January 2010
Twenty years after the fact, FW de Klerk talks... →
A short, well-executed piece of journalism. I remember when this all happened, of course, but I never thought much about de Klerk's role at the time.
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An eyewitness description of Blackwater's Nisoor... →
The father of a nine-year-old boy, Ali Kinani, killed by Blackwater employees in September 2007 in what was apparently an unprovoked massacre of unarmed civilians, is now suing the Blackwater employees he thinks were responsible. This article provides a rundown of some of the currently available information, including Kinani's own eyewitness account of the incident. It makes pretty harrowing...
"Corporate personhood"? Why not canine personhood? →
If the Supreme Court can build an argument around the idea that a corporation is a legal person, then why not dogs too?
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“My grandmother was not a highly educated woman, but she told me as a small child...”
– André Bauer, South Carolina Lieutenant Governor (currently campaigning for governor), giving his opinion on South Carolina’s free and reduced-cost school lunch program, quoted in Nathaniel Cary, “Needy ‘owe something back’ for aid,” The Greenville News / TheState.com...
“I sleep with three pillows. Every night my husband says, “That’s too...”
– UK comedienne Sharon Horgan describing her domestic sleeping arrangements with her husband. Quoted in Tim Dowling, “The politics of sharing a bed,” The Guardian (Jan. 23, 2010).
“I’m a history buff… I love the Museum of Natural History.”
– Massachusetts senator-elect Scott Brown (via langer)
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16837_1318285113681_1127342506_30985115_7531979_... →
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“Samuel Beckett once said: ‘Every word is like an unnecessary stain on...”
– Art Spiegelman, Maus: A Survivor’s Tale, II: And Here My Troubles Began (NY: Pantheon, 1991), p. 45.
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“[A] vast number of policy innovations have arisen from the most important...”
– From the publisher’s description of Joan Roelofs, Foundations and Public Policy: The Mask of Pluralism (Albany: SUNY Press, 2003).
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Albert Mohler tells Pat Robertson where to stick... →
I tend to find a lot of Mohler's views, well, troubling, to put it mildly, but this is a cogent and welcome theological refutation of Robertson's claim that the recent earthquake in Haiti has something to do with a divine curse.
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Jennifer Michael Hecht, "On Suicide" (from The... →
Hecht, a poet, reflects on the recent suicide of her friend and colleague, poet Rachel Wetzsteon, at age 42.
So I want to say this, and forgive me the strangeness of it. Don’t kill yourself. Life has always been almost too hard to bear, for a lot of the people, a lot of the time. It’s awful. But it isn’t too hard to bear, it’s only almost too hard to bear… I’m...
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“But in all the regions where I thread my way, seeking your guidance, only in you...”
– St. Augustine, Confessions 10.40, tr. R.S. Pine-Coffin (NY: Penguin, 1961), p. 249. Original text (from Stoa.org): neque in his omnibus quae percurro consulens te invenio tutum locum animae meae nisi in te, quo conligantur sparsa mea nec a te quicquam recedat ex me. et aliquando intromittis me in...
Satan to Pat Robertson: "You're making me look... →
I've been trying not to pay too much attention to Pat Robertson and his shenanigans, but this letter to him, written by Satan himself (channeled by a reader of the Minneapolis Star-Tribune and sent to the paper's editors) is too good not to post.
Think Buddhists are all peaceniks? Think again. →
A new collection of academic studies reveals a strong strain of violence and militancy that runs through the world's historically Buddhist cultures. So — it's not all about "present moment, wonderful moment" after all, I guess.
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“I see it all raving before me the endless yakking kitchen mouthings of life, the...”
– Jack Kerouac, Big Sur (1962; rpt. NY: Penguin, 1992), p. 173.
WatchWhat religion should Tiger Woods adopt? From Jon Stewart and the Comedy Central team!
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“I had heard, just before meeting him, some cassettes of his latest compositions,...”
– Ravi Shankar’s memories of John Coltrane, recorded in 2001. They first met around 1964; Coltrane died in 1967. Source: The Ravi Shankar Foundation webpage.
“Sometimes I wish I could walk up to my music for the first time, as if I had...”
– Attributed to John Coltrane (1926-67).
Study suggests that most "real" news stories still... →
This is pretty much what I've always thought. People say that traditional journalism and "old media" are dying. Maybe, sure, for economic reasons. People also say "you can get all your news online now." But what does that mean? You can get your news from blogs. Okay, but where are bloggers getting their news? Mostly from other bloggers.
Well, if you trace all those links all...
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“We want to do for the world of work what eBay did for commerce. You have access...”
– LiveOps CEO Maynard Webb, a former chief operating officer of eBay, quoted in Peter Coy et al., “The Disposable Worker,” BusinessWeek (Jan. 10, 2010).
Just in case you're still not clear on this:... →
I know this is kind of old news by now, but just in case anyone doesn't get this yet: if you use Facebook for business, your Rolodex is now open for public viewing.
“Skype, which was the fantasy of our childhood, gets you back to sitting there...”
– Sherry Turkle, interviewed by Joel Stein in “Why People Don’t Like Video Chatting,” TIME (Jan. 18, 2010).
"Previously unknown civilization" discovered in... →
This kind of thing totally blows my mind. Archaeologists have uncovered evidence of a previously unknown, highly developed urban culture deep in the Amazonian rain forest. I can't remember who posted this, or I'd give credit.
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Georgia Sea Island Singers, “My Lord’s...
Education policy: who should be making the... →
This year's Teacher of the Year, Andrew Mullen, an ex-cop who started a new career teaching kids who've been thrown out of traditional school systems, sits in on a conversation between senators, governors, and other "education experts" and gives us his thoughts. Thanks to José Vilson for posting this.
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I go to the movies And I go downtown Someone keep...
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“Can faith save you? If a brother or sister is naked and lacks daily food, and...”
– James 2.14-19, NRSV.