Doctor: “We’re all stories in the end. Just make it a good one, eh?” “The Big Bang” opens not where we left off last week, but rather on a scene repeated from the season’s first episode: Amelia Pond praying for someone to come and close the crack in her bedroom wall. This time, however, there is no Doctor. In a therapy session, Amelia paints a picture of the night sky, the moon surrounded by stars — her own version of van Gogh’s The Starry Night. When asked what she’s drawn, Amelia calmly explains that they’re stars. “Oh,...
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New York Times Columnist Line of the Day
If you’re one of the four-or-so frequent readers of this here blog, chances are you also occasionally check out the New York Times op-ed page. You may even know the names: Thomas “Friedman’s Just Another Word For Nothing Left to Lose” Friedman, Gail “The Colander” Collins, Nicholas “The Dark Crystal” Kristof, &c. Well, I’ve decided to devote a daily feature to these folks, by daily pointing out one line that is either awesome, funny, insightful, intelligent, ridiculous, or utterly divorced from reality. I hope you enjoy. Today\’s is from Ross \”Do That Thing\” Douthat, who in his...
Continue reading...Morning Constitutional – Monday, 26 July 2010
Good morning, everybody. The Kansas City Wizards beat Manchester United in a pointless friendly, but we\’ll take what we can get. Now, your morning constitutional: Kaing Guek Eav, known as Duch, a former Khmer Rouge prison chief, has been found guilty of crimes against humanity by a UN-backed Cambodian war crimes tribunal and sentenced to 35 years in prison. Who were the Khmer Rouge? The website WikiLeaks.org on Sunday published around 90,000 military and diplomatic documents relating to the war in Afghanistan. Many suggest that Pakistan is aiding Afghan rebels. The documents also show a much dimmer...
Continue reading...Poem of the Week
One of my all-time favorites. The Summer Day by Mary Oliver Who made the world? Who made the swan, and the black bear? Who made the grasshopper? This grasshopper, I mean– the one who has flung herself out of the grass, the one who is eating sugar out of my hand, who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and down– who is gazing around with her enormous and complicated eyes. Now she lifts her pale forearms and thoroughly washes her face. Now she snaps her wings open, and floats away. I don\’t know...
Continue reading...Does Ross Douthat think Pro-Gay is Pro-Family?
Andrew Sullivan reads Ross Douthat and likes what he sees: I’m stretching things a bit, I know, but it\’s interesting to see Ross praise what he calls David Cameron’s “pro-family” impulses – especially by supporting married couples in the tax code, something I also support. The Lib-Dems have largely quashed this for now. But Cameron’s pro-family agenda specifically and emphatically included gay couples. In fact, his entire argument was that we should not distinguish between gay and straight, but focus on core values – like commitment and responsibility. This is the argument I’ve been making for twenty...
Continue reading...New York Times Columnist Line of the Day
If you’re one of the four-or-so frequent readers of this here blog, chances are you also occasionally check out the New York Times op-ed page. You may even know the names: Thomas “Friedman’s Just Another Word For Nothing Left to Lose” Friedman, Gail “The Colander” Collins, Nicholas “The Dark Crystal” Kristof, &c. Well, I’ve decided to devote a daily feature to these folks, by daily pointing out one line that is either awesome, funny, insightful, intelligent, ridiculous, or utterly divorced from reality. I hope you enjoy. Today\’s is from Paul \”The Little Professor\” Krugman, who in his...
Continue reading...OH NOES: Bacon spies!
You better watch how much bacon you’re eating! According to Texas Representative Louie Gohmert, the government could come after you for being a fat kid and eating all the bacon: Here’s what I would say. Think about it. The federal government has all of your personal medical records. We’ve been told that the federal government has the capability of monitoring every credit card purchase, every debit card purchase that anyone in America makes. We’re also told it doesn’t do that, but it has the capability. But once the federal government through tax dollars is paying for people’s...
Continue reading...Hey, white people: Are you scared enough of black people?
Rachael Maddow: Fox News has run with a few different stories this year that they really pushed all on their own. They weren’t mainstream news stories — they weren’t even news, really. They were Fox agenda items, all following a very, very similar narrative. There was the Van Jones controversy, with Fox morphing the president’s renewable-energy policy expert into an ex-con who served time after the Rodney King race riots — not true. The other great Fox News crusade of the past year was against ACORN, an almost all-minority community organizing group which Fox characterized as stealing...
Continue reading...No Hipsters in China, Part 2
Via The New Yorker. Goo: Somewhere over the Pacific, Pabst Blue Ribbon began putting on airs. That reliably blue-collar Milwaukee lager, later adopted by unbearable hipsters on the coasts, has turned up in China. And P.B.R., best known in the U.S. for being the cheapest beer on the grocery-store shelf, has—like so many expatriates before it—taken the move as an opportunity to change its image. For a beer, that appears to involve an elegant glass bottle and a fantastically ridiculous price tag. One bottle: forty-four dollars.
Continue reading...Morning Consitutional – Tuesday, 20 July 2010
Good morning, folks. Elisabeth Hasselbeck doesn\’t like Kathy Griffin much at all. Now, your morning constitutional: The Senate Judiciary Committee will vote on the nomination of Elena Kagan to the Supreme Court today. If she is approved by the committee, her nomination will go before the full Senate, who will likely vote on her before their August recess. The Senate will consider a bill today that would that would extend unemployment benefits for those who have been out of work for more than six months, a bill that has been blocked so far by Republicans. According to...
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