(Gee, I hit some wrong key and had to type this all over again anyway! Oh well, it's Monday.)
Interesting thread, even if the squabbling over definitions does get a bit wearisome after a while. Just for a change of pace, here's something from Mary Wollstonecraft's LETTERS WRITTEN DURING A SHORT RESIDENCE IN SWEDEN, NORWAY AND DENMARK (a wonderful book filled with pithy political observations on politics and war, as well as religion):
What, for example, has piety, under the heathen or christian system, been, but a blind faith in things contrary to the principles of reason? And could poor reason make considerable advances, when it was reckoned the highest degree of virtue to do violence to its dictates? Lutherans preaching reformation, have built a reputation for sanctity on the same foundation as the catholics; yet I do not perceive that a regular attendance on public worship, and their other observances, make them a whit more true in their affections, or honest in their private transactions. It seems, indeed, quite as easy to prevaricate with religious injunctions as human laws, when the exercise of their reason does not lead people to acquire principles for themselves to be the criterion of all those they receive from others. [Letter XIX]
Sure, she's stating the obvious, but she does it so nicely!
Chaucer, Mingus (rah! rah!)
Monk, elec/stic (rah! rah!)
[and speaking of weird personal tastes, is anyone else out there crazy about coffee yogurt? or old *and* West Coasty enough to remember Quicksilver Messenger Service (so much better than the Dead)?]
I have read favorable reviews of Time's Arrow in The San Francisco Chronicle and The New York Times(I think it was) that didn't venture into the quagmire of "sci-fi can't be good." Sounds like an interesting book; if someone had sent me a copy, I probably would have reviewed it myself by now (though I wouldn't have been able to track down its antecedants in the genre as efficiently as people have done here). So the guy at Salon isn't necessarily the majority view -- just an individual jerk.
Your'e right, Patrick, he's a gem! All I can do is curse and sputter about political matters, but he gets to the root of things -- eloquently.
Mary Kay: Thanks for the link. That's telling em!
Back on an earlier thread, which hasn't seen comments for several days, I received a pretty negative response for objecting to Howard Dean's wife being paraded around on the campaign trail, and later I even apologized for not seeing the Diane Sawyer interview with both Deans. Today, in the New York Times, someone else voices what I meant to say far more eloquently: http://www.nytimes.com/2004/02/01/magazine/01WWLN.html
It's a damn shame that any woman married to a candidate can't live her own life, and work at her own profession, without being dragged onto the political stage. Obviously this isn't a perfect world, so the practice will go on, but that doesn't mean we all have to just grin and bear it. My thanks to the Times writer for addressing the issue.
On Bush: I mean the "Bring 'em on!" character. Maybe he only exists in soundbites. For a funny take on his space asperations, see the latest "Tom the Dancing Bug" cartoon: http://www.uclick.com/client/wpc/td/
On Dean's wife: Sorry. I stand corrected.
Re the dancing weasel: I've been thinking something similar about the rockin' Rev, since TV showed Al Sharpton doing his James Brown dancing impression.
As for the rebel yell bit, yes the media and Dean's enemies are making way too much of it, but what bothered me was the resemblence to Bush in cowboy mode. We've had all the cowboyism we can take in this country. Dragging out his doctor wife onto the campaign trail also seems like a pretty desperate measure. What next, give her helmet hair?
I'm still undecided how I'll vote in the AZ primaries. Everyone's behavior in NH may give me a clue. (Only 3 candidates are running ads here. Clark's "inspiring" music makes me want to puke, but maybe the old vets will buy it.)
Though I'm anything but an activist type, it's interesting to hear from those who are.
Sorry if this is a bit off-thread, but I couldn't resist. There's a kind of deliberately absurd bastard spawn of "The Roads Must Roll" in a new YA/SF/F series by Philip Reeve, "The Hungry City Chronicles" (beginning with the novel Mortal Engines and continuing in Predator's Gold), where -- against a backdrop of ruined high tech and a devastated world -- cities themselves take to the road, lumbering around absorbing rivals and smaller burgs. In this mad vision, London is portrayed as a layer-cake of its old districts -- and not just to comic effect. There's both sharp social satire and anthropological musings here (nomadic life vs. non-trendy "stasis"). However ridiculous and impossible, visions of future tech always have their uses, if the writer knows what he/she is doing.
| Year | Number of comments posted |
|---|---|
| 2004 | 10 |
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