one-breath pundit
At Legal Underground, today, you can meet an extraplanetary observer from Og who’s trying to figure out
what makes American lawyers tick
on various stem cell issues to St. Peter. We’ll leave what makes a good Catholic to other commentators.
But, we think St. Peter might have questions for religous “fundamentalists”:
Why do you think that only the religion that you were born into or have chosen has all
the answers? Can’t we distinguish “faith” in a relationship with God from adherence to
church-made dogma?
Can a religion that excommunicated those who said the world was round and revolved
around the sun be a good judge of the appropriateness of scientific research?
Do you guys think you were given wonderous, curious, creative brains and a world
filled with problems, so that you could find all the answers in one ancient book that’s
filled with gossip, ambiguous metaphors, war crimes and ethnic hatred?
Ernie is seeking good taglines for Windows, in response to Apple’s “Think Different”. Mr. Svenson suggests: “I’ll just do it the hard way.” We offer: “Think Difficult” and “Don’t think, just update.”
- The other by immigration lawyer Alan Lee gives the Bush Administration poor
marks on immigration policy and execution, and notes that “As of September 30,
2003, the number of pending cases at the U.S.C.I.S. stood at a record 6 million plus.”
I’ve been thinking that the best part for me about Yusuf Islam landing in the news is my digging out old Cat Stevens’ albums. However, the worse part is that some of his tunes
are so darn catchy, I can’t keep them out of my head and I’m singing them everywhere (to
the chagrin of many, who are surely taking their various lord’s names in vain.)
Today, the
Tampa Tribune has an article that spotlights what lawyers in Florida think about lawyer ads.
Now it’s time for some quiet haiku from our Honored Guest/Friend paul m.:
migrating whales
all our footprints
wash away
spring rain
the measured step
of a sandhill crane
canyon echo
sky-colored asters
among the rocks
credits: “migrating whales” – The Heron’s Nest, Feb., 2003, Readers’ and Editors’ Choice — Poem of the Year [2002]
”spring rain” and “canyon echo” – The Heron’s Nest, Feb. 2002, Readers’ Choice Popular Poet Award, Runner-Up
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For half a century, it wasn’t only the horses racing to the finish line in Saratoga Springs, NY,
the trendy “summer place to be.” Tourists enjoying the city’s main park often discovered
too late that no public restrooms were available there.
The Albany Times Union reported yesterday, however, that ”Public facilities are
due to open before the summer tourist season in a $180,000 project at Congress Park. “ (Oct. 24,
naturally, raised the “potty parity” issue, which ethicalEsq discussed last year.
University of Chicago law professor Mary Anne Case, creator of the Toilet Survey, has been
studying the issue for years, and explains that separate facilities are not always equal, as equal
square footage does not produce equality. Thus, she says:
“What are you equalizing: excreting opportunities, or are you equalizing waiting time?
I’m not being frivolous when I say these are important questions to debate.”
As the home of liberal Skidmore College, and proud of both its traditions and its progressiveness, I’m
counting on Saratoga Springs to help clarify, and maybe solve, many of these issues.
Finding a public toilet was apparently a frequent problem for travelling haiku poets in
often bringing humor to the topic. For example:
mountain village–
a temporary toilet
in blossom shade
where piss dribbles,
dribbles down…
irises
get ready to see
my piss waterfall!
croaking frog
Cute Caleb Lemley doesn’t seem bothered by the lack of restrooms in Congress Park.
(original photo by Times Union photographer Cindy Schultz, Oct. 24, 2004, no longer available at the site)
- You know, Caleb is almost as cute as Denise’s Little Baggage Tyler: “Tyler swinger”
toilet seat up -
bedroom
suddenly chilly
[Oct. 25, 2004]
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