Darn this tinfoil chin-strap, it’s hard to keep everything in position. Okay, I think I’ve got it. Ready?
Stderr
All the unbuffered error messages
Darn this tinfoil chin-strap, it’s hard to keep everything in position. Okay, I think I’ve got it. Ready?
I lose track of the number of times someone has called me a “leftist” because of my views on social justice, privacy, demilitarization, and opposition to weapons of mass destruction. And I have no idea how many times I’ve been referred to as a “right winger” because I own firearms and am generally suspicious of authority. But actually my suspicion of authority is suspicion of everyone, and it’s only authority that I worry about – and it all gets complicated. When I was in college and someone asked me to label myself, I sometimes would say “I am a radical righto-leftist.” That’s the sort of thing that seems funny when you’re a sophomore (hence the label: sophomoric) but, like most other labels, it wears out.
Jean Meslier
When we complain about the violence and evils which generally religion causes upon earth, we are answered at once, that these excesses are not due to religion, but that they are the sad effect of men’s passions. I would ask, however, what unchained these passions? It is evidently religion; it is a zeal which renders inhuman, and which serves to cover the greatest infamy.
Enroute to Vienna, connecting through Copenhagen airport on an SAS flight out of Washington, Dulles, I slept badly because of a the onset of a gout attack in my right ankle…
The first poem I learned by heart was Wilfred Owen’s “Dulce et Decorum Est” (here)
Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge,Till on the haunting flares we turned our backs,And towards our distant rest began to trudge.Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots,But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame; all blind;Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hootsOf gas-shells dropping softly behind.
If any question why we died,Tell them, because our fathers lied.
The fundamental assumption in moral philosophy is that men are responsible for their actions. From this assumption, it follows necessarily, as Kant pointed out, that men are metaphysically free, which is to say that in some sense they are capable of choosing how they shall act.
Federal judge declares “black lives matter” from the bench. That’s Slate’s title. Then, Slate proceeds to dance the gooney bird dance around something that ought to enrage anyone with a brain.
… IT FORMS BUT LICENTIOUS AND PERVERSE DESPOTS, AS WELL AS ABJECT AND UNHAPPY SUBJECTS.
Jean Meslier
I’m reading this rather lengthy article on NYT interactive, and it feels like I’m immersed in a documentary film. It’s not fun reading, but I think it’s important. If you have an hour or two to spare, you may wish to check it out yourself.