- Proverbs for Paranoids, 3: If they can get you asking the wrong questions, they don't have to worry about answers.—Gravity’s Rainbow
‘Is it about a bicycle?’ he asked.—The Third Policeman
Monthly Archives: October 2007
Handyman
Happy Halloween!
[h/t to Ben Samuels via The Beat]
Etude
I stumbled across a review of a book called Novels in Three Lines by Félix Fénéon, and given how I admire concision (or say I do, at any rate), I just had to take a look. The title in French, Nouvelles en trois lignes, is actually a pun: nouvelles can be taken as either “novellas” [...]
Ottomania
I have been waiting for Christopher Hitchens to weigh in on the Armenian genocide resolution (H.Res. 106) for weeks now. I used to agree with Hitchens a lot more in the past—back in the days when he thought “terrorist” was a stupid label and “terrorism” a blanket excuse for a brutal but ultimately pointless response, [...]
Bumpers
Peddling through Georgetown this morning, I saw this bumper sticker:
Don’t believe everything you think
A block or so later, this:
MILITANT AGNOSTIC
I don’t know & you don’t either
Skeptic to the right of me, skeptic to the left of me …
Discuss quietly within yourself.
Wahoo
Every time the Cleveland Indians baseball club makes it to the playoffs, a sense of unease sets in with the euphoria. It’s only a matter of days, if not minutes, from the time they step into the national spotlight before broadcasters or bloggers or commenters will decry the “racism” of the Indians name or, more [...]
Equanimity
As the son of a nurse and brother of a doctor (and brother-in-law of two more), this squib in the latest University of Chicago alumni magazine caught my attention: “Why Doctors Don’t Feel Your Pain.”
Brain scans show that physicians apparently learn to “shut off” the portion of their brain that helps them appreciate the pain [...]
Turkophilia
The Armenian genocide resolution (H.Res. 106) is due for a committee vote today. Last week the Turkish government took out a full-page ad in section A of the Washington Post in an attempt to throw sand in everyone’s eyes, and today the Post again dished out its Realpolitik garbage in support of its good friend [...]
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