“COP TALK”: I’m at Reason Online, talking about cops who spew e-vitriol…. “Many police departments across the country have experienced similar bulletin board crises over the last few years, putting police officers’ freedom of speech in conflict with the public’s need to be protected from, well, cops who get off on using Tasers.” Read more

MORE OF OTHER PEOPLE TALKING ABOUT AELRED (come to the spiritual-friendship discussion this Sunday!)–this time from the best chapter in the best thing Andrew Sullivan’s written, “If Love Were All” from Love Undetectable: Reflections on friendship, sex and survival: Such a conviction about the essential congruity between virtue and friendship was central to the work of Aelred of Rievaulx. For Aelred, true friendship seems at times a kind of mystical delirium, an essential step toward knowledge of and acquiescence to... Read more

TWO COMICS LINKS via Journalista: Ooooohhh, gangsterous. And I’m going to try to make it to this November 9 (Washington DC): Join Lynda Barry, Alison Bechdel and Chris Ware for a discussion on the graphic novel moderated by Daniel Raeburn, at the Washington DC Jewish Community Center’s Aaron and Cecile Goldman Theater at 16th and Q, beginning at 8PM. so let me know if you think of anything for me to ask esp. Alison Bechdel! Read more

WATERBOARDING IN AMERICAN HISTORY. Via Balkinization. Read more

PUTTING THE “MORE” IN MEMENTO MORI: November is the month Catholics dedicate to remembrance and prayer for the dead. Daniel Mitsui honors it in his inimitable way–scroll, O man, while your time remains! Read more

TO WHET YOUR APPETITE FOR THIS SUNDAY’S AWESOME AELRED DISCUSSION: New Haven correspondent Helen Rittelmeyer writes: You know who was nuts about Aelred? Cardinal Newman. The best secondary source book I’ve found in The Great Senior Essay Hunt has been “Same-Sex Desire in Victorian Religious Culture” by Frederick Roden. (What a title! Available on Googlebooks!) He has a ten page discussion of Aelred & Newman that struck me in two ways. 1. I LOST MY METAPHOR — CAN I HAVE... Read more

REMEMBER HOW I SAID THE RAT IS SMARTER THAN YOU? Guess who passed her generals exam, and is now ABD? *throws confetti* Go congratulate her! Read more

TWO LINKS: Via Ratty, Gangsters Anonymous (with interesting stuff about “weakness”); and, via E-Pression, Johnny Marr is a visiting music professor at Salford University. Read more

Most nothing is not nothing at all: it is usually a determined nothing, as Hegel says–nothing in relation to something that it is not but that delimits it, fixes its terms, gives it a margin.—Cigarettes Are Sublime Read more

D.C. AREA PEOPLE: This Sunday, from 3:30 p.m. to 5 p.m., I’llbe leading a discussion at St. Matthew’s Cathedral of spiritual friendship–how our friendships with others can be modeled on and strengthen friendship with Christ. The discussion will be based on St. Aelred’s book SPIRITUAL FRIENDSHIP, but you do NOT have to have read the book to come and participate! The discussion is sponsored by Always Our Children, the cathedral’s gay & lesbian ministry. St. Matthew’s is at 17th and... Read more