"Words ought to be a little wild, for they are the assault of thoughts on the unthinking." — John Maynard Keynes "Giles, no one's using 'I' statements!" — Willow Rosenberg Bring up the subject of civility and you will inevitably wind up in a sideshow having little to do with the subject. Civility does not mean never having to say you're sorry. It does not mean baby-proofing all conversation to ensure its inoffensiveness for the most delicate of sensibilities. Nor... Read more
Kevin Drum points out the results of an astonishing survey showing that basic civility is dead in a vast portion of the blogosphere. And no, this has nothing to do with profanity. The seven dirty words may be rude and inappropriate for children, but civility actually has very little to do with keeping one's language G-rated. I'm talking about a much more fundamental rejection of the foundations of civil conversation, as measured by this survey by Right Wing News, "Rightosphere... Read more
Michael Medved, writing at TownHall.com, says that "liberals … hate the Ten Commandments." He reaches this conclusion because civil libertarian groups like the ACLU and the Baptist Joint Committee for Religious Liberty believe that "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof." These groups oppose the establishment of any official state religion. Medved seizes on a particular instance of this opposition and pretends that it is based on the particular content of... Read more
Left Behind, pp. 253-255 After Carpathia outlined his eagerness to support the U.N. in any way possible, someone interjected a question about the disappearances. "Someone interjected" — that's all we're told. This "someone" is the first person we've met in many chapters who seems to have any grasp on the situation, any sense of perspective. The world has just witnessed the biggest thing since the K-T event and yet, a mere seven days later, no one seems to be paying... Read more
"The State I'm In," Sinead O'Connor "Anthems for a 17-year-old Girl," Broken Social Scene "Skin Feeling," Crowded House "Don't Die in Me," Mirah "It's Not Your Fault," Ashley Cleveland "Into the Mystic," Van Morrison "She Don't Have a Clue," Mark Heard "She's an Addiction," Green "Riches," Unlikely Cowboy "Nobody's Crying," Patty Griffin Bonus: WXPN offers the new single from Iggy Pop and The Stooges, "My Idea of Fun" — free download here. Read more
Last month, Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., spoke at a rally in Ames, Iowa, and said: We ended up launching a war that should have never been authorized, and should have never been waged, and on which we've now spent $400 billion, and have seen over 3,000 lives of the bravest young Americans wasted. Sen. Obama quickly apologized for using the word "wasted": "Even as I said it, I realized I had misspoken," Obama said. "It is not at all what... Read more
Both Shakes and Atrios take issue with the faux inclusive phrase "People of Faith." As Atrios puts it: "People of Faith," despite its general acceptance as an inclusive term, is actually an exclusionary one, not just against nonbelievers like myself, but also against other non-dominant religions in which the concept of "faith," while usually present in some form, doesn't play a central role. The context here was Mitt Romney's saying that, "We need to have a person of faith lead... Read more
PAT: Ugh. This is Coke. MIKE: What's wrong with Coke? PAT: It's got caffeine in it. I can't have caffeine. I'm Jewish. MIKE: You're what? PAT: Jewish. We're not allowed to have caffeine. MIKE: Dude, you're not Jewish. And even if you were that wouldn't mean you couldn't have caffeine. PAT: Hey this is America, I can be whatever I want to be. MIKE: Your name is Patrick Flynn. PAT: Doesn't matter. Freedom of religion. MIKE: OK, so if you're... Read more
GILES: It's the end of the world. WILLOW, XANDER, BUFFY: Again? GILES: It's the end of the world, everyone dies. It's rather important really. WILLOW: So what do we do? BUFFY: I stop it. Left Behind, pp. 251-253 Nicolae Carpathia meets the press, giving the authors the chance to offer more leftover lessons from Dale Carnegie: … Carpathia met the eyes of every person in the room, at least briefly. He never looked down, never looked away, never looked up.... Read more
Cain and Abel seem to still be causing trouble … "Pale Blue Eyes," Alejandro Escovedo "I Hate Myself for Loving You," Joan Jett "Rudderless," The Lemonheads "Car," Built to Spill "Palo Alto," Radiohead "Tom Traubert's Blues," Tom Waits "Life on a Chain," Pete Yorn "Cattle and the Creeping Things," The Hold Steady "Mean Eyed Cat," Johnny Cash "All I Need Is Everything," Over the Rhine Bonus: I couldn't find that track, but here's Over the Rhine doing one of my... Read more
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