Harry Reid, Barack Obama

Luke Ford says:

On his radio show Jan. 11, 2010, Dennis Prager said about U.S. Senate majority leader Harry Reid’s remarks about Barack Obama being more electable because he was a light-skinned black man who only spoke with a “negro dialect when he wants to”: “I am embarrassed as an American that this is big news.

“I think Harry Reid is one of those who are leading the United States to disaster.”

“I do not care what people say privately. We have started to think that private things muttered to a friend tells us all we need to know about a person… When these writers write these comments, they just make people more wary about opening up to friends and colleagues. It is a self-imposed totalitarianism.

“What is it about totalitarianism that is so frightening? That what you say in private is monitored.”

“The reporting of what people say privately? Tell me why that is different then what the Stasi did in East Germany. Why is this noble? Does it tell you things you need to know about a character?”

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The Startle Response

Luke Ford says:

I’m reading Freedom to Change by Frank Pierce Jones, a professor of Classics at Brown University and a teacher of Alexander Technique.

From page 178: The pattern of startle (which has been studied by high-speed photography) is remarkably regular. It begins with an eye-blink; the head is then thrust forward; the shoulders are raised and the arms stiffened; abdominal muscles shorten; breathing stops and the knees are flexed.

The startle pattern is a model of other slower response patterns: fear, anxiety, fatigue and pain all show postural changes from the norm which are similar to those that are seen in startle. In all of them there is a shortening of neck muscles which displaces the head, and which is usually followed by some kind of flexion response, so that the body is drawn into a slightly smaller space. As in startle these postural responses cannot take place without the prior displacement of the head and the shortening of neck muscles.

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Failed Messiah Scott Rosenberg

Luke Ford says:

Samuel G. Freedman writes in the New York Times:

Leaders of the Chabad movement declined to speak on the record about Mr. Rosenberg, but in general, they say he has exaggerated the degree of messianism in the movement and that he is driven to settle scores. Even they, though, acknowledge he has gotten some embarrassing things right.

“Shmarya often reminds me of journalism in the old days — when editors would sometimes go at one another physically in the street,” Jonathan D. Sarna, a historian of American Jewry at Brandeis University with expertise in Jewish journalism, wrote in an e-mail message. “I know that he is fiercely hated in some Orthodox circles, but he has had many a scoop, and is certainly THE destination for those who want dirt about Orthodoxy exposed to the world.”

There have been a lot of articles written about Shmarya Rosenberg but this is far and away the best one yet. It really gives you a sense of the man, what drives him, and what are his strengths and weaknesses.

The opening of the story is vivid:

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Alexander Technique Happiness

Luke Ford says:

I’m reading a terrific book addressing this question — Freedom to Change by Frank Pierce Jones, a professor of Classics at Brown University and a teacher of Alexander Technique.

Happiness is defined as “doing well something that interests you.” It can be seen at its clearest in a healthy child at play whose pleasure resides in the satisfaction of making something work. This satisfaction, Alexander says, can be established even more strongly when the mechanism that is made to work is the child’s own. Here he describes vividly the change in facial expression and the look of pleasure that a child shows when he suddenly discovers in a lesson that he can do easily and in a coordinated manner something he has always done awkwardly before, realizing, for example, that he can in this way improve his skill in games. “It’s a happiness,” Alexander said, “which increases with the psycho-physical improvement.” In marked contrast is the unhappiness shown by most adults as they approach middle age and realize that they are not improving in themselves but deteriorating. Success is essential to happiness in everyone. When happiness cannot be obtained in the ordinary way, in the satisfaction of using oneself optimally in the routine of everyday life, a person will begin pursuing specific pleasures. People unfortunately have been taught to make the routine activities of daily life automatic and as far as possible unconscious. This leads to a condition of stagnation and the harmful demand for specific excitements and stimulations, none of which can possibly produce real happiness. Such happiness can only be obtained by restoring to a person his own sensory standard so that he can gradually re-establish a pattern of growth and self-satisfaction that will carry him beyond middle age and into old age. Happiness, then, consists in the sensory satisfaction that comes with an increase of self-knowledge and control. This satisfaction extends to all aspects of living (including, of course, the sexual).

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The Upper Classes

Luke Ford says:

I’m reading a terrific book addressing this question — Freedom to Change by Frank Pierce Jones, a professor of Classics at Brown University and a teacher of Alexander Technique.

When happiness cannot be obtained in the ordinary way, in the satisfaction of using oneself optimally in the routine of everyday life, a person will begin pursuing specific pleasures. People unfortunately have been taught to make the routine activities of daily life automatic and as far as possible unconscious. This leads to a condition of stagnation and the harmful demand for specific excitements and stimulations, none of which can possibly produce real happiness. Such happiness can only be obtained by restoring to a person his own sensory standard so that he can gradually re-establish a pattern of growth and self-satisfaction that will carry him beyond middle age and into old age. Happiness, then, consists in the sensory satisfaction that comes with an increase of self-knowledge and control. This satisfaction extends to all aspects of living (including, of course, the sexual).

From page 53:

“The upper classes,” A.R. Alexander once said, “are never any help to you. When one of them discovers the Technique, he never tells anybody else about it. He likes to keep it for himself.” It was different with literary people. They liked to share the knowledge of something they had discovered…

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Big Boy Rules

Luke Ford says:

Despite a stomach bug, I interviewed by phone Washington Post reporter Steve Fainaru Wednesday evening, Jan. 13, 2010, about his 2009 book Big Boy Rules.

Luke: “Tell me about the impact of 9/11 upon you personally and professionally.”

Steve: “It had a profound impact. When it happened, I was in Washington. I was covering sports… That job became immediately obsolete. I was tasked to cover terrorism. It took me to New York. Then the [Iraq] war started and I got caught up in the war for the better part of three years.”

“There were several books I could’ve written about Iraq. This story, both personally and professionally, resonated with me the most… The whole private security madness going on over there, the hidden quality of it, it just made it a rich topic.”

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Alexander Technique & John Dewey

Luke Ford says:

I’m reading a terrific book addressing this question — Freedom to Change by Frank Pierce Jones, a professor of Classics at Brown University and a teacher of Alexander Technique.

From Appendix A: “John Dewey once said that the reason F.M. Alexander’s teaching had appealed to him in the first place was not that it made him feel better (though the improvement in his health had been marked), but that it made him conscious of his total ignorance of a whole field of knowledge. The field he referred to was the knowledge of how he used himself in the ordinary activities of life. Like many intellectuals, Dewey was aware of a certain ineptness in the performance of physical tasks. If he was going to get up from a chair, or sit down, or pick up something he had dropped, he would do it awkwardly, and his aim was to get it over with as quickly as possible so as to get on to something more suited to his abilities, like “thinking.” Alexander made him realize that his impressions and beliefs about his own physical activities were as appropriate a field as any for the exercise of constructive thought.”

Dr. Jones writes about John Dewey: I asked Dewey about his early experiences with the Alexander Technique. He said he had been taken by it first because it provided a demonstration of the unity of mind and body. He thought that the demonstration had struck him more forcibly than it might have struck someone who got the sensory experience easily and quickly, because he was such a slow learner. He had always been physically awkward, he said, and performed all actions too quickly and impulsively and without thought. “Thought” in his case was saved for “mental” activity, which had always been easy for him. (Alexander told me that when Dewey first came to him he was “drugged with thinking” and used to fall asleep during lessons.) It was a revelation to discover that thought could be applied with equal advantage to everyday movements.

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