On Political Sex Scandals

We're in a time of transition.  Technology allows an immense amount of investigative access and media amplification of any person's sexual back history.  So every politician can expect this hyper scrutiny.  But people do not become politicians--born gamblers on the people's trust--by leading squeaky clean lives.  The risk itself spurs them on.  Perhaps Oedipus, ancient leaders of Thebes, actually knew he was sleeping with his mother--and hid it all along!....  But the truth will come out.  Of the closet or of the past. 

 

The cumulative disgust with politicians will in the future at last lead people to gladly cede the control of their lives and leadership of their communities  to machines, robots,  programs, asexual cyborgs, what have you.  And then we humans will be free to fornicate like canines, happy pets of the machines.  Riddle of the sphinx solved!

 

Ah, Hefner

What a guy...

Death of NYT?...

We've all heard of the frightened cries, but who could think it might be so soon?...

RIP Bush

The grand ambition of a fratboy succumbs.  Goodbye and good riddance. 

Screens and Pages

Another elegiac salvo from the high literary ramparts in the rhetorical war over the future of reading, and the screen vs. the page. 

Ayn Randians Rebel

Remember Atlas Shrugged?

Detroit Beatdown

Hilarious example of urban dialect. 

300--Minority Report

On the self-imposed exceptionalism of the West (which has sired, as is rarely pointed out, the exceptionalism of America). 
 

On Beauty

Modern art-- another investment scam, a Ponzi scheme of critics and 'creators' in collusion--and really very little to do with beauty.  That's long been my opinion, but as 'art' is not technically my province, I've felt like an uninitiated ignoramus when I give voice to my suspicions.  But here it is confirmed. 

Must We Go To College?

I've had these exact thoughts before about our nation's insane belief that everyone must go to college.

 

 

Gifts from the Heart

Mead, jam, and mix tapes-- what better gifts for the holidays.

 

 

On Moral Relativism

This spirited polemic degenerates into a thinly veiled attack on university humanities departments by the ever-aggrieved right-winger clinging to a ghostly absolute.  Nothing novel in that. 

On Markets

To take arms against a market of troubles, or by walking on its flows, to surf them?...

 

Is intellectual change afoot?

Roll Call of the Dead

When all our professions have been replaced, what will we do then?  Of course, there will always be something, won't there?

Satanic Verses: Myths

Great backstory to the furor around that book and its fallout twenty years later.  Yes, the liberal spine needs to relocate its spirit, its imperative, its animus.  And goddamn it--that just might hurt some feelings. 

Susan Sontag

Never thought of her as any sort of model, but this sentence gives me pause to reconsider:  "Sontag continued her intense and sustained engagement with canonical novelists, philosophers, and poets such as Jeremy Bentham, Joseph Conrad, Fyodor Dostoyevsky, André Gide, Hermann Hesse, Gerard Manley Hopkins, Henry James, Franz Kafka, Søren Kierkegaard, Thomas Mann, Friedrich Nietzsche, Rainer Maria Rilke, Anthony Trollope, and Leo Tolstoy."

More Lit-Bashing

I love hearing about the decrepitude of the study of literature in the academy.  It helps to justify a major life decision of mine (and one I continually question):  not to pursue the vaunted PhD and professor of literature perch. 

 

 

Paper Wasting

We waste a lot of paper.  While we have done a good job setting up recycling bins, we could save significant money on the purchase of paper if we found a way to internally re-use paper.  For instance, many times PDF files print incorrectly, producing a line of indecipherable gobbledygook on a huge number of wasted sheets of paper.  Turn these sheets over and they could be easily printed on again--so long as the person printing is only printing a document for internal use.  (I.e., it doesn't require a perfect sheet of paper). 

 

First step:  have a place to collect such sheets of paper.  (the person who printed the document tacitly approves that they be made available for re-use; i.e., there is nothing confidential or private on the mis-printed sheet.)

Second step:  put them in a printer in a designated drawer. 

Third step:  the IT department (perhaps working with printer vendor) will create a means by which anyone printing can choose which drawer they are printing from (so that they can print to the lesser quality paper if they wish to)

Fourth step:  Create 'job aid' sheets and distribute them to employees so they are aware of this option and how to use it.

 

 

On Writing

So You Want to be a Writer?...

YouTube Cashcow

Broadcasting--and earning a living--from the basement.  Wow...