The most recent 20 comments posted to Making Light by Jeremy Hornik:

Through my reading of this post and the long and fine set of comments, I can't help thinking of the kind of limited, qualified faith implied in Pascal's Wager*.

Look, the come-on says, you don't have to really believe all that mysticism stuff I'm babbling on about. Act like you believe... pay the money, follow the forms of belief, stick it out in the sweat lodge. Then, if it turns out that it's all true, you're covered. And what if everything I promise is true? Wouldn't you want at least a shot at it?

As a dyed-in-the-wool cynic and skeptic, I feel like this applies to every seminar I go to, everything from Agile Programming Methods to Robert McKee's Story Seminar. The honest ones own up to it... we can't guarantee this will work for you, but try it. Maybe it will. The dishonest ones just let it go.

Sorry: I'd write more, but my laptop battery is dying.


* Or my own shallow misreading of it.

#39 Mary Frances:

I cringe at 'alright,' even though it expresses something specific in dialogue that sounds more (to me) like "Arright." That's something I'm actually more likely to say than "all right," which sounds to me like it should be followed as such:

"All right, chaps, who's been whingeing for a cup of 'twee?'"

But I have a soft spot in my heart for 'aight.' Even though, when I see it written out, I have to remind that it doesn't rhyme with 'eight.' I think it's because I believe 'aight' is a choice about how the speaker sounds, and 'alright' could possibly be just poor spelling.

Aight?

That is a brutal, brutal list. I think of myself as a fine speller of words and the like, and a compulsive corrector of other people's written mistakes, but I would never be a real copy editor.

My personal bugaboo is 'sargeant.' No, wait: 'sergeant.' Um... trying not to look it up... um... failing... OK, it's the second one. But I have to look it up every time. It bothers me both ways.

#32, Lee: I agree. This Chicago election marks the first time in almost two decades of voting that I've ever voted Republican. Four years ago, the Democratic party swept Illinois, taking the Governorship, the state House, the state Senate, and every statewide office except the Treasurer. Since then, they've generally acted as if all they have to do is recite a few platitudes and do a little light fearmongering about Republican corruption, and no one will ever notice the blatant influence-peddling.

The County story is almost worse. The deeply entrenched John Stroger faced a reform challenger in the primary, and had a stroke one week before the election. All information about his condition has been held up since. All we know is that although he is too sick to vote in this election, he was apparently well enough to nominate his son Todd to take his place. Stroger's family may be shameless, but they're not dumb: although John named the new county hospital after himself, he was smart enough not to go there.

The contempt of the local Democratic party at city, county and state level for the voters is an elegant fractal recursion of the Republican attitude nationally.

And Jim, if that makes you angry, note that our fine Democratic mayor Richard M. Daley came out in defense of Dennis Hastert's handling of the Foley scandal.

So as much as I hate nuanced political argument, and as much as I mostly agree with the sentiment, all local politics is local. I can't in good conscience vote for a candidate I believe to be corrupt, no matter what message I may be sending nationally.

For federal offices, though, I'm right with you. Go team!

I missed the Guardian deadline by an hour. (Is it 5 hours or 6 hours from London? D'oh!) But I wanted to post this anyway.

Philip Roth and the death of Dumbledore

Everyone in Weequahic knew. When a Jew makes it big like Dumbledore (and growing up, he who must not be named dumbbell Horowitz was a capital J Jew, nickels for Israel in the sleeve of his wizard robe) it doesn’t stay secret even when he changes his name and starts talking like David Niven. Some of our more Zionist neighbors were so angry that this schmuck had betrayed the neighborhood that they put up flags saying, “Muggle and proud.” “Schmucks,” my father would mutter, dropping his wand into his briefcase and stomping off to his train. Sandy and I didn’t have to ask who.

But he was talking about me! I was muggle to the core! I strained and strained at my little wand but I couldn’t get it to rise up, never mind shoot out a shower of sparks. “Try harder,” my mother would yell through the locked door. “Rub it with both hands!”

“Go away,” I begged.

“Sandy shot a whole stream of owls out of his wand, and he’s only six,” she yelled.

Dumbledore-Horowitz laughs. “Smashing anecdote,” he says, in that Niven that impresses the immigrant parents of wizard children. (Who else would spend that kind of tuition money but strivers, layers of guilt trips, failures by birth who put everything on their children? Oh, Sandy went to Hogwart’s.) “Weequahic, you say?”

“You self-hating phony,” I mutter, pull the hidden thing out of my bag and let him have it. It’s a picture of him, with earlocks and a pointy yarmulke, smiling with his silver kaddish wand. I shriek, “What do you think of that, Horowitz?” Whatever spell he’d cast on himself to obliterate his Jewishness lifted, and for one moment there was a spark of recognition. Or maybe that’s how a person looks when they have a massive stroke. I’m no doctor, either.

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