Gen LaGreca has a posted a rousing article about individual rights, and the necessity of invoking them when arguing for liberty.
Among her recommendations:
Reason with Moral Principles, Not Just Practicality
I think that's right. Counter-arguments about practicality often have the air of conceding your opponent's moral point of view. Your opponent ends up looking like the "do the right thing" idealist, and you end up looking like the "let's be practical" realist. When this happens, you have been positioned into a dangerous slot.
Speaking only of what is and isn't practical,
makes you sound unstrategic... merely tactical.
The Washington Post ran a story today arguing that Obama is not actually black, since he's half-white.
To me, as to increasing numbers of mixed-race people, Barack Obama is not our first black president.
I guess that'll have to wait
for some future date.
UPDATE: If you're interested in the niceties of genetic history, here are some estimates on "How White Are Blacks, How Black Are Whites?"
There's a mention of Asians and Native Americans in connection with Tiger Woods.
The Chicago Tribune has its own story about the Obamas' love:
The Obamas' unabashed affection for each other suggests they could become the one of the most engaging sets of lovebirds in White House history. Though the home has known many deeply committed couples (as well as some infamously uncommitted), few were as young, attractive or willing to put their passion on public display.
Did public displays of affection
help to win the election?
The Trib does balance the story by reporting on public statements they have both made about tensions in the marriage. But they conclude:Talk and trade-offs appear to have mended that rift.
Did public reports of negotiation
help to win over this war-weary nation?
The Indians seem to have finally squelched that latest terrorist attack in Mumbai.
When I was a kid, the peace movement had a slogan. "What if they held a war and nobody came?" You saw it on posters, usually decorated with flowers.
The problem is that your enemies
may deliver war where they please.
On Long Island today, Walmart shoppers killed a man.
"He was bum-rushed by 200 people," co-worker Jimmy Overby, 43, told the Daily News. "They took the doors off the hinges. He was trampled and killed in front of me. They took me down too. ... I literally had to fight people off my back."
He was pronounced dead at 6 am. What a way to kick off the shopping season. I hope they got this on the security cam.
To keep any more from being harmed,
Long Island retail workers should be armed.
For anyone marketing oil or coal,
I think reframing should be your goal.
These rather useful commodities
are viewed as unnatural oddities.
But really they're not so Satanic -
In fact, they're purely organic.
There's a peculiar brouhaha going on at Carleton U. in Canada:
A student association at Carleton University has decided to cancel its annual Shinerama campaign benefiting cystic fibrosis according to the belief the disease only affects white people, who are mostly male. The school's student council made the move after passing a motion stating: "Whereas cystic fibrosis has been recently revealed to only affect white people, and primarily men, be it resolved that: CUSA discontinue its support of this campaign."
First, excuse me while I puke over the ethics involved.
Second, they were totally wrong on the gender angle:
Cystic fibrosis is diagnosed in males and females equally.
Female patients consistently had a lower median survival age than male patients (25 vs 30 years in 1990).
Third, they were even wrong on the racial angle:
Of all ethnic groups, Caucasians have the highest inherited risk for CF, and Asian Americans have the lowest. In the United States today, about 1 of every 3,600 Caucasian children is born with CF. This compares with 1 of every 17,000 African Americans and only 1 of every 90,000 Asian Americans. Although the chances of inherited risk may vary, CF has been described in every geographic area of the world among every ethnic population.
Such postmodern convictions -
only inclusive afflictions
are worth of contributions
for research solutions.
It's Thanksgiving Day in the States.
Lacking a belief in a pervasive mind that runs the Universe from behind, I'm not sure who to thank, except for those of my own kind.
So, to all who have ever lightened my day, to all who have given a smile or toiled to find a better way to do anything worthwhile, or just plain struggled to get along, and thereby kept something from going wrong...
thank you.
Zookeepers in Japan were frustrated - their polar bear pair wouldn't mate - wouldn't make more of those cute snow-colored carnivores!
Turned out their "male" was really female.
Kind of a large-scale fail.
Apparently...
thick hair
made it hard to tell.
But the bears
knew perfectly well.
Rehearsing Little Women is a lot of fun so far.
I can see why Jo has remained such a favorite of readers.
She wants to be a full member of her family, but she also wants her own career. Her family keeps hemming her in with homilies, but she ends up making a success of herself on her own terms.
I play the preacher father -
who can be a bit of a bother!
Today a jury in Texas convicted some people of funneling charity money to a terrorist group - Hamas.
I was struck by this quotation:
“My dad is not a criminal!” sobbed one courtroom observer after the verdicts were read. “He’s a human!”
I don't know the age of the speaker, who was doubtless in deep distress. But the line of thought struck me as odd. Being a criminal and being a human are not exactly contradictory.
The first, I reckon,
is a subset of the second.
It's true that we often speak metaphorically of criminals as if they were subhuman animals.
But criminals are people too!
Committing a crime? You may go to jail.
But no way will you grow a tail!
Reena Kapoor alerted me to this spoof headline:
Somali Pirates in Discussions to Acquire Citigroup
Citigroup might find it reassuring,
to know that someone finds them so alluring.
The pardoning of turkeys is a time-honored form of silly publicity gathering. Every year, governors and the president pardon turkeys around Thanksgiving.
But not all are pardoned. Only a few.
The rest get eaten by me and you.
Well, you're exempted from that last line if you're a vegetarian.
The governor of our 49th state got a huge wave of bad press because - after pardoning a bird - she was interviewed with a couple of other birds being drained of their blood in the background of the video.
Major media clucked at her over allowing TV viewers to see the process by which a living organism becomes meat.
Eric at Classical Values has a round-up, and he reveals a shocking picture of Obama chomping into some chicken:
Imagine. Not only was that animal slaughtered while still alive, but its dead body was then severed into pieces, with the flesh on one of its legs finally torn apart by the teeth of a man who then swallowed it -- the latter in full view of reporters and photographers. And after all of that, he was elected president.
Somehow the media chose not to howl
over the foul play done to that fowl.
Saw Don't Dress For Dinner, a modern French farce. The show was hilarious. The crowd loved it. It's still in previews, so I suppose it will only get funnier.
The male lead is played by Jeffrey Donovan, the guy who plays the hero on the Burn Notice TV show. Spencer Kayden, as the hired cook, frequently steals the show.
It's not a new play. But this production had the look of a Broadway-bound revival, with expensive actors and no money spared on the set.
The playwright's most famous comedy, Boeing Boeing, seems to be running successfully on Broadway right now, and I believe "Don't Dress" is a many-years-later sequel, so the timing may be right.
A farce,
when well done,
is more than the sum
of its fast moving parts.
Quee Nelson suggests a thought experiment:Just ask yourself: what would happen, really, seriously, if everybody suddenly became extremely charitable and voluntarily we all agreed to redistribute all the wealth of the world equally? What would happen?
Her answer is that the world would plunge into poverty on short notice. Because no one would be preserving capital for future production.
Capital means spinning wheels, tractors, sewing machines, water pumps, drill-presses, grain silos, conveyor belts, trucks, planes, ships, factories, and bags full of seed corn for next year's planting.
When munching on this year's grain
try to make sure that some remains
to be planted in the spring.
Otherwise fall will bring
empty fields
and a shortage of meals.
I noticed a sign today, at a place of business:
No Public Restroom
Thank You
I appreciate being thanked. But... what was I being thanked for?
I guess it's simply an attitude
of pre-emptive gratitude.
I see where Stephen Hicks' classic Free Speech and Postmodernism talk is now available as a monograph on Amazon.
Speaking of free speech,
it's dangerous to young minds.
Keep it out of reach
and away from schools of all kinds.
Some people like to write from outlines.
In high school, we were often required to turn in outlines with our essays. I would always write the essay first, and then construct an outline to go with it.
I think of it as a personal peculiarity, but I like to start from a sentence or a phrase, and then just chase it where it leads... until it actually get somewhere worth going. I don't expect this will make perfect sense to everybody.
I literally can't imagine a different way of writing a short poem.
A phrase snags in the mind.
From there the words unwind,
threading the unwalked maze
finding the hidden ways
until its run is done.
