Archive for the ‘Common-Place Book’ Category
The Gay, Gay Right
What adds a peculiar dynamic to this anti-gay juggernaut is the continued emergence of gay people within its ranks. Allen Drury would have been incredulous if gay-baiters hounding his Utah senator [in his novel Advice and Consent] had turned out to be gay themselves, but this has been a consistent pattern throughout the 30-year war. […]
In: All, Common-Place Book, Splenetics
W: The Original Countermajoritarian
This brings us to the filibuster. The primary objection to the filibuster is that it is countermajoritarian. That is, it enables a minority of senators (41 in the current Senate) to block proposed legislation and nominations. But there is nothing odd about that. In a government determined to avoid "capture" by any faction and designed […]
In: All, Common-Place Book, Splenetics
The Appalling Hostility toward Equality
With regard to the "gay agenda" that has certain groups whipped into a frenzy ("Groups say bills push gay agenda," April 25), I would ask that as they proceed with their lobbying against such outrageous legislation as a bill [in the Maryland General Assembly] that would ensure that people can designate medical decision-makers, perhaps those […]
Men of Faith
Actually, holy alliance would be a better phrase. Bush and bin Laden are really on the same side: the side of faith and violence against the side of reason and discussion. Both have implacable faith that they are right and the other is evil. Each believes that when he dies he is going to heaven. […]
"Caused by Physics"
Before the Nazi rise to power, German society bloomed with cultural, artistic, and social openness, as did the United States in the last third of the twentieth century. The dominant culture enriched itself by cross-pollinating with other groups. Creativity, innovation, and freedom held sway in art, music, drama, and dance. In lifestyle choices, openness and […]
Rickets & Windows
File under "unintended consequences": In 1696 a window tax was inroduced in Britain when the financially hard-pressed govenment started taxing properties based on the number of windows. The citizenry responded by bricking up windows and the darker houses are thought to have contributed to an increased incidence of rickets and tuberculosis. [David Whitehouse, The Sun: […]
In: All, Common-Place Book, It's Only Rocket Science, Raised Eyebrows Dept.
Eddington on Protons
Famed astronomer & mathematician Sir Arthur Eddington: I believe there are 15, 747, 724, 136, 275, 002, 577, 605, 653, 961, 181, 555, 468, 044, 717, 914, 527, 116, 709, 366, 231, 425, 076, 185, 631, 031, 296 protons in the universe and the same number of electrons. [Quoted in The Sun: A Biography, by […]
In: All, Common-Place Book, Raised Eyebrows Dept.
A-Felching We Will Go
The past week has been a busy one here at Björnslottet: my father has been visiting, we did two final performances of "On the Twentieth Century" last weekend, we got the house ready for the cast party this last Friday night, I had my forty-ninth birthday on Saturday, and I was preoccupied all week with […]
New Dark Ages?
[Opposition to evolution] comes, I’m sorry to say, from religion. And from bad religion. You won’t find any opposition to the idea of evolution among sophisticated, educated theologians. It comes from an exceedingly retarded, primitive version of religion, which unfortunately is at present undergoing an epidemic in the United States. Not in Europe, not in […]
A Star Explodes in Slow Motion
I've thoroughly enjoyed reading this book by Peter Atkins (reference below), and I found his slow-motion description of the process that leads to the creation of a supernova uncommonly gripping and dramatic, as well as enlightening. Stars bigger than about eight Suns have a violent future. The temperature in these giants can rise so much, […]
In: All, Common-Place Book, It's Only Rocket Science, The Art of Conversation
His Humpty-Dumptiness
Watch in amazement as top US military spokesmen try to maintain that we are most definitely winning the war in Iraq (and have been for some time — probably averaging in our military successes for several years before the invasion). Here is Donald Rumsfeld helping the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff maintain his […]
In: All, Common-Place Book, Raised Eyebrows Dept.
Christian Soldier Sexuality
It's about Jesus. But the fact that so much of the language used to discuss Christ is homoerotic is no coincidence. The first miracle of Jesus to believers is that his appeal crossed so many boundaries of the ancient world. Rich and poor, Jew and gentile, men and women — every kind of person loved […]
In: All, Common-Place Book, Splenetics
NPC ID "Debate"
Bob Park, a physicist who writes the brief "What's New" reports for the American Physical Society with a great deal of wit and withering obervation (archives here, subscribe here), apparently attended a recent press "event" at the National Press Club put on by the irrepressible [so-called] Design [so-called] Insitute: EVOLUTION: DISCOVERY INSTITUTE FINDS A SCIENTIST […]
In: All, Common-Place Book, It's Only Rocket Science
Manifesting the Human Experience
Even as the heartland state [Kansas] was enshrining bigotry in its constitution [by passing an anti gay-marriage amendment], a bipartisan legislative majority in Connecticut this month approved same-sex civil unions — and, unlike the laws allowing same-sex marriage in Massachusetts and civil unions in Vermont, this one was not in response to a court order. […]
Poseur Presidents & Prime Ministers
And, are there any Great Men in the world today? Where — this is a question I've been asked by several readers recently — are the Churchills, the Roosevelts, the Trumans, the Eisenhowers, the Titos, the Lloyd Georges, the Woodrow Wilsons, the de Gaulles and Clemenceaus? Our present band of poseur presidents and prime ministers […]
Antonin Scalia: Judicial Activist
Justice Scalia likes to boast that he follows his strict-constructionist philosophy wherever it leads, even if it leads to results he disagrees with. But it is uncanny how often it leads him just where he already wanted to go. In his view, the 14th Amendment prohibits Michigan from using affirmative action in college admissions, but […]
Too Rich for Democracy
In a letter to Joseph Milligan on April 6, 1816, Thomas Jefferson explicitly suggested that if individuals became so rich that their wealth could influence or challenge government, then their wealth should be decreased upon their death. He wrote, "If the overgrown wealth of an individual be deemed dangerous to the State, the best corrective […]
Don't Ask!
This statement confuses me: At a crowded news conference, Mr. DeLay said he would not entertain questions about his political activities. ["DeLay Asks House Panel to Review Judges", by Sheryl Gay Stolberg, 14 April 2005.] Since Mr. DeLay is a politician, what else would he talk about?
In: All, Common-Place Book, Raised Eyebrows Dept.
What a Slime-Mold Beetle!
Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld are now species of slime-mold beetles U.S. President George Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney and Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld may not all get a library, airport or highway named after them. But each has a slime-mold beetle named in his honor. Two former Cornell University entomologists who recently had the […]
In: All, Common-Place Book, Raised Eyebrows Dept.
The Crow's Ear
I am now certain that Avedon Carol (of The Sideshow) is a person after my own heart for pointing out this gem from The International Herald Tribune Just 15 hours after he died on Saturday night, the great pageantry around the death of a pope began Sunday morning, with a huge public Mass in St. […]
In: All, Common-Place Book, Raised Eyebrows Dept., Such Language!