IN RE GNOSTICISM: The Chickpea Eater once asked the profound question: “I wonder why we say, ‘It doesn’t matter,’ and not, ‘It doesn’t spirit’?” Of course, he also once was accused of going “from zero to Heidegger in ten seconds,” so hey. Read more

If there’s something strange in your neighborhood Who you gonna call? Blogwatchers! If there’s something weird… and it don’t look good Who you gonna call? Blogwatchers! Ted Barlow: Down with rent control! (and here); and two Bushonomics-bashing snippets, including some good points about what kind of businessmen Bush and Cheney were. E-Pression: Homilies must change or die!!! I sympathize deeply. I’ll add to Zorak’s list of Homilies She’d Like to Hear: anything adding relevant historical context and depth to the... Read more

AN ANTI-FARM SUBSIDIES GAME!!!! And much more, at ShiftyFifty, a site dedicated to bashing EU farm subsidies. Link via Dodgeblog. Read more

I’M THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION. Which revolution are you? (Link via The Agitator.) Read more

“I’m a jet man, not a gigolo.” –John Wayne, “Jet Pilot” Read more

OUTSIDE NARNIA: Christianity and children’s literature. My Crisis article on why kids should read non- and even anti-Christian children’s books. Read more

A COURSE AT YALE THIS FALL. David Brooks is a visiting lecturer: POLITICAL SCIENCE 221 Opinion Journalism in America 01 11036 David Brooks W 3.30-5.20 WLH 001 No final exam scheduled A study of the opinion journalists, pundits, and columnists who shape American public debate. Study of selected commentators of the twentieth century; survey of op-ed pages, journals, television commentary, and “bloggers.” Link via one of the Yale Free Press crew. Read more

THINGS YOU CAN LEARN IN CAMBODIA: 1) Maoism sucks, sucks, sucks. 2) You can deep-fry anything. Link via The Rat. Read more

BEFORE THERE WERE CARS. Toward the beginning of a section on the problems cars pose for cities, Jacobs quotes H.B. Cresswell, writing about the London of his youth (the 1890s): “The Strand of those days… was the throbbing heart of the people’s essential London. Hedged by a maze of continuous alleys and courts, the Strand was fronted by numbers of little restaurants whose windows vaunted exquisite feeding; taverns, dives, oyster and wine bars, ham and beef shops; and small shops... Read more

EVEN HER FOOTNOTES ARE COOL. Jane Jacobs on one problem with paternalism: “The late Marshall Shafer, the brilliant U.S. Public Health Service official who developed the federal program of hospital construction aid and administered it for many eyars, kept pasted in his desk drawer a piece of paper he looked at from time to time to remind himself of something. It said, ‘A fool can put on his own clothes better than a wise man can do it for him.'”... Read more