THE time you won your town the race
We chaired you through the market-place;
Man and boy stood cheering by,
And home we brought you shoulder-high.

To-day, the road all runners come,
Shoulder-high we bring you home,
And set you at your threshold down,
Townsman of a stiller town.

Smart lad, to slip betimes away
From fields where glory does not stay,
And early though the laurel grows
It withers quicker than the rose.

Eyes the shady night has shut
Cannot see the record cut,
And silence sounds no worse than cheers
After earth has stopped the ears:

Now you will not swell the rout
Of lads that wore their honours out,
Runners whom renown outran
And the name died before the man.

So set, before its echoes fade,
The fleet foot on the sill of shade,
And hold to the low lintel up
The still-defended challenge-cup.

And round that early-laurelled head
Will flock to gaze the strengthless dead,
And find unwithered on its curls
The garland briefer than a girl’s.
A. E. Houseman

Johnny Carson has died. Lots of other people in the blogosphere have commented see Wizbang and Dean’s World, for example.

I think there is something that people have missed. Carson did not die young. In a very real sense he outlived his fame. 25% of all Americans—everybody under about age 16—have never really seen him except in the occasional retrospective or re-run. They only know him as somebody the old people talk about. But like his idol, Jack Benny, or Frank Sinatra, Bing Crosby, Charlie Chaplin, or Al Jolson, he was simply the best at what he did. And now he’s gone.

Here are a few things worth a glance this weekend:

• Duophony is back after a two week hiatus.
• Athena of Terrorism Unveiled unveils a little of her research on Arab media and public opinion.
• Chester of The Adventures of Chester tells us about the latest Iraq prognostications from George Friedman.
• Matthew Holt of The Health Care Blog wonders are we heading for a crash (in the health care system) and can we turn the wheel?.
• Andrew Chamberlain of The Idea Shop gives us a game theory analysis of punctuality. That’s always been my excuse.
• Carnival of the Commies, the best of the Left from the week that was from Tigerhawk.

That should keep you busy.

Juan Cole’s blog, Informed Comment, is one of my daily stops. I don’t go there for the daily casualty reports but for the keyhole views he affords of people and information to which I’d otherwise have little exposure. This morning he writes:

It should be remembered that in many countries it is necessary to travel for hours (even hours by plane) to get to a voter registration office (there are only two in Australia and none in Perth; there are none in the US South below Kentucky).

I’m sure the good people of Nashville, Tennessee—the location of one of the registration centers in the United States, cf. links here—are surprised that their city is north of Kentucky.

UPDATE: I note that Professor Cole has corrected his post and was decent enough to acknowledge the correction.

What would the world be like without Israel? That’s what this article from Foreign Policy considers:

Imagine that Israel never existed. Would the economic malaise and political repression that drive angry young men to become suicide bombers vanish? Would the Palestinians have an independent state? Would the United States, freed of its burdensome ally, suddenly find itself beloved throughout the Muslim world? Wishful thinking. Far from creating tensions, Israel actually contains more antagonisms than it causes.

Well worth a read.

I think there are some other similar questions that are worth considering:

• What if the United States wasn’t giving military aid to Israel?

  My own belief is that U. S. military aid reduces the likelihood of armed conflict between Israel and its neighbors and, consequently, the number of dead Israelis and Arabs.

• What if Israel had no nuclear weapons?

  My own belief is that, once again, Israel’s possession of nuclear weapons reduces the likelihood of armed conflict between Israel and its neighbors and, consequently, the number of dead Israelis and Arab. Another interesting question arising from this is would Israel’s neighbors stop seeking nuclear weapons if Israel did not have them? Really?

Let me tell you some of the reasons that I love the neighborhood I live in in Chicago. My neighborhood is a residential neighborhood with an amazingly convenient location. We’re 20 minutes from O’Hare, twenty minutes from the Loop, twenty minutes from suburban shopping malls, I’m in easy walking distance of a bank, a drug store, and restaurants. Soon I’ll be in walking distance of a Whole Foods store.

My neighborhood is what’s referred to in Chicago as a “high-clout” sort of neighborhood. Some of my neighbors are police officers, firefighters, heads of city departments, and siblings of Mayor Daley. We get good city services here. Our streets are always plowed when it snows.

But the most important reason I love my neighborhood is my fantastic neighbors. This is a place where the people really care about one another.

I woke this morning to nine inches of snow on the ground. After walking the dogs I began digging us out. While I was sculpting a path out the door and through our sidewalks Dennis across the street had gotten out his snowblower and had plowed the entire block. Why? Well, he likes using his new snowblower, he’s proud of his neighborhood and wants to see it looking tidy and neat, but, mostly, it was just a darned nice thing to do.

Those are our neighbors Ginny and Elizabeth in the picture up there. They’re digging somebody’s car out of the snow. Who’s car? Well, it might be one of theirs or it might be somebody else’s. It’s just a nice thing to do.

New York City is considering forming a commission to study whether the city should secede from the state of New York:

A bill that would create a commission to study whether the city should secede from New York state will get another hearing soon — after sitting in the City Council for nearly two years

The bill was introduced on Feb. 26, 2003. A hearing was held shortly after, but no action has been taken on the bill since then.

“I expected delays and opposition when we got to the state level, but I never thought it would be held up for two years trying to get out of a City Council committee,” said Councilman Peter Vallone Jr. (D-Queens), who introduced the bill.

But Councilman Bill Perkins (D-Manhattan) — the chair of the Government Operations committee, where the bill has been held up since May 2003 — told The Post that he plans to hold another hearing on the bill “sometime this year.”

After a disappointing “State of the State” speech two weeks ago, Vallone said this was the perfect time to look at whether the city should secede.

“Ten years of long political speeches and empty promising while New York City residents pay for his mistakes, Gov. Pataki is slapping us on the back with one hand while lifting our wallets with the other,” Vallone said. “We cannot raise taxes any more, nor can we make any further cuts. This may be our only viable option.”

There are two little things standing in the way of the mighty city council of New York—namely, the New York legislature and the U. S. Congress. Turning our eye to the United States Constitution, Article IV, Section 3:

Section 3. New states may be admitted by the Congress into this union; but no new states shall be formed or erected within the jurisdiction of any other state; nor any state be formed by the junction of two or more states, or parts of states, without the consent of the legislatures of the states concerned as well as of the Congress.

And as far as seceding and forming their own country goes, I seem to remember that a pretty bloody war was fought here on that very subject. How did that turn out, anyway? Why are they wasting their time on this foolishness?

Virginia Mayo has died. She was a vaudevillean and a Goldwyn Girl and is probably best known for the five pictures she co-starred in with Danny Kaye including The Secret Life of Walter Mitty, The Kid from Brooklyn, and Wonder Man. But her best roles were tough broads: Cagney’s girl friend in White Heat and Dana Andrews’s unfaithful wife in the unforgettable The Best Years of Our Lives. My sources—people who went to high school with her—tell me that wasn’t too far from the mark.

Virginia Mayo (originally Virginia Jones) was a St. Louisan. She went to Sumner (or was it Cleveland?—I’ll have to ask) High School (unlike my parents who both went to Roosevelt) and appeared at the St. Louis Muni Opera. Back in those days the Muni was a place for people trying to break into show business. Both Cary Grant and Agnes Moorehead appeared at the Muni before their big breaks.

CORRECTION: My mother, the ultimate authority on all things St. Louis, tells me that Virginia Mayo went to Soldan High School.

Here’s what’s caught my eye this morning:

• Callimachus of Done With Mirrors
  has been holding out on us: Mrs. Callimachus is gorgeous (photo included).
• The Education Wonks
  have a round-up of great posts from the Edusphere.
• Venomous Kate of Electric Venom
  hisses about the hazards and terrors of wearing jeans.
• Porphyrogenitus—the
  first blog to link to me IIRC—has a very decent analysis of the president’s second inaugural speech.
• McQ at Questions and Observations considers John Powers’s Democratic Contract with America.
• Monk-blogging from Marybeth of Random Thoughts from Marybeth. The new season begins tonight.
• Roger L. Simon is complaining
  about NPR’s coverage of the inauguration.
• Interesting point on Bush’s inauguration speech from Strange Women Lying in Ponds: America’s vital interests and our deepest beliefs are now one.
• The Talking Dog has about the smartest anti-Bush
  inauguration post I’ve read.

That’s the lot.

This week’s Carnival of the Recipes, recipes from some of the best cooks in the blogosphere, is available. This week it’s being hosted by Caltechgirl of Not Exactly Rocket Science. She’s using a cute abecedaria-style format. There are several recipes I’m very curious about especially a bread pudding recipe. I just love bread pudding.