It is not permissible to deliberately target non-combatants with a weapon of mass destruction. To do so is always, in all times and places, wrong and monstrous and forbidden. That's not my rule. It existed for centuries before I was born and it will remain true long after I die. It has, over the centuries, been violated by nearly everyone who has had the power to do so, but none of those who violated it ever succeeded in refuting it.... Read more
The Wikipedia entry on Ursula Le Guin's provocative short story "The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas" includes a comment from the author on where she got the inspiration for writing it: "from forgetting Dostoevsky and reading road signs backwards." Somewhere I read a variation on this comment in which Le Guin was quoted as saying "from misremembering Dostoevsky …" Or perhaps I just misremembered that. In any case, with the current trend of plundering Jane Austen proving so fruitful,... Read more
Tribulation Force, pp. 258-265 Rayford Steele flies into O'Hare International Airport, then drives home, eats some Chinese take-out and goes to Bible study. Buck Williams eats some Chinese take-out at Rayford's house, goes to Bible study, then drives off to O'Hare International Airport. While Rayford is at the airport, Buck is on the phone. While Buck is at the airport, Rayford is on the phone. That is all that happens in these pages. Less than that, actually, since we're never... Read more
The point being, of course, that claims of greater or lesser "American" authenticity are inherently stupid. (And also, as a general rule, that it's a bad idea for anyone to try to tell New Yorkers that you're more American — or more anything — than they are.) This "real American" nonsense is sometimes just innocently stupid, but usually it's a fairly nasty business. It's a way of delegitimizing other people — of suggesting that they're second-class citizens. Or not really... Read more
Newcomers are often insecure, and a debt of gratitude can make anyone feel a bit awkward, so I try my best to be patient with some of the sillier things often said by those from the American "heartland" about supposed "East Coast elites" in general and New York in particular. But that patience has its limits and I may have reached those limits listening to various non-New Yorkers bloviating about where and how New Yorkers ought to be allowed to... Read more
Kevin Drum makes a helpful comparison between your credit history and your medical history: In the same way that medical records are available only to people with a legitimate medical need, I think that credit records should be available only to those who actually extend credit. Beyond that, they're private. Employers don't get them, the FBI doesn't get them, journalists don't get them and my neighborhood association doesn't get them. I don't care how much each of these people really,... Read more
The Today Show this morning presented its latest variation on the now-routine story "Five Ways to Improve Your Credit Score." "It affects all portions of your life," Matt Lauer says in the introduction, "how much you pay for insurance, even whether or not you might get a job." The report never challenges this "all portions of your life" expansion of credit scoring or questions why what was purportedly designed as a measure of credit-worthiness should be or should be allowed... Read more
Tribulation Force, pp. 257-258 After 250+ pages in which nothing much happens, we encounter the opposite form of bad writing — two pages in which too much happens, all off-stage. And what happens is not something that could ever happen. Rayford Steele has been half-drowsing in first class, flying back from his uneventful visit to the White House, when the name Nicolae Carpathia makes him sit up and take notice of the news report flashing by. What follows is 17... Read more
Brad DeLong linked to this post from Cogitamus celebrating George Washington's 1790 letter to the Hebrew Congregation of Newport, R.I. I hadn't read this before, partly, I suppose, due to some parochial Baptist fixation on Thomas Jefferson's 1802 Letter to the Danbury Baptists that kept me from reading any other correspondence between early presidents and the religious minorities of New England. Washington's letter is just as unambiguous and forceful. And it may be a more useful tool for arguing with... Read more
The previous post arose from things I came across while failing to find what I was looking for. I was trying to find concrete data on the reportedly increasing use of credit "scoring" by prospective employers and its relation to the disturbing trend of very long-term unemployment. Because the two trends seem to me to be related — like the two sides of a vise. MSN Money's Liz Pulliam Weston says a survey of HR managers found the use of... Read more
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