@6: I don't know that I would ever buy a Civil War history written by a non-American. Sometimes home terrain DOES matter.
And I only read histories of Etruscans written by Etruscans.
It's not a very good argument that because prisoners have some of their rights revoked that therefore they can have all their rights revoked. The constitutional amendments don't just protect the right to bear arms. They also protect the right to a fair trial, the right to counsel, freedom of religion, and protect against cruel and unusual punishment. The idea that being incarcerated automatically denies all constitutional protections is obscene. Each revoked right needs to be justified on its own terms, not because some other rights are revoked. And I have yet to see any good justifications for removing people's right to vote because they are in prison. The very idea implies that prisoners are not to be considered part of society at all.
Russell@#33:
While I agree with the general tenet of the article that professional footballers don't necessarily make great commentators, this particular piece is heavy-handed and full of picky little details. I won't defend the abysmal Chris Handy, but Gordon Bray is an excellent commentator who never played rugby at senior state level let alone internationals. Which kind of demolishes the premise of the entire rant.
I'm going to add my voice to #10 and #11. I read a few of Hillerman's novels and I never came away with the impression that the Navajos were saints and the anglos villains. Even when the villain was anglo, it was very common for him to be manipulating aspects of Navajo culture of which Joe Leaphorn expresses some exasperated criticism.
Dave@87: I'm a purebred Australian who has never read Harriet Beecher Stove and yet I know what it means to call someone an Uncle Tom. Ralph Nader must have known, and even if he didn't, he could have made a quick retraction and reiterated his point using a different phrase.
Boston users should disable blink as a matter of personal safety.
SamChevre, that's not the point. There are many walks in life where a certain political position is more common. The question is not how many staffers appointed were Democrat or Republican or non-aligned. The question is, were people appointed on the basis of their political affiliations? Appointing people to powerful public roles, especially prosecutorial ones, on the basis of their political allegiance is wrong. Even if the appointing power thinks it's just balancing a natural bias, it's still wrong.
Jim, are you sure that hearing thunder means you're in the strike zone? I mean, you can hear thunder from many kilometres away. If you hear the distinct "clap" of thunder then you're going to be within a kilometre or so, but if it's that low rumble then you're probably well out of range. Having said that, thunderstorms move and if you happen to be dangerously exposed, you ought to think about moving ASAP.
I've actually had the experience of being extremely near a lightning strike. I never saw exactly where the bolt hit as I was in a car at early evening driving through a tall forest and all I experienced was the flash of light, a simultaneous (within the error bars of my perceptual capacity) thunderclap, and felt a surge of static in the air. One thing that I've never seen described before but which I noticed was a sudden smell of ozone, almost as if air freshener had been sprayed in the car.
abi #288: Respectfully, I disagree entirely. Breaking the law by helping escaped slaves is not a necessary evil. It is not like letting one person die to save 10 or any of those other scenarios that philosophers enjoy torturing themselves with. I'm not advocating wanton lawlessness, but helping people escape slavery is a good thing in and of itself and if the law says not to do it then 100% of the evil is in the law, 0% is in the defiance of said law.
And I guess you picked an unlucky analogy, being as I'm a medical doctor and I feel that comparing the cost-benefit analysis of surgery to the moral quandaries of civil disobedience makes for a rather strained equation.
A lot of confusion on this thread. PNH is in my opinion perfectly right to say what he said about Buckley. Contra some of the objections, (i) Buckley was a hugely intelligent man who used his intelligence to support immoral causes and did so by crafting fallacies that he must have known were logically incorrect and he used them anyway; (ii) Buckley was not just some poor schmuck who happened to be homophobic but could be talked out of it over time -- he was immensely influential and he did not have the excuse of never having been exposed to counter-arguments; (iii) that Buckley had some admirable traits (eg. being nice to Rick Perlstein) does not mitigate the harm he did; (iv) despite claims that he came to regret some of his older views, a brief look at TNR shows that it is still pushing the same fallacy-rich arguments it has always pushed.
abi #286: breaking the law is *not* an evil deed in itself. The Underground Railway and the Germans who protected Jews from the Nazis were breaking the law.
And now that I think about it, how can you call it a commission if it isn't on a sale?
Teresa,
It seems to me that if Airleaf waives their commission on a sale, that must be because they don't expect to sell. Who in their right mind is going to sign up with a group that only gets paid if it fails?
Teresa, I think the show he was talking about was the one in his intro: Lexx. He obviously identifies himself with Stanley the useless cleaner whose only break in life was to fortuitously absorb the key to the most powerful spaceship in the universe...but still can't get girls to be nice to him.
And I think you misunderstand his point. He's saying that Gibson, Doctorow, etc., etc., don't write proper science fiction because they write about "compassion, tolerance, and equality" rather than the correct theme of science fiction, which is "common sense and merit." Gor books are SF, see, but not Le Guin. The reason why you miss his point is that you are not a deranged loser.
Adding to an already extensive comments thread...
Clearly Ms Jareo is not in full possession of her faculties and fully deserves the public dressing-down she has received. I'm a little disappointed though by the number of posts here that say they *want* her to be sued by Lucas. What is it with the Schadenfreude? Why isn't it enough that she receive the cease-and-desist letter and that she ceases and desists?
The real harm that she has done is not to Lucas's intellectual property, which appears to have survived even his own best efforts to make it unsaleable. The real harm is that Ms Jareo is running a writer's workshop at what appears to be a respected program and is using Another Hope in her bio as evidence of her experience as an author.
Do I want Lucas to sue her? God no. Who the hell wants *more* encroachment by the intellectual property lawyers on public life? But the organisers of the West Chester University Poetry Conference ought to review their decision to allow Ms Jareo to run one of the workshops. Maybe she is still appropriate, but on the evidence at hand I would think she is quite possibly a very bad choice to be put in charge of a workshop aimed at beginning writers. People are paying $85 per workshop for this.
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|---|---|
| 2009 | 5 |
| 2008 | 7 |
| 2006 | 4 |
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