Archive for the ‘Common-Place Book’ Category
Fiction Guides by Emma Coates
I'm not all that big a fan of "rules" for writers, perhaps because there are far too many self-help howtos for writers filled with a lot of useless, thoughtless "rules". But when I write I have a few personal rules I follow, and I'm always delighted to find some rules from other writers that are […]
In: All, Common-Place Book, Writing
How is A Same-Sex Marriage like Anesthesia?
The discovery and promotion of anesthesia [c. 1845], regardless of its true father, also demonstrated the difficulties of pursing medical research in mid-nineteenth-century America. An indifference to basic investigatory work permeated clinical practice. Most physicians, affected by poor education and training and their own financial shortcomings, sought in medicine only the immediate means to solve […]
In: All, Common-Place Book, Raised Eyebrows Dept.
Frank Kameny on "Gay is Good"
The one thing I’ve said, if I want to be remembered for nothing else, it’s back in July, 1968 I coined the slogan “Gay Is Good.” And that really, it sort of, it epitomizes really my entire approach to all the issues. You have to take an affirmative approach on these things. In other words, […]
In: All, Common-Place Book, Faaabulosity
Because He's Conservative
"So I don’t support gay marriage despite being a Conservative. I support gay marriage because I’m a Conservative." — David Cameron, UK Prime Minister [quoted by Peter Lloyd, "PM David Cameron re-iterates backing for gay marriage at party conference speech", Pink Paper, 5 October 2011.]
In: All, Common-Place Book, Faaabulosity
Maddow on Birthers
The idea that the birth certificate is the real story, and Osama bin Laden is the distraction from it, tells you everything you really need to know about the people who are invested in the birth certificate. —Rachel Maddow on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, 3 May 2011
In: All, Common-Place Book, Current Events
Balancing Basic & Applied Research
The transistor, the LED, and the medical isotope technetium-99m are important applications of science, yet as far as I know none of them was invented as the result of a government initiative to fund industrially relevant research. The transistor was invented at Bell Labs. The LED was invented at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, […]
In: All, Common-Place Book, It's Only Rocket Science
You've Got to be Carefully Taught
Remarking on the news that the Catholic Church in Rhode Island was to kick off a program to "educate" parishioners about the "dangers" of marriage equality: [P]eople must be coached into seeing [gays and lesbians who wish to marry] as a threat, since the instinct is to see us as the benign lovers that we […]
In: All, Common-Place Book, Faaabulosity
Beard on Salads
Tonight I was thumbing through James Beard's American Cookery (1972, in a reissued edition), and noted these two remarks on the subject of salads. [from page 34] When a Pennsylvania housewife won a national prize for a jellied salad in 1905, she unleashed a demand for congealed salads that has grown alarmingly, particularly in the […]
In: All, Books, Common-Place Book, Food Stuff
Mullen on Integrity
"Our people sacrifice a lot for their country, including their lives. None of them should have to sacrifice their integrity as well." — Admiral Mike Mullen, Chairman, Joint Chiefs of Staff, quoted by President Obama in remarks at the signing of "The Don't Ask, Don't Tell Repeal Act of 2010" on 22 December 2010.
In: Common-Place Book, Current Events, Faaabulosity
Should Science-Deniers Chair Technical Congressional Committees?
It should come as no surprise that I think the answer is a resolute "no". This is from Bob Park's "What's New" for 27 November 2010. 4. FAITH: LIFE IN A MULTICULTURAL DEMOCRACY. I have a number of devoutly religious physics colleagues who are able to partition their life: scientist on one side, devout believer […]
In: All, Briefly Noted, Common-Place Book
Adams on Cage
I don’t agree with those who consider Cage the most important composer after Stravinsky. I think much of his later work is fundamentally, even tediously, didactic. A work like ‘4′33″’ is a demonstration, a lesson in how to listen, so to speak. But to equate its artistic value, as some have, with a work like […]
In: All, Common-Place Book, Music & Art
Is Wall Street Worth It?
Most people on Wall Street, not surprisingly, believe that they earn their keep, but at least one influential financier vehemently disagrees: Paul Woolley, a seventy-one-year-old Englishman who has set up an institute at the London School of Economics called the Woolley Centre for the Study of Capital Market Dysfunctionality. “Why on earth should finance be […]
In: All, Common-Place Book, Current Events
Mencken on Crowdsourcing
Democracy is a pathetic belief in the collective wisdom of individual ignorance. — H.L. Mencken
Fulfilling the Meaning, not Redefining
I want to say to the gentleman to my left [Brian Brown], gay people who want to marry have no desire to redefine marriage in any way. When women got the vote they did not redefine voting. When African-Americans got the right to sit at a lunch counter alongside white people, they did not redefine […]
In: All, Common-Place Book, Faaabulosity
Ban Ki-Moon : Reform Discriminative Laws
Human rights make up one of the three pillars of the United Nations, alongside development and peace and security. Protecting human rights means protecting the rights of everyone, without distinction or discrimination, and paying particular attention to the most vulnerable and marginalized, who may face special obstacles to the full enjoyment of their rights. In […]
In: All, Common-Place Book, Faaabulosity
It Does Take Some Thought
"Think of a single problem confronting the world today," says Bill Bryson, in full rhetorical flow. "Disease, poverty, global warming… If the problem is going to be solved, it is science that is going to solve it. Scientists tend to be unappreciated in the world at large, but you can hardly overstate the importance of […]
In: All, Common-Place Book, It's Only Rocket Science
Teabagging and Mad Hattery
The Tea Party is many things at once, but one way or another, it almost always comes back to a campaign against that unsafe urban hellscape of godless liberalism we call our modern world. [Matt Taibbi, "Tea & Crackers", Rolling Stone, 28 September 2010.] Is teabagging — that pitiful longing for the "Leave it to […]
In: All, Common-Place Book, Reflections
Tiny Stories
The “shortest horror story ever written” is usually attributed to Frederic Brown: The last man on Earth sat alone in a room. There was a knock on the door. Ron Smith shortened this further by changing knock to lock. [from Greg Ross, "Short-Shorts", Futility Closet, 16 September 2010.] Smith's change certainly shortened Brown's original, but […]
In: All, Common-Place Book, Writing
The Long Road
The same is true of the trajectory of the same-sex marriage issue. Gay couples began going to court to claim a right to marry at almost exactly the same time that women began turning to the courts to claim a right to abortion. The student body president of the University of Minnesota Law School brought […]
In: All, Common-Place Book, Faaabulosity
Fear and Prejudice on Trial
We remember during the 2008 campaign in California the remarkable campaign of slurs, innuendo, and outright lies that opponents of marriage equality indulged in. Remarkably–or perhaps it's no surprise at all, really–when it came time for them to make their case in court, under oath, it turned out that there was no understandable, rational reason […]
In: All, Common-Place Book, Faaabulosity