Michael Edwards writes in OpenDemocracy of Love, reason and the future of civil society. All life, one might say, is negotiation, and the price of entry into civil society is the willingness to change one’s mind through an encounter with the views of others. Like rocks in a stream, the sharp edges of our differences […]
The asshole theme must be going around…. Frank Paynter emailed me a pointer the other day to the You’re an Asshole filmstrip, and Shelley has a philosophical entry about assholes (her maxims being “The world is full of assholes” and “sometimes you’re one of them”). In German, incidentally, Arschloch is a worse swear-word than shit […]
I took several silly quizzes. My portrait should be painted by Salvador Dali (whom I do not care for at all): Salvador Dali Salvador Dali should paint your portrait. You love to think about the world in a different way then everyone else. You are very ambitious, and you like strange things. You are curious […]
It’s nearly Christmas, isn’t it? The time to find solace and warmth in exotic and historically expensive spices: ginger, bark of cinnamon, mace, coriander and cumin. Coupled with warm ovens and tricks of kitchen chemistry, we can bake plenty of goodies to give mouthfeel satisfaction. The other day I observed something strange about some boys. […]
Tired of those boring old ecumenically-correct “holiday” wishes, those “season’s greetings” that don’t convey what you really believe? Dean Landsman has the perfect may-your-wishes-come-true holiday greeting for the rest of us — and no, it’s not just any old Festivus greeting, either. It’s a good’un: take a look and see what I mean… Edit: I […]
My blog writing for today consists of a comment I wrote in response to Tim Aldrich, who found my Running out of time (Nov.8/05) entry. Tim Aldrich is the editor of About Time; Speed, Society, People and the Environment, and he was kind enough to leave a comment on my blog. And I wrote a […]
I just confirmed through trial and error that I cannot receive any mail sent to my yheibel AT post DOT harvard DOT edu address if it has files attached. This presumably also applies to people who have “signatures” that include files (a picture, a business card, whatever), although I particularly suspect Word files as being […]
Just a quick pointer tonight to Harold Pinter’s acceptance speech for the 2005 Nobel Prize in literature. Pinter starts by telling us a story about what’s true and what’s false for the writer (of fiction), and then modulates into a scathing indictment of what is true and false in politics. Political power, Pinter writes, is […]
Americans haven’t always been so blasé about war profiteering. President Franklin Delano Roosevelt famously said: “I don’t want to see a single war millionaire created in the United States as a result of this world disaster.” FDR’s strong feelings about war profiteering were shared by his successor, Harry Truman. As a Senator, Truman had traveled […]
Theme: Pool by Borja Fernandez.
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