WHY I AM A DESTINY. WHY I WRITE SUCH LAME POSTS. So looking over the whole voucher dispute, I see that although I think I have answered UP (albeit much more obliquely than I intended), I also misrepresented his position–he’s saying that moral education should not be a primary purpose of schooling, not that there should be a wall of separation between ethics and school. Now, how I missed this I don’t know, since he up and said it in... Read more

“If you hear a peculiar noise, it’s my skin creeping.” –Susan Hayward, “Deadline at Dawn” Read more

MORE ON VOUCHERS from Uncertain Principles. My response: I disagree that vouchers are a cop-out, a way for parents to slough the hard work of raising children off onto others. UP at times sounds like he considers all non-homeschooling (or, more likely, all non-homeschooling that involves any discussion or teaching of ethics) as a cop-out or abdication of parental responsibility. Beyond that, though, vouchers help parents but don’t take the responsibility for child-rearing away from them–in fact, vouchers give parents... Read more

THIS SITE is pretty cute and all, but this–now this is what cats are all about. I miss my beast. He lives with my parents. I will note, though, that people who say stuff like, “My cats are my children!” are creepy. Read more

HEY RUSSO: Amy Welborn is dissin’ “Sex in the City.” What with my slams on Picard and crew, it’s been a rough week for the Republic’s viewing habits. Maybe when you recover from your conference (at which the Russinator rocked the house, btw), you can lay the smack down to all of us “Cheers”-watching freaks. Read more

On a dark desert highway Cool wind in my hair Warm smell of blogwatches Rising up through the air… Not much blogging today–maybe more tomorrow–but I figure I dumped a whole bucketload of blog on here Saturday, so hey. For now, here’s a blogwatch. Agenda Bender: If you didn’t click on the InstaPundit link, maybe you’ll click now. AB is a funny, rambly blog about “Pomosexuality, Homotextuality, Slomoleftbanality, and Drear Theory (aka Career Theory) [aka Gay4Pay].” Lurches from subject to... Read more

MAILBAG DELUXE: Rich and poor; pacifism; sex; all of love is a quotation. As always, I am in plain text and my readers are in bold. I’ll post surrogate-motherhood mail later, since I want to write a separate post replying to some very good questions I got about that. From Barbara H. Ryland, in re this post: As the saying goes, when the rich get a cold, the poor get pneumonia. That is, the rich have the means to buy... Read more

RANDOM LINKS AND A QUESTION.Will Wilkinson: The Fly Bottle is back! A very cool page–don’t be scared off by the URL. Link via The Rat. Comics-type people: Should I read V for Vendetta? A casual glance-through at the comics shop led me to think it could be either a) really, really cool, or b) really, really stupid. Read more

THE POLITICS OF DANCING III: Third installment of my rambling ruminations on pop lyrics. Click here for exegeses of the Cramps’ “Eyeball in My Martini” and Cat Power’s “Say.” This time we’ll look at Queen, “Princes of the Universe.” Looking at the actual lyrics, I see that they don’t tend to support the point I’d like to make, which is fine–TPOD is really not about accurately reflecting the intent of the lyricists. The one line I knew from the song... Read more

MADRASSA VOUCHERS: Second in a series. Some voucher opponents ask whether Christian voucher supporters would still favor vouchers if large numbers of parents began using them to send their children to radical Islamist madrassas. My response is basically, again, rich parents can already do this! If you’re OK with madrassas for the rich–if you think they’re wrong but you won’t outlaw them, say–then saying poor parents can’t use vouchers at madrassas is pretty weird. The basic claim here is that... Read more