We’re good at fixing thingsExcept for the things we’ve broken.
Read moreBook: The Metaphysical Club
This is one of the best books I’ve read–ever. For sheer substance, for bringing alive the complexity and interrelations in the history of ideas, for making sense of some underpinnings of American thought that are needed now, as they say, more than ever. It also debunked many givens for me, as it detailed toward the…
Read moreBride-gear General
The bride sat like a general issuing orders. “Don’t drag my train while you’re at it” etc.
Read morehow much violence is ok?
I keep asking, when they talk about mistreatment of detainees. isn’t humane treatment of prisoners gilding the turd. support our troops? you mean because we find it necessary to kill? why not, “support our alcoholics” because we find it necessary to drink?
Read moreEKE
Documentary called “Eke” in which people who are comfortably millionaires detail how they earned or came by the money. Eked out their existence…
Read moreThe Engaged Couple in the Photograph
together, looking out at you as from the hold of a spaceship, trying and transparently failing not to betray the judgment they are placing on the airless hostile environment around them. Because this is how he read the photograph of the couple, the real airlessness, the trap, seemed to be where they were, sealed off…
Read moreJane Addams’ “A Modern Lear” – 1896
and the idea of “affectionate interpretation”. Her refusal to recognize the reality of antagonisms between capital (or a paternalistic benefactor like George Pullman) and labor. Her reflections on the Pullman strike, resulting from residents in Pullman’s model town of Pullman Illinois striking when their wages were cut due to a cyclical depression yet Pullman resisted…
Read moregraciousness
the forbearance and real charity of the superior athlete or intellect toward those of lesser abilties. In reciprocation, their respectful admiration and joy at the guidance and the example of phenomenal performance. A respectful taking on of the mantle and in return a kind of piety, an assigning of importance. That’s the ideal anyway. Falling…
Read moreCrash vs. Lantana
would be useful to compare these two similar films. Crash has it moments, but is deeply flawed and phoney. Lantana, if I remember right, never loses its hold on truth.
Read morearguments
effective debate must try to corral the opponent in uttering a statement that you have already identified as being indefensible. sophistry? debate teams? what lawyers do? all of the above.
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