The Definition of Treason Under American Law

Recently, political disputants and the mainstream media have taken to calling people who disagree with government officials and government mandates traitors. Traitors would be people who commit treason, a very serious crime.

But under the United States constitution treason is defined very narrowly. And the people throwing about the label of traitor are not even pretending that the strict definition in Article 3, section 3 has been met.

The first person most Americans think of when we hear the term treason is Benedict Arnold. His betrayal is so notorious that his name has become synonymous with treason. “Don’t be a Benedict Arnold!” people sometimes say.

Benedict Arnold was in fact a turncoat. He changed sides during the revolutionary war. First he abjured his loyalty to King George and signed up at Valley Forge to serve under George Washington. Later when commanding American forces at West Point he changed his mind and began serving the British again. Was Benedict Arnold a traitor against Britain when he served under George Washington? Or was a he a traitor against the United States when he went back to serving King George? It is really a matter of point of view, as the famous lines by John Harrington illustrate: “Treason never prospers. What’s the reason? If it prosper, none dare call it treason.”

John Harrington

The controlling case about the application of the constitutional definition of treason is United States v. Aaron Burr. Aaron Burr was acquitted. Nothing that he did by mustering forces against Mexico could be construed as treason against the United States.

He was however found guilty of violating The Neutrality Act, a statute that denies Americans the right to wage war on their own or to serve in a foreign army. The Neutrality Act is of dubious constitutionality and still poses dilemmas for naturalized American citizens to this very day.

However, despite the Neutrality Act’s prohibition on serving in a competing army or serving another potentate, one thing is clear from the oath administered to new citizens: allegiance of American citizens is to the constitution and not the government of the United States. Therefore, rebellion against the government is not necessarily treason. In the United States, we recognize the difference between sedition and treason, as well as the difference between rebellion and treason. Yet there are certain factions currently in control of our mainstream media who seek to blur that distinction.

Julia Hanna and I discussed this on our livestream.

If you would like to learn more about Aaron Burr and the Neutrality Act, read my book, Theodosia and the Pirates.

 

Posted in Opinion Pieces and Editorials, Penal Code and Incarceration, Politics and Philosophy | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

A Letter from Amnon Katz to the Canaanites

Recently I visited my mother, and she gave me a copy of an old letter my father sent to the Canaanite leadership in January of 1978. My father died on October 3, 2000. Most of the Canaanite leaders were much older than he was. The paper on which the letter was printed is yellowed, torn and full of holes. Before it disappears, I decided to share what he wrote.

The letter was in Hebrew. I have added an English translation.

 

Grand Prairie, Texas

January 15, 1978

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                             SECRET: Anyone who hands over this document to the enemies of Canaan will be put to death and his corpse thrown to the dogs.

 

To the faithful of Canaan wherever they may be,

I am addressing you in order to point out a way to realize Canaanism that we have neglected so far. This way is to turn directly to the inhabitants of Judea, Samaria and other areas in order to arouse and organize them, until they themselves will rise up and demand their rights to a Hebrew education and full Israeli citizenship.

I became conscious that this way is possible thanks to my meeting with “Ali” (not his real name)  —  a young man from one of the “Arab” settlements in Judea. Ali was introduced to me here in Texas by an American acquaintance.  We exchanged a few words in Hebrew and then went back to speaking English. A short while before I had explained Canaanism to the American. I knew that he saw the encounter between me and the Palestinian a test of Canaanism. When Ali started a sentence with: “I’m an Arab…” I interrupted him and asked: “What do you mean when you say that you are an Arab? Did you ancestors come to Israel from Arabia?”

“No.”

“You are not an Arab,” I told him. “You are a local from Israel.” The young man agreed and said that he would like to be simply Israeli. I told him that, in my opinion, that is exactly what he should be. When he heard this, Ali came over and hugged me.

Since then I continued to muse over the nature of the Judean. I found that his loyalty to Israel was deep and fundamental. This feeling springs from the preference for Israeli society over that of the neighboring countries, because of the human relations and honoring the individual that are to be found in Israel. If he could, he would want to assimilate and to become well versed in Israeli society, and would be happy to defend Israel and to put his life in peril serving it.

Because Ali was from the “territories”, Israeli institutions from IDF to the Hebrew University, are closed to him. In contrast, his cousin is serving in an Israeli armored unit. Ali tells of his cousin’s bravery with pride, about his courage and his exploits for Israel in the battles of ’73. The mother of his cousin is from Judea, but his father is from the Negev. For this reason the cousin is deemed  an “Israeli Beduin”, and IDF is open to him. Ali is considered an Arab from the territories, and everything is closed to him.

Ali received an education in Arabic.  His Hebrew is poor. He is not familiar with the Hebrew Bible — he has never even heard of King Saul. The draw of Israel for him is based on territorial belonging, on the preference for Israeli society, and, since our meeting, the awareness that his place of origin is Israel and not Arabia. From the entire theory of Canaanism, he currently understands only “The Arabs Who Are in the Land of Israel.” Even this he has not read because of the language barrier.

In all this the identification with Israel and the newfound awareness of his “Jewish” origin is a deep and strong motive for Ali. He was very hurt when he heard Begin (on TV) mention “Palestinian Arabs”  and was on the verge of sending an open letter of protest. This letter and also other plans that I had for him were not put into effect. The immediate reason was fear of retaliation against his family by the PLO. A deeper reason is that Ali is in the process of emigrating to the United States, and a large portion of his family has already emigrated here before him.

In Israel there are many left who are just like him. If you reach them in time, you could find in them the leverage that we lacked all these years. From a historical perspective, isn’t this the natural way? It is normal that those who have been annexed fight for their rights (e.g. Rome.)

The people you will turn to in this scenario are far from having a Hebrew education and background. The thesis needs to be fitted to the understanding of the recipients. At first, we should concentrate on the origin of the inhabitants of Israel and Lebanon, and the material has to be available in Arabic. We need an Arabic translation of “The Arabs Who Are in the Land of Israel.” The current preference for Israeli society will do the rest.

In expressing these things I am concerned that some of you will see in my words arrogance and self-aggrandizement. I am afraid you will look askance at my giving you — who are greater than me in years, in wisdom and in Canaanism — advice and “instructions” from afar. Please, my brothers, don’t. It is not for me or for my honor that I write these things. Only for the love Canaan and as the gods command I write. Therefore, forget me, remember Canaan, and do each whatever he can for the motherland.

The gods be with you,

Amnon Katz

 

מכתב מאמנון כץ לכנענים

מכתב מאמנון כץ אל הכנענים

 

 

 

 

 

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Triggered! Why You Have Not Seen a Libertarian Musical Yet!

 

Have you been wondering: Why are all the musicals I have ever seen pandering to statists? Why isn’t there a libertarian musical? One reason might be that the funding for theater productions nowadays all comes from 501 (c) (3) compliant nonprofits. This is true whether it is a local community theater production or a Broadway play. Making an honest profit off art is not how it happens. I am sure people profit, but even Piketty’s Capital in the 21st Century admits that the growing divide between haves and have-nots comes in the form of income inequality, not capital accumulation. In other words, your salary can be as big as you like, when you are the one setting it. But your company will show no profit.

If I offer The Debt Collector to local community productions, which are usually run by devout Mormons with credentials from Julliard, I am told that the sexy songs are too sexual.

“Have you seen Les Miserables?” I ask. “Do you think that Fantine’s downfall is not much more explicit?”

“What passes muster on Broadway is not okay for Main Street America,” I am told.

“But what about Annie? Annie is for kids. Have you seen Carol Burnett’s Miss Hannity? Have your children seen her?”

“That’s different.”

Why is that different? How is it different? Could it be because that show enshrines FDR?  I personally would have loved to see Miss Hannity get it on with Daddy Warbucks. They are, after all, both statists.

And then there is the whole anti-Landlord thing.  Why, oh, why is “Master of the House ” not offensive, when songs like “Law Abiding People” are triggering?

Because it is not fair to the underclasses to make fun of them? Then why does the guy who sings “Master of the House” have a cockney accent? Your disdain for the newly risen and adulation for aristocrats is scarcely hidden, Mister Liberal-Minded Intellectual.

We have a problem. Every musical I know of caters to the same ideology, and nobody, left or right of center, is doing a thing to change it.

 

Related

https://www.pubwages.com/26/an-extended-synopsis-of-the-debt-collector

 

 

 

 

 

 

Posted in Movies and Films, Music, Musical Styles, Opinion Pieces and Editorials | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Comparing Autism Spectrum Disorder with Narcissistic Personality Disorder

Autism is a developmental disorder characterized by impairment of automated social skills. Narcissism is a personality disorder characterized by socially inappropriate behavior. Because both seem to involve a focus on the self and a deficit in the ability to perspective shift, each has become a pejorative term leveled at libertarians and objectivists. The main difference between the disorders is that ASD involves mind blindness while NPD involves a savvy use of mind reading and mirroring the mental states of others for the purpose of manipulation. While clinicians state that it is possible to have a comorbidity between the two conditions, it is unlikely that someone who is mind blind can have much success manipulating others. This kind of manipulation is a tactic that has survival value only to those with at least a neurotypical ability to read the social cues of others.

Julia Hanna and I will compared ASD and NPD on our show. Here is the link:

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Inverted-A Horn Poetry Submission Guidelines

How We Judge Metrical Poetry: Inverted-A Horn Submissions Guidelines

Aya Katz profile image
The Inverted-A Horn Masthead
The Inverted-A Horn Masthead

How can you tell if something is good? In the case of poetry, aren’t all standards of evaluation strictly subjective? Don’t we all tend to think that what we write is good? Isn’t it all a matter of taste?

In the case of much of modern poetry that is not metrical, this may be true. However, metrical poetry involves both a technical and an artistic component, and while we may sometimes disagree concerning artistic evaluation, the technical part is fairly straightforward.

In this hub, I will explain what we at the Inverted-A Horn look for in poetry submissions. In the process we will discuss the idea of objective merit versus subjective preferences in the selection of poetry.

Objectivity

Having objective standards in a field of endeavor is something that usually elevates the prestige of the field and ensures competitive earnings for those who excel. Some areas in which it is relatively easy to establish objective standards of evaluation include: athletics, mathematics and music.

Objective standards are present when people are able to judge for themselves that others are considerably better than they are at a particular skill. For instance, I can’t stay deluded about my relative strength as a sprinter for very long. All I have to do is measure a course and clock my run to know that I am not in the running for any world record. This does not mean I can’t enjoy running, but it does mean that when someone other than me gets a gold medal, I will know that he deserves it, and that it was not all a matter of politics.

The same is true for mathematics. Since the rules of the game are well defined, we usually can tell for ourselves that someone else has solved a problem that we were not able to solve. (Except for a few cranks, mentioned in the link, most people have fairly realistic notions concerning their own mathematical abilities.)

In classical music, too, there is a certain level of objectivity. Many more people can intuitively appreciate good music than are able to produce it. Simply by judging their own output against that of someone who is more proficient, they can tell when they have been outclassed.

The state of objectivity in poetic evaluation was never as rigorously defined as are excellence in athletics, mathematics and music. However, there was a time when people enjoyed poetry recitation even though they were not poets themselves.They were able to judge the merit of a poem by the effect that it had on them when recited. There were even competitions to determine who had greater skill at recitation.

Just as with music, the effect of the meter and the substance of the poem were felt by its audience, and people could readily enjoy the experience of hearing a poem well recited, when they realized that they themselves were not capable of writing such a poem or even of reciting it to the same effect,

In those days, poets had the prestige of composers and reciters were given the same respect as musicians. Those days are long past. Here at The Inverted-A Horn, we are hoping for a revival.

What is meter?

Meter is composed of units called feet. In a metrical line, there will typically be a fixed number of feet and each foot will be composed of specific patterns formed by the arrangement of weak and strong syllables.

What makes a syllable weak or strong? This varies from language to language. Some languages are stress-based languages, like Modern English. In Modern English a stressed syllable is considered strong, and an unstressed syllable is considered weak. In Latin, which was a time-based language, the contrast was between long and short syllables. For the purposes of meter in Latin, a strong syllable was a long syllable. A weak syllable was a short syllable.

Each language has its own way of determining which syllable is weak or strong. The important thing in understanding meter is to note that there are two things that contrast with each other: a dot and a dash, a ying and a yang. It doesn’t matter so much what they are. Without the contrast, there could be no meter.

Independently of the definition of weak and strong syllables, which varies from language to language, we can define specific meters in the following way, using x to stand for a strong syllable and o to stand for a weak one.

In any specific meter, you will see recurring patterns of x and o, as in the following examples:

1) oox/oox/oox/

Read it out loud: “Dot dot dash/dot dot dash/ dot dot dash.” Or instead you could say: “duh duh dah!” for each three syllables.

2) ox/ox/ox Read it aloud: “Dot dash/ dot dash/ dot dash.” Or alternatively: “Duh dah“, for each two syllables. You can beat the meter out on the table as if it were a rhythm.

3) oxo/oxo/oxo/ Read it out loud: “dot dash dot/ dot dash dot/ dot dash dot.” This time the one in the middle is the strong one.

4) xo/xo/xo Now the strong syllable come first, followed by a weak one. “Dash dot/ dash dot/ dash dot.”

A single repetition of such patterns is called a metrical foot

Labels for Different Meters

The different types of metrical feet have traditional names:

1) ox (or a weak followed by a strong syllable) is an iamb, and when used as adjective is calle iambic.

2) oox (or two weak syllables followed by one strong) is an anapest, or an anapestic foot.

3) oxo (or strong syllable sandwiched between two weak ones) is called an amphibrach or amphibrachus.

4) xo (or a strong syllable followed by a weak one) is called a trochee, or trochaic foot.

5) xoo (or a strong syllable followed by two weak ones) is called a dactyl, or dactylic foot.

There are a few others that the books mention, such as spondee, which consists of two strong syllables together or a tribrach, which consists of three weak syllables in a row. When submitting poetry to us, avoid those kinds of feet. They tend to break up the meter.

Regular meter usually avoids two strong syllables side by side, nor does it tolerate having more than two weak syllables side by side before a strong one appears. Why? Because put two strong things together, and one of them will turn out to be stronger than the other. Put three weak ones together, and one of them will turn out to be not as weak, It’s human nature not to be able to tolerate that much uniformity. If you do manage it, then it will end up sounding like prose.

What does prose sound like? It is unmelodious. It violates the easiest flow of syllables. Prose does this, because there is a tension between metrical rules imposed in a word and metrical rules imposed on a phrase. In a multisyllabic word, two strong syllables will never be found side by side. In a multisyllabic word, more than two weak syllables will not go together. In a sentence or phrase, this does sometimes happen, because, for instance, a word ending in a strong syllable can be followed by a word starting with a strong syllable.The difference between poetry and prose is that prose has irregular meter. Prose doesn’t scan.

We at Inverted-A don’t have a preference for any particular meter. As long as it is regular, any meter will do. Different poems can include regular combinations of specific numbers of particular feet in each line. For instance, we all have heard of iambic pentameter, which consists of five iambs per line.

Do you need to to know the name of your meter in order to submit poetry to Inverted-A? Absolutely not. Do you need to sit around counting weak versus strong syllables? Again, the answer is no. If you write metrical poetry instinctively, all that will take care of itself.

Why do I mention it then? If you submit a poem with perfect meter, there will be no scansion problem. (Your poem may still get rejected, because of content issues, but that’s a different story.) The only time we may end up talking about the meter is if there’s something wrong with it. In which case, it’s nice to have a vocabulary for discussing it.

Assigning Stress to Syllables in a Line of Modern English

The trick to metrical poetry is that it selects patterns that a language naturally has plenty of, but it just makes them a little more regular. Listening to poetry is like listening to someone talking — only more so! It’s an idealization of a regular pattern that is natural in a language.

In the case of monosyllabic words in English, here is a rule of thumb: in the average phrase or sentence the content words will get the stresses, while the grammatical words will not be stressed:

1) The man was not at home.

2) His phone was off the hook.

3) It’s good to feed the dog.

These are all simple sentences in Modern English that just naturally fall into iambic feet. There are many more such sentences, and this is why writing poetry in iambic feet is easy in English.

Words consisting of more than one syllable in English have a stress assigned to them on a word by word basis. That is, you have to be familiar with the word, to know where the stresses go. What makes things even more complicated, if you bother to notice, is that some English words are so long that a single stress in not enough. According to some theorists, these words have both a primary and a secondary stress. In addition to this, some words have syllables that are not only unstressed, they are actually reduced. For purposes of metrical poetry, though, there are only two kinds of syllables: weak and strong. A syllable with a stress, primary or secondary, is a stressed syllable, and therefore, strong. A syllable that is unstressed is weak. A reduced syllable is weak.

Here I will show you the meter of specific multisyllabic English words:

1) con-sti-tu-tion x-o-x-o

2) spin-ach x-o

3) re-port o-x

4) un-for-tu-nate-ly o-x-o-o-x

When stringing words together in a sentence or phrase, their internal metrical structure rarely gives way to the metrical demands of the phrase. That’s why choosing the right word to suit your meter — or the right meter to suit your word – is important.

In the following line from E. Shaun Russell’s poem, “State of the Union”, which appears in Inverted-A Horn # 28, the word “constitution” fits neatly into an iambic meter, as follows:

“In-voke/ your con/-sti-tu/-tion and/ feel proud

Most of the meter in this line flows naturally and there is no other way to read it except as a series of iambic feet. Can you identify the one foot where a metrical reading does not necessarily coincide with a natural one? It’s the one where the word “and” bears the stress. Because the meter in the rest of the line is so strong, it’s not hard for us to follow the stress pattern and stress “and”. Words like “and” do occasionally get stressed because of the context.(Example: “Do you want the water or the juice? I want the water and the juice.”)

Your metrical poem is most successful when the natural reading and the metrical reading coincide.

The Process of Selection

What happens when we start evaluating a poem at the Inverted-A Horn? The first thing we do is read it out loud, to see if it scans. It doesn’t matter what it looks like on the page. What matters is how it sounds.

Take this paragraph, for instance, which was written by Roy Moore and published as part of “The Ranchman” in Inverted-A Horn #13: “…The mountains rise purple with far off horizons. The sky overhead is blue, silver, and chrome. The valley is tranquil in sunlight and shadow. This is my heaven, this place I call home.”

Was that paragraph prose? No, because it scanned. You can tell something is a poem with your eyes closed. You’re not going to fool us into thinking a prose submission belongs in our poetry section by cutting it up into short lines. (We do publish prose, too!) Some of us are not looking at the paper. We’re listening to somebody else read it. We can tell if it scans.

Must a poem rhyme? No. We like rhymes, but they are optional, like the icing on a cake. We will not accept something that rhymes but doesn’t scan. We will accept it if it scans and doesn’t rhyme. But it has to be good!

Of course, what “good” is has its subjective side. That’s where personal taste comes in. About half the poems we get are rejected because they don’t scan at all. That decision is easy, because it’s completely objective. We then proceed to divide the rest of the poetry submissions into three piles:

1) Those that simply don’t move us, even if they do scan.

2) Those that move us but scan imperfectly.

3) Those that move us and also scan perfectly.

Here’s what happens: We reject the poems in the first group on substantive rather than formal grounds. We offer suggestions to correct the scansion of the poems in the second group. We accept without reservation the poems in the third group.

So what tends to move us? We like romantic/heroic poems. We don’t like to think of humanity as helpless and without redeeming value. We want to see beauty, but we’re not looking for trite sentiments. A poem can be sad and yet good. It can be lyrical, narrative or philosophical. We accept many different subjects.

If you want to get a better idea, send off for a sample issue of The Horn.

 

(c) 2009 Aya Katz

COMMENTS

 

  • Aya Katz profile imageAUTHOR

    Aya Katz 

    9 years ago from The Ozarks

    Thanks, Caterina! I looked forward to reading your works on Inverteda.com.

  • Caterina Mercone Maxwell 

    9 years ago

    Your article is excellent and refreshingly elucidating. Thank you for your fine work.

  • Twilight Lawns profile image

    Twilight Lawns 

    9 years ago from Norbury-sur-Mer, Surrey, England. U.K.

    I am capable of metrical poetry (rhyming even) and I have written even a Petrarchan sonnet or two. It’s not too easy writing in the saddle of a high horse. Thanks again, for being so understanding.

  • Aya Katz profile imageAUTHOR

    Aya Katz 

    9 years ago from The Ozarks

    Ian, no problem. I can see how it might have been confusing coming from the online persepective. You might say that we have a double-standard: very high for print publication, but very open for people who just want to express themselves on the web.

    I hope that you do sign up with us for online article publishing. I think we will get along just fine.

  • Twilight Lawns profile image

    Twilight Lawns 

    9 years ago from Norbury-sur-Mer, Surrey, England. U.K.

    Thank you for your prompt and civil response. If I have offended, it was not my attention, and I will still look into the site. Maybe I was just feeling that there were no standards being maintained, and my bruised psyche suddenly thought there were too many standards being insisted upon. As I said earlier; the standard of poetic endeavour on HP makes me cringe… frequently because there seems to be the idea that, if there is a vague attempt at meter, and an obligatory adherence to rhyme, that there is poetry going on.

    Forget the meaning; forget the sense.

    Once more, apologies.

    I will now get off my soap box or high horse, or whatever.

    Ian

  • Aya Katz profile imageAUTHOR

    Aya Katz 

    9 years ago from The Ozarks

    Twilight Lawns, there are number of different things you are confusing here. The Inverted-A Horn is a newsletter that we publish on paper the old fashioned way, and we only print our kind of stuff: libertarian political commentary, romantic heroic poetry, and short stories with real plots. We also publish books, in softcover: novels that we consider to be well written.

    But if you came here from the recommendation of one of the alternative online publishers, that’s a completely different story. You can publish whatever you like at inverteda.com, if you sign up, and we will neither endorse it nor delete it. (Assuming it doesn’t violate Google TOS and carry adsense.)

    So, there are two things going on here. We are a press. As a press we have very high standards. But we’ve also opened a spot for the public to just express itself, and there anybody can say just about anything, provided it’s not defamation or doesn’t get us in trouble with the the mighty G.

    BTW, we aren’t some kind of reactionaries that only publish Petrarchian sonnets. Even with our press, any poem that has a meter — a consistent meter– has got a chance of being published, even if nobody has used that particular meter before. It has to fit our definition of what a meter is, but we don’t need to have heard of it before to recognize it as such.

    By the same token, we don’t publish everything that scans, either. It has to move us!

  • Twilight Lawns profile image

    Twilight Lawns 

    9 years ago from Norbury-sur-Mer, Surrey, England. U.K.

    Understood. I was recommended your site as I got the impression that there was a way forward out of the fog that was HubPages, but reading your rather spiteful “we know better than you or anyone else” reply, it seems that you hold the banner of ‘Reactionary Thought’, both high and proud. (Please excuse my use of an adjective instead of an adverb),

    Please take a look at my meagre little comment, and see that I do not say that Eliot is better than Byron or Shakespeare; Wordsworth or Coleridge. I just feel that you dismiss him, and the likes of him, out of hand. I like poetry as well as the next man (which isn’t much to say, in this country), and have taught literature and poetry as part of my teaching career, and am appalled at puerile prose being dressed up as poetry, just because it stops and starts at the end of a line, and may, or may not, have a rhyming word thrown in here or there. There is enough of that going on on HubPages already, but if you subscribe to strict Petrarchan Sonnet forms and iambic pentameter to the exclusion of a little development and an attempt to forge into the late twentieth century, then it is your right.

  • Aya Katz profile imageAUTHOR

    Aya Katz 

    9 years ago from The Ozarks

    Twilight Lawns, T.S. Eliot and I belong to different schools of thought. We also follow different paths. Inverted-A was founded in part as a reaction to progressive schools of literature that de-valued and undercut metrical poetry.

    Your comment seems to imply that because we at Inverted-A are less well known than Eliot, then anything he wrote and his type of poetry trumps anything we have to say. But we follow a long line of poets who came long before Eliot.

    Do you think Eliot necessarily knew better than Shakespeare, or Wordsworth or Shelley? Does anybody recite Eliot by heart? How many ordinary people derive pleasure from reading him?

  • Twilight Lawns profile image

    Twilight Lawns 

    9 years ago from Norbury-sur-Mer, Surrey, England. U.K.

    Oh Dear, I don’t think T S Eliot would have had much of a chance with your high-minded standards.

    But I’m sure you know better than the likes of him and his admirers.

    .
  • Aya Katz profile imageAUTHOR

    Aya Katz 

    12 years ago from The Ozarks

    Jerilee, thanks!

    Status: Visible.
  • Jerilee Wei profile image

    Jerilee Wei 

    12 years ago from United States

    Great hub Aya! It’ll take me awhile to digest it, but you always seem to have a way of making things make sense in a new light.

  • Aya Katz profile imageAUTHOR

    Aya Katz 

    12 years ago from The Ozarks

    With apologies to Lord Byron, I would have to say that if he submitted the following line to us as part of DON JUAN, we’d make him rewrite it:

    Dying intestate, Juan   was sole heir

    x-o     o-x-o      x(-o)  o     o      x

      DAH-duh-duh-DAH-duh-DAH(-duh)-duh-duh-DAH

    The line appears at the beginning of the stanza, in a position where the majority of other lines would have five iambs. But, regardless of how we pronounce JUAN, we don’t get that here. “Dying” is accented on the first syllable. It’s DY-ing, not “Dy-ING.” Yes, sometimes we can stretch normal accent a little, but this is way too much. It’s simply abnormal to pronounce the word that way, in any dialect of English that I’ve ever encountered. You could argue that the line starts with a degenerate foot, so you can add a beat before “dying’, but that still doesn’t fix the mess that comes after. The word intestate has its accent on the second syllable “test”. It’s testate versus intestate. The in is just a negator, and it doesn’t get the accent, any more than “In-” in “insensible” would.

    Now, as for the disyllabic pronunciation of Juan as JU-an, remember that Byron previously rhymed it with “true one”, so the implication is that the stress is on the first syllable.

    I just don’t see how pronouncing “Juan” as two syllables could save the meter in this line, when a normal line in that position in the stanza runs like this:

    “I want a hero: an uncommon want,”

    o-x/o-x/o-x/o-x/o-x/

    duh-DAH-du-DAH-duh-DAH-du-DAH

  • Aya Katz profile imageAUTHOR

    Aya Katz 

    12 years ago from The Ozarks

    Nets, I’ll get back to you a little later on that point. In the meanwhile, here is a link to the entire text of Lord Byron’s DON JUAN, so that others can weigh in on this question:

    http://www.geocities.com/~bblair/donjuan.htm

  • nhkatz profile image

    nhkatz 

    12 years ago from Bloomington, Indiana

    No. It’s a different stanza. I swear the correct pronunciation of Juan makes it prose. But I get confused …

    Status: Approved.
  • Aya Katz profile imageAUTHOR

    Aya Katz 

    12 years ago from The Ozarks

    Nets, yes, you seem to be right about the first line that you quote. The scansion of the third line seems odd whichever way you pronounce Juan. Is it from the same stanza?

    Maven101, thanks for your comment!

  • maven101 profile image

    Larry Conners 

    12 years ago from Northern Arizona

    Thanks for a great and informative Hub…my poetry tends to be more prose,

    With much deep thought but poetic flub…you’ve shown me how I must compose..

    Really, thanks for another interesting Hub…

    Status: Approved.
  • nhkatz profile image

    nhkatz 

    12 years ago from Bloomington, Indiana

    He seems pretty consistent about his joke in Canto the first. (Or maybe I’m bad at scansion.)

    “Narrating something of Don Juan’s father,

    And also of his mother if you’d rather.”

    “Dying intestate, Juan was sole heir …”

  • Aya Katz profile imageAUTHOR

    Aya Katz 

    12 years ago from The Ozarks

    Nets, yes, the actual pronunciation of specific words varies by dialect, including how many syllables each word has, and how it is to be pronounced. So, it’s not so much the correctness of the meter that varies, but the pronunciation of the words. If a poem is meant to be pronounced in a non-standard dialect, then the person submitting it should mention that.

    However, it is more frequent that rhyme, rather than meter, will be affected by dialectal variation, as you pointed out!

    BTW, it’s not true that Byron didn’t know how to pronounce “Juan.” His rhyming Ju-an and “new one” was a joke. In other stanzas of the same poem Juan had a single syllable,

    Sometimes by paying attention to meter or rhyme scheme we are able to make out how a word was meant to be pronounced in a certain dialect. Notice the word “tired” in this verse from Loretta Lynn’s “Coal Miner’s Daughter”:

    I’m proud to be a coal miner’s daughter

    I remember well, the well where I drew water

    The work we done was hard

    At night we’d sleep, cause we were tired

    I never thought I’d ever leave Butcher Holler

    Clearly, in this song, “tired” rhymes with “hard” and is pronounced like “tarred.”

  • nhkatz profile image

    nhkatz 

    12 years ago from Bloomington, Indiana

    Within a language, is it true that correctness of meter can vary substantially with dialect. For instance, are there different dialects which pronounce the same word with different numbers of syllables. [How should “Juan” be pronounced in Byron?] {{By the way, I’m really excited to learn from your ads that someone named John Galt wrote criticism of Byron.}}

    Certainly pronunciation has dramatic effects on rhyme scheme:

    Once I thought your name was Kerr.

    I knew precisely who you were.

    Now I find your name is Kerr.

    Does it alter what you are?

  • Aya Katz profile imageAUTHOR

    Aya Katz 

    12 years ago from The Ozarks

    Hot Dorkage, thanks! Your reaction is very encouraging. I was afraid this hub might be a tad too academic. But maybe academic can be good!

  • hot dorkage profile image

    hot dorkage 

    12 years ago from Oregon, USA

    This is great.  The musician in me always knew how to smell iambic pentameter when I heard/saw it but no one ever broke it down for me like this.  I feel like I just came out of a great college english lecture.

    to Market, to Market to buy a fat pig

    oXo oXo oXo oX

    home again, home again jiggety jig

    XooXooXooX

    Never knew that nursery rhyme was an amphibrach

    When I have grand children I am going to teach them that!

Updated on February 12, 2012

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Democracy in Business is Socialism

“At Vanguard, you’re more than just an investor. You’re an owner.” This is the credo of one of the biggest investment companies in the world. While many people find the slogan reassuring, it is actually quite alarming to anyone who has experience with a democratically run establishment. Vanguard is owned by billions of people, which means billions of people get a vote in how Vanguard is run. And when everybody has a vote, nobody has a vote. People who used to live in China understand this instinctively. Americans may not.

Democracy and demagoguery go hand in hand. The American version of free enterprise was that when you owned your business, nobody else got a vote in how your business was run. It also meant that whoever owned a press had freedom of speech. Lately we have found that our platforms for self-expression (Twitter, Facebook, Google) are owned by multinational corporations, and when we look to the companies with a controlling share, they are also owned by multinational investment companies like Vanguard. Vanguard offers democracy to its investors. Many investors still have not realized this is not a good thing.

The word “democracy” has a pleasant connotation, even among many people who value freedom of expression for the individual. The word “socialism” has a mixed connotation in different populations.  Some intellectuals embrace socialism, precisely because it implies that people get to vote about economic issues that affect them. Others know that socialism is closely related to communism, and that loss of ownership eventually leads to losing freedom of speech. I have heard people who champion private property rights use the adjective “democratic” in a positive way, while being opposed to socialism, but the idea of democracy in business is much more clearly related to the concept of socialism than is democracy in government.

Examples of democratically run businesses include those where  the customers of a business are its owners (e.g. an electric co-op), or when employees of a large business are equal owners of its stock (a worker cooperative). How is that not socialism? If you are an Objectivist who has read Atlas Shrugged, it will remind you of the Twentieth Century Motor Company and what happened to it when the Starns fortune heirs decided to bestow ownership on the workers.

When we try to find out who owns the big tech giants of today, we find a number of holding companies and intermediaries among the owners. Over and over again, the name of Vanguard resurfaces. Vanguard, on its own website, boasts that it is not owned by shareholders: it is owned  by the very investors whose funds it is managing. This is a truly frightening idea. If the investors knew how to manage an investment business, wouldn’t they just manage their own funds? Why go to experts if people just like yourself can dictate what the expert will do when taking care of your affairs?

Would you be reassured to seek treatment at a clinic where other patients just like you get to vote on the medical procedure you undergo? Would you want to fly in an airline where the other passengers get to vote on the flight plan? Would you want to dine at a restaurant where other diners get to vote on how your meal is prepared?  Would you want to be a mental patient where the inmates are running the asylum? That is what a true democracy in business would be like.

Or it could be that your vote does not really count, and the managers of the company do whatever they damn well please. When everybody has a vote, and everybody is billions of people, then nobody has a vote. When everyone has a say, no one has a say, besides the politicians.

Vanguard has openly been called a cult, where people enjoy the flavor of the Koolaid, so they do not leave. And those who understand what socialism really is do describe Vanguard as socialist. In fact, Vanguardism is a socialist idea.

Vanguard is not owned by China, we have been assured over and over again. Vanguard is owned by the investors, ordinary people like you and me, all over the world. But Vanguard is headquartered in Shanghai, and China has a strong say in what businesses operating in China must do.

The great reset has already begun. “You will own nothing, and you will be happy.” Or, to put it in a more socially democratic way: You will be a co-owner of everything, but your vote will not count. And when the camp commandant asks you if you are happy, you will not dare to answer in anything but the affirmative.

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A Review of “Read Cursive Fast” by Kate Gladstone

Many people are not good at writing in cursive, but they have no trouble reading it when it is shown to them. Others cannot even make out anything written in cursive. This can be a practical problem, whether it is a question of reading a grocery list, a love note or a wedding invitation. When investigating old records for genealogical purposes or  delving into historical primary sources, it is imperative that one can read cursive. But can you learn to read cursive if you cannot write it? This is the mission of Kate Gladstone’s new book: Read Cursive Fast.

To order the book: http://readcursivefast.com/

Only 139 pages long, this short book is a handy textbook on decoding cursive. By the time the reader is done with all the exercises, the secrets of cursive become clear and obvious.

For a discussion about the book, watch the video above.

Using a method of teaching that is gradual and painless, author Kate Gladstone guides the reader through letter recognition, to texts that become progressively more difficult to read, to fluency in cursive reading.

I highly recommend this book to homeschoolers, college students or anyone who wants to investigate the past. I was lucky enough to get an advance copy. But the book will be available soon, and can be pre-ordered here: http://readcursivefast.com/order

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Painting Autumn Interlude: A Portrait of Two

For Christmas this year I painted a portrait of my daughter and her boyfriend.

Though the portrait was in color in acrylics, I started with the black lines only. The black line version looks considerably different from the finished painting, because much of the important information about facial structure is entirely composed of the other colors.

It was easy to segregate the black portions from all the others, as I had run out of ink in the color cartridge when I first printed out the reference photo. This allowed me to contrast the full color photo with the photo that only had black markings.

After I had copied the black lines, I added color. But adding color is not the same as just coloring in an outline.

Many structures did not emerge until the colorful shadows and highlights defined their boundaries. For instance, neither figure had a nose until the color portion built its structure and boundaries.

Here is a video about the painting process:

 

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Review of Mr. Sunshine, a Korean Historical Drama

Back in my early years, I had a plan to unite all the fandoms I was a part of, including the Trekkies and the Republicans, the libertarians and the filkers, and even the B7 fans, so we could all save the world together. Unfortunately, my plan failed. You can read all about it here: https://hubpages.com/politics/Who-Else-is-Coming-The-Apryl-Raitt-Phenomenon.  Today, after watching Mr. Sunshine, I am contemplating a new plan.

Even though Mr. Sunshine미스터 션샤인) aired in 2018, I only recently got to watch it. I was very impressed. Below is a discussion I had with Julia Hanna about the show before I had even finished viewing the last episode.

Here is the first painting I did of Lady Ae-sin. I share some of my thoughts about the show in the video.

Here is my painting of Eugene Choi. More observations are shared in the narration.

And here is my hopeful perspective on the show and on the potential for a proactive fandom. When I was a Blake’s Seven fan, I was disappointed to learn that none of the other  fans were interested in becoming freedom fighters. Instead, they were primarily liberals who held pro-government views. They liked Rebel leader Blake, but had no plans to rebel. But I have not seen any of my liberal friends waxing eloquent about Mr. Sunshine. Instead, I see that Yaron Brook of the Ayn Rand Institute likes the show.

https://youtu.be/QOQgqX05GNk

He did not just make one video about the show. As a Rand fan, he recognized some familiar plot staples: one woman, loved by three great men. The woman is a heroine worthy of our respect. The three men are willing to die for her.

Yaron Brook  did not only make two videos about Mr. Sunshine. He made a third  just to explore the ending and why everyone had to die. Do you agree with Yaron Brook that Eugene Choi, Gu Dong-Mae, Hina and Kim Hui-Seong all had to die like Kira in We the Living? Why or why not? Did they die for their sins or for their virtues?

How many Objectivists that you know are willing to die for their values in this age of government lockdown? How many of them expect to die for going along with the status quo too long? Leave a comment if you have some thoughts to share on this subject. Yaron thinks Eddie Willers survived the purge, so maybe there is still hope for those of us who are not perfect!

Posted in Ayn Rand, Movies and Films, Opinion Pieces and Editorials, Politics and Philosophy | Tagged , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

How to Teach Art to Students with Poor Hand-Eye Coordination

In the United States the public school system is geared to help students of average intelligence, but above average hand eye coordination. In Israel, at the time when I was in kindergarten, the system was geared toward students with above average intelligence, but below average coordination skills. In this article, I will try to explain how this applies to art and learning how to draw and paint.

I am a self taught artist with below average hand-eye coordination skills. I compensate for what I can’t do with what I can. I believe that ultimately that is what all people have to do while making their way through life. Problems arise when school systems and employers are too fixated on the method and are less interested in the ultimate results.

In the above video, I share my painting method. As you can see, I do everything free hand, and there is no sketch of the figure on the canvas before the painting starts. As you can also see, the paint is not evenly distributed and there is no uniformity of brush strokes. As a result, you have a coherent image, but it is not very neat. I call this my messy painting style. But the truth is that I am not choosing this as a statement of style: it is my way of compensating for my disabilities by relying more heavily on my areas of strength. I believe that when teaching art to a diverse population of students, this method of compensation should be open to all who would profit from using it.

Some teachers believe that neatness has to be learned first, and for those students who are unable to learn neatness, they should be held back and prevented from executing complex representations until they can learn to be neat. But some of us never learn to be neat even after a lifetime of trying,  though we are capable of higher order reasoning and representational painting.

My book Ping & the Snirkelly People Illustration by Lanie Frick

To demonstrate the difference between a conceptually friendly art teaching style and one that favors coordination skills over conceptual mastery, I will contrast my experience in an Israeli kindergarten in 1965 with the art teaching method I saw in a first grade class in the US in 1966.

In the Israeli kindergarten, our teacher asked us one day to draw a bird. She didn’t tell us how to draw the bird, leaving the choice of method entirely up to us. We had paper and crayons. The paper was entirely blank. We were left to our own devices in trying to figure out how to represent a bird.

The teacher looked over our work and praised those students whose representation of a bird looked most like a bird. She liked my drawing, and she even asked me to show another student how I drew the bird, because that student was having trouble drawing a bird.

The next year in the American first grade, we were given a paper that had a cat with a ball of yarn already drawn on it in outline. We were asked to use crayons to color it in, and we were told that the cat needed to be black and the yarn had to be red. We were then judged by how well we followed instructions and how neatly we colored the image. Because I did not understand English, I copied a fellow student who used the wrong colors, as she was bad at following directions. Because I have hand-eye coordination issues, my coloring was not neat. I was lucky that I had a good teacher who was kind and understanding.

However, when going from an Israeli method to an American method, the very same student can go from being “good at art” to being “poor in art”, because each method favors different skill sets.

Some art teachers reason that not everybody can draw freehand, but everyone can learn to color within the lines, to trace from a projector or to use a stencil. They argue that ultimately neat drawings, made using these methods, are better than freehand versions of the same image. What they don’t take into account is that not everyone will be able to color an outline in within the lines, trace the image correctly or use a stencil. Tracing, coloring and stencil use require good hand-eye coordination skills that not everybody has.

The reason I draw and paint freehand is not because I look down on tracing and stencils. It’s just that I could never master those skills after a lifetime of trying.

What art teachers can learn from my story is this: what is easy for one person is hard for another. For some students, drawing freehand is the only option that really works. It does not make sense to hold them back until they learn to color within the lines.

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A fish I drew freehand in 1st grade

Posted in Arts & Crafts, Books and Authors, Child Rearing | Tagged , , , , | 6 Comments