Lifestyle Polling
The Rasmussen Group just called (Carole answered, but relayed the questions) & among the things they asked were:
Have you ever eaten pet food?
Does your partner have a nickname for your private parts?
If you had a duel with Dick Cheney, would you shoot him or would he shoot you?
Do you think Drew Carey is sexy?
Should men [...]
Remarkable Bonsai / Richard Rorty
I just ran across these amazing photos of bonsai by Walter Pall, who has developed what bonsai purists call a “naturalistic” style, though the viewer unfamiliar with the formal styles of traditional bonsai might not choose the adjective “natural” to describe these tress. All that apparently lifeless wood, by the way, called jin, is part [...]
Evil
Executing an innocent person — even a merely potentially innocent person — is surely the the depth of evil. This execution, going forward tomorrow, combines so many kinds of moral failure it staggers the imagination. (See Mark Keliman’s commentary here.) My stomach turns at the knowledge that the United States has an “Anti-terrorism and Effective [...]
Summer Reading / Writing / Blogging / Teaching / Weeding
I seem to lose my obsessive need to share my opinions in the summer, at least in blog format. No doubt my wife & colleagues wish I would take up this outlet more often, sparing them my incisive, delightful opinions about this & that. From time to time over the last few years I have [...]
The Primal Horde
Reading this account of Williams syndrome (a genetic disability) in the NY Times & the light it sheds on the details of primate social evolution, especially language, I was struck by the fact that it does not differ all that much from Freud’s account of the dynamics of the “primal horde” at the beginning of [...]
The News: Snapshot of a Failed Presidency
Snapshot of a Failed Presidency: Clicking on the NY Times main page just now, these were the headlines ranged down the left column: US Aborted Raid on Qaeda Chiefs in Pakistan in ‘05; Youth Groups Created by Kremlin Serve Putin’s Cause; 105 are Killed in Suicide Bombing North of Baghdad; Sensing a Shift, Reid Will [...]
Pithy
Josh Marshall boils it down to a single nugget of truth.
Another Commutation
If you have been as speechlessly inarticulate as I have over Bush’s commutation of Scooter Libby’s completely legitimate sentence, you will want to be aware of this additional act of cowardice on the part of this rogue administration.
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