but I don't know what that's about. It was terrible enough that I had to wake myself up, so I woke John up too, and said, "I was having the most terrible dream about sparagmos!", and he said, "wha...?" Then I went back to sleep.

Two Tickets to Paradise

Am I the only person who has a kind of perverse urge to go on the National Review cruise sometime?

Mega-influential author and NRO Contributor Victor Davis Hanson, world-renowned Islam authority Bernard Lewis, RNC chairman Ed Gillespie, Club for Growth president Steve Moore, acclaimed author Dinesh D’Souza, NRO favorite John Derbyshire, and NR editorial stars Rich Lowry, Ramesh Ponnuru, and Jay Nordlinger.

And we’ve also just heard from syndicated columnist Michelle Malkin, (the author of Invasion, the 2002 blockbuster on U.S. immigration policy)--she’s agreed to join us for our seven days of fun, sun, and conservative shop-talk.

Right, but I'm forgetting how hard it is to get acid nowadays.