EVEN TINIER BLOGWATCH: I think Brink Lindsey and I are talking past one another on this whole “meanings of life” thing. I wanna know what love is; I don’t want to decorate my House of Being. I don’t want to be noticed (which is what the cow in his first example gets)–I don’t want meaning conferred upon my life by my society (or by people who want to turn me into delicious steaks). I want to be right. This is crucial because I want to do right by those I love. It’s also crucial because of the existence of the terrible and the sublime: experiences, whether horrific or awe-inspiring, that reveal to us the insufficiency of our lives, plans, and photographs. Anyway, suffice it to say that I don’t think the essay Lindsey cites is much of a reply to Ivan Karamazov. (And sorry for the curtness–I appreciate Lindsey’s challenge, and think it’s very cool that he’s posting about this stuff, but I’m trying to be really brief and I apologize if that comes off wrong.)

On the other hand, his (Lindsey’s, not Ivan’s) farm-bill-and-trade post is a must-read. Fax it to your Congressbeasts. (I would, but I don’t have any–sorry, Eleanor Holmes Norton doesn’t count.) Fax it to Dubya.

I think my next contest will be, “Write a blog post about the farm bill as if you were Ivan Karamazov.”