Archive for the ‘Common-Place Book’ Category
Sister Wendy on Marriage Equality
I read the blog posting referenced below mostly because it mentioned Sister Wendy in the title, and we here at Björnslottet are big fans of Sister Wendy Beckett. For those of you who don't know her, Sister Wendy is a nun who has made some wonderful documentaries about art and written some nice books about […]
Speaking of Spam
Speaking of spam, Seth Godin wrote What a shame that we let organized crime, aggressive promoters and selfish nebbishes wreck such a useful medium. [Seth Godin, "When Spam Approaches Infinity", Seth's Blog, 6 November 2007.]
To Listen More Hearingly
The New York Times (here) said that Alex Ross' The Rest Is Noise: Listening to the Twentieth Century is one of its ten best books of the year. It's his history of the century past as heard through the century's "classical" music. I have no complaint, by the way–I like Alex Ross' writing and the […]
In: All, Books, Common-Place Book, Such Language!
Tutu on Church Priorities
"Our world is facing problems – poverty, HIV and Aids – a devastating pandemic, and conflict," said Archbishop [Desmond] Tutu, 76. "God must be weeping looking at some of the atrocities that we commit against one another. "In the face of all of that, our Church, especially the Anglican Church, at this time is almost […]
Leakey: How Stupid Can You Get?
The centerpiece of the exhibit at the Nairobi National Museum is Turkana Boy, the remains of a boy who died 1.5 million years ago in Kenya. The fossil, the most complete specimen of homo erectus found so far, has been kept in a bomb-proof vault. […] "I do not dispute that as humans we have […]
Park on Torture
An item of historical and current-events interest from Bob Park's What's New for 26 October 2007: INTERROGATIONS: BUSH DEFENDS INTERROGATION METHODS. Earlier this month there was a remarkable reunion at Fort Hunt, VA of surviving members of the group responsible for interrogating Nazi prisoners of war. All in their 80s and 90s, they are shocked […]
Schwarz on Mission Creep
From Bill Moyers' Journal, a recent episode where the topic was eavesdropping on electronic communications. I've shamelessly copied a quotation from Fritz Schwarz, and dropped with no compunction Charles Fried's contention that such eavesdropping is absolutely necessary, because the NSA is like the cop on the beat in a small town — although we note […]
Chris Dodd: Holding
Two things come to mind as a little preamble: 1) I keep saying that the likely successful Democratic candidates will be the ones who show daring leadership, not the ones who perfect middle-of-the-road triangulation; and 2) I've always liked Chris Dodd, since the days when I lived in Connecticut (c. 1980) and he was first […]
In: All, Common-Place Book, Current Events
Disentangling Religion from Public Life
Via Maud Newton, this is an excerpt of her excerpt from the introduction to the book Faith in the Halls of Power: How Evangelicals Joined the American Elite, by D. Michael Lindsay, that I found interesting: Much of the twentieth century was spent disentangling religion from public life. Commerce and piety were once seen as […]
Is Pink Dainty or Butch?
Writing about a study purporting to support the notion that girls have an inherent preference for pink — making it the girl's color — Ben Goldacre wrote the following, which I wanted to save in my "It's Always Been That Way — Hasn't It?" file. But is colour preference cultural or genetic? Well. The “girls […]
Why Pi?
As a little gloss to the previous entry on calculating π, I'm finally reading the entertaining and enlightening article "The Quest for Pi" and find this unique observation after asking why people persist in calculating π to billions of digits: Certainly there is no need for computing π to millions or billions of digits in […]
In: All, Common-Place Book, It's Only Rocket Science
To Be Rich & To Spend
I was struck by Robert Reich's concise and ringing analysis in this paragraph of what it means to be rich: But with a recession looming, Democrats need to stop being the party of Herbert Hoover economics. And the Republican[s] need to understand tax cuts for the rich won't help because the rich don’t increase their […]
The Old & New Vietnam
How right — in so many ways he hadn't contemplated — the current commander-in-chief is to compare his pretty little war in Iraq with the tragic war in Vietnam. "For twenty years, first the French and then the United States, have been predicting victory in Vietnam. In 1961 and 1962, as well as 1966 and […]
Gay Marriage or Dick Cheney more Dangerous?
My ability to get a marriage license hurts nobody: Gay marriage is less harmful to straight people than Dick Cheney on a hunting trip. New York Assembly member Daniel J. O’Donnell [quoted in Robin Finn, "This O’Donnell Picks His Fights in the Legislature", New York Times, 13 July 2007].
Riefenstahl vs. Coulter
Avedon Carol offers this lovely essayette (The Sideshow, 18 July 2007) comparing Leni Riefenstahl with a the Odious Coulter: It occurs to me that someday, when Ann Coulter's oeuvre becomes part of the collection of works that are taught in college, along with the works of Leni Riefenstahl, as examples of using the media to […]
Against Garlic's Savour
My friend Richard writes with this historical tidbit: "Sir John Harrington, the man credited with inventing the WC, was Queen Elizabeth's cousin. He also left behind this kitchen poem." If leeks you leake, but do their smell disleeke, eat onions And you shall not smell the leek. If you of onions would the scent expel, […]
In: All, Common-Place Book, Laughing Matters
Pascoe Snorts
I was quite pleased to discover on Monday night (typically "library night" around our house — more on that someday) that the Bowie Library had a copy on its shelves of the latest book by Reginald Hill, because I'm very fond of Reginald Hill's writing, particularly his decades-long series of Dalziel & Pascoe detective novels, […]
In: All, Books, Common-Place Book, Writing
Gravel on Love
From Raw Story (David Edwards and Mike Sheehan, "Mike Gravel: 'Love between a man and a man is beautiful' ", 9 May 2007) New Hampshire's WMUR TV hosted a conversation with [Democratic presidential candidate Mike] Gravel in which the former US senator, answering an audience question about gay marriage, replies, "If a couple of lesbians […]
Lienhard's How Invention Begins
How Invention Begins, by John Lienhard (Oxford : Oxford University Press, 2006) was a fascinating book. I picked it up because the cover looked nice when I was shelf surfing at the library. It was a fortunate if serendipitous choice, because I really enjoyed reading it. Lienhard is an engineer, and he takes an in-depth […]
In: All, Books, Common-Place Book
Quammen's The Boilerplate Rhino
Here's another title from recent weeks' reading: The Boilerplate Rhino, by David Quammen (New York : Simon & Schuster, 2000). It's one of his collections of essays, all of which were published originally in his monthly column for Outdoor magazine between 1988 and 1996. Like most collections it has uneven spots, but I enjoyed reading […]
In: All, Books, Common-Place Book