Archive for July, 2012

Alain de Botton has written a book about sex! I’m almost tempted to buy it for the hilarity — de Botton is the kind of upper-class twit lampooned by Monty Python, and I’m sure it would be full of insights about how such a person could accidentally reproduce themselves. You must read the whole review to get the full brunt of the absurdity. As Stephanie says, the book tells us much more about de Botton’s narrow view of sex than it tells us about sex itself. For example… Joking aside, de Botton goes on to extend Worringer’s Read more
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It’s getting a little weird…now people are sending me more cannibal stories, like this one. Papua New Guinea police have arrested members of an alleged cannibal cult accused of killing at least seven people, eating their brains raw and making soup from their penises, a report said Friday. Part of the strange twist here, besides the Penis Soup, is that they’re killing sorcerors. Not for sorcery per se, but because their prices for casting curses on people are too high. So it’s kind of like the New Guinea version of the Occupy Movement, only with less chanting and more enchanted machetes.

They used to call us the Statler and Waldorf of talk.origins, so you just knew whose side I’d take in this discussion of civility. There’s a place for it, but not in a battle with malicious fools. When I use the word “IDiot” I fully intend to bash the IDiots for their stupid ideas. Why? Because their ideas are stupid and they really are idiots. Passion and anger are two of our weapons. I’m not going to let the ninny nannies disarm us.

Here’s something else I ran across at Making Light, and it will cheer you right up: it’s a history of Machiavelli’s time and place. If you thought Machiavelli was a ruthless, cunning schemer who presaged the modern political world of cynicism and expedience…you might just change your mind after reading it. And now I want to visit Florence. Wait, I’ve always wanted to visit Florence…OK, now I want to visit it more. Aww, heck, I want to see all of Italy. Note also: her intelligent re-interpretation of the Avengers movie is also well worth reading.

This is a little eerie: Tatsuya Ishida is lampooning a certain attitude — the same attitude that’s been creating Deep Rifts all over the place. So it’s cutting edge Third Wave misogyny — that makes it all better.