800 miles in 16 hours is still only 50 mph - not bad for a train, but one still might wonder whether a car would have been quicker while quite as scenic, or a plane even cheaper and quicker though less scenic. (For the last-mentioned reasons I opted to fly from Amsterdam to Copenhagen a scant few years ago, though I was stunned by the speed and ease of travel by train within the Netherlands.)
I'm sure you've seen it, but if you haven't, Buonarroti's Moses languishes unregarded in San Pietro in Vincoli, just around the corner from the Colosseum. Tell'm Sigmund sent you.
1. A similar incident is a plot device in "The Importance of Being Earnest"
2. Yo Yo Ma once left his Stradivarius cello in a cab.
Fred Clark, although an evangelical Christian, is an unabashed liberal.
Sara Robinson also commented on this at Orcinus.
The comments at both sites confirm that real people believe that Obama is the Antichrist, a Muslim, a communist, or any combination thereof.
Let it be noted that the unity dates aren't the only unambiguous ones. In the European format, anything after 14 January or the 13th for any other month qualifies. In the U.S. format, anything after the 13th in October through December does.
The worst thing about this is that the armed forces, or at least their public relations side, are the ones promulgating this nonsense. We are doing far worse things with our military, extending stays and shortening leaves and getting more of them killed and wounded than before, and perhaps only commanders who could countenance the latter could swallow the former.
At this point we have not only given up honor, we seem to have lost our shame to boot.
Whenever anyone trots out the old line, "Why do you care about illegal surveillance if you aren't doing anything wrong?", it's handy to be able to point out that they continually and emphatically equate dissent with treason.
First they came for the amphibians...
Voi che sapete is a "rather dull song"? That is blasphemy, sir.
Keynes: "When the facts change, I change my mind. What do you do, sir?"
It may turn out to be the particular strength of the godless that we, unwedded to doctrine, were we to grasp the sorry scheme of things entire, might actually choose not to
shatter it to bits
and mold it nearer to our hearts' desire
if only because the birds are singing in the trees outside.
Justice in Houston seems rather brutal. Bail is set at $888,888, the prisoners sleep on a concrete floor, the temperature is turned down low... janitors in a Texas jail are treated like prisoners at Guantanamo:
The guards would tell us: 'This is what you get for protesting.' One of them said, 'Who gives a shit about janitors making 5 dollars an hour? Lots of people make that much.'
Would someone please remind me that I live in the land of the free?
I believe the official name is the "Global War on Terror", or GWOT, including both the Afghanistan and Iraq campaigns, and that veterans who have served in both theaters have complained that they ought to get ribbons for each. (For some reason, "The War Against Terror" and the "Global Struggle Against Violent Extremism" didn't make it.)
We could call it "World War W", "World War dubious" or the "War to Reelect the President", or WREEP, as in, "as ye sow, so shall ye WREEP".
If Mehlman isn't gay, there's no harm done; it's no more than junior high school friction. If he is, he may deserve some sympathy, but damned little pity, considering how ruthlessly his party and his organization have played up the gay threat.
With respect to Ted Haggard, it might be useful to speculate whether the evangelical model of sexuality, that everyone is born straight, exacerbates the problems of the few who don't fit the mold. (In contrast, Dobson seems to regard gays as feminized males, which is nearly as divorced from reality but at least does not invoke demonic interference.)
It's not wise, nor kind, nor careful to say "out them all, and let them sort it out", but doing so might obviate quite a bit of nonsense.
I'm not sure I buy the idea that "masturbation makes you go blind". Sure, I've been near-sighted since adolescence, and at fifty I need progressive lenses, but I can still drive.
As for treating terrorists like pirates, I don't think that Johnny Depp has anything like the gravitas of Osama bin Laden, nor bin Laden the sexiness of Depp.
There is a serious point here. There are still pirates in southeast Asia, but practically speaking they pose no more threat to life on earth than giant squid or Islamic troglodytes.
Bruce Schneier had this:
From the TSA's web page on prohibited items:
We encourage everyone to pack gel-filled bras in their checked baggage.
Everyone? Do I have to as well? Where should I go buy one?
Some of the comments were predictable:
Mine is filled with acetone in one cup and hydrogen peroxide in the other.
but they get better:
I just realized why this liquid ban happened -- someone at the TSA misread a movie marquee, and realized that they'd better ban Shakes On A Plane!
The way things are, there might be better reasons to fear snacks on a plane.
Arguably, the case for continuing the American occupation of Iraq is essentially that for the (fresh, new) Israeli occupation of Lebanon. Force is the only thing we respect, and we have to make them understand that.
Afterwards, as we relaxed in our respective corners, I wondered aloud: "Aren't we profoundly linked in some dimension that we can't directly perceive?"
"Bah," she replied, as she always does, the eternal skeptic.
Perhaps he should have gone on the lam instead of getting it on with the lamb.
Poor Rawls is convinced that the autumnally red crescent turns the memorial into a mosque, FNORD when the dark truth is that the grove is merely one part of a non-Euclidean structure, the contemplation of which will overwhelm the minds of its visitors. He dimly discerns the evil, but has no idea of its ancient and unearthly origins.
This does seem to be the good stuff:
Three brothers have hacked to death their two sisters in Jordan, a day after parliament rejected an amendment that stiffens sentences for people convicted of so-called honour killings.
Perhaps this sort of news is preferable to word of how private contractors in Iraq cheerfully blow away random families, but I'd prefer a world in which neither happened.
| Year | Number of comments posted |
|---|---|
| 2009 | 3 |
| 2008 | 2 |
| 2007 | 4 |
| 2006 | 10 |
| 2005 | 14 |
Total: 33 comments. View all these comments on a single page.
The most recent 20 comments posted to Making Light by bad Jim:
Show all comments by bad Jim.