If you haven’t read these, and you like literature, fiction, and the creative use of languages, you’re missing out on treasure. From what I’m reading today, I offer this little gem.

…but what [the captured enemy soldier] had said set me thinking of the North, and I found I knew next to nothing about it.

When I had been a boy, scrubbing floors and running errands in the Citadel, the war itself had seemed almost infintely remote. I knew that most of the matrosses who manned the major batteries had taken part in it, but I knew it just as I knew that the sunlight that fell upon my hand had been to the sun. I would be a torturer, and as a torturer I would have no reason to enter the army and no reason to fear that I would be impressed into it. I never expected to see the war at the gates of [the City]…I never expected to leave the City, or even to leave [my own] quarter of the city called the Citadel.

The North…was then inconceivably remote, a place as distant as the most distant galaxy, since both were forever out of reach. Mentally, I confused it with the dying belt of tropical vegetation that lay between our own land and theirs, although I would have distinguished the two without difficulty if [my teaching Master] had asked me to in the classroom.

But of [the North] itself I had no idea. I did not know if it had great cities or none. I did not know if it was mountainous like the northern or eastern parts of our Commonwealth or as level as our pampas. I did have the impression (although I could not be sure it was correct) that is was a single land mass like our South; and most distinct of all, I had the impression of an innumerable people…an inexhaustible swarm that almost became a creature of itself, as a colony of ants does.

…to think of those millions and millions without speech, or confined to parroting proverbial phrases that must surely have long ago lost most of their meaning, was nearly more than the mind could bear. Speaking almost to myself, I said, “It must surely be a trick, or a lie, or a mistake. Such a nation could not exist.”  Read more 

One day I’ll post the amusing story of How I Learned to Hate the “Science” of Psychology, but for now I’ll direct your attention to the “serious” publication Pyschology Today which decided to lower the reputation of the field even further by publishing the following Deep Insights about how evolution “makes” us act and think:

1. Men like blond bombshells (and women want to look like them)
…
4. Most suicide bombers are Muslim
5. Having sons reduces the likelihood of divorce
6. Beautiful people have more daughters

etc.  Read more 

So I was one with nature all day and away from computers and text and other things that aren’t green. I plugged in the iPod, and let my mind wander. I’m a writer, so I have to share what I “wrote” as I raked leaves and mulched flower beds. This is just Saturday night silliness, but I’d love to hear what you think of the ideas. Expand, critique, and most of all, have some fun. Don’t invite me to the Revolution that lacks dreaming and dancing, to paraphrase a great. H/T to BD and his Chere:

I feel like making trouble. This post should get me a nice, red flag in some government server. I want to propose “The Overnight Revolution.” Some smart people have told me more than once, “no one is going to save you but you.” In that vein, I recall Helen Thomas’ words to me recently, which more or less approximate to “the Democratic party doesn’t have the stones.” So, if I have to be imaginative, I will be. Mine is a simple idea, and I think it could be practical too. We’re lazy in America, and we like our bloodshed and violence to last about 2 hours, and then we like to go home and have a beer and turn on the TV or light up. So, I give you: the lazy man’s revolution.  Read more 

Zack raises a lot of interesting points in history and ask some good questions. I enjoyed this part:

Organizers these days tend to fall into one of two camps. The first are followers of Saul Alinsky, who is being remembered in this TPMCafe thread. They believe their job is not to lead, but to teach The People how to lead themselves (by practicing “leadership development” and “consciousness raising”). The other camp believes their job is to steamroller The People into doing what’s best for them (because they are not capable of leading themselves).

Please notice what these camps have in common: Both see themselves as separate from The People. Both see The People an object that must be treated by organizers in certain ways to achieve desired outcomes. One camp fancies itself more democratic; the other more realistic and results-oriented. They are unified in their belief that they each possess a special status apart from The People. To both, “We, The People” could only be a bit of good PR, not a sincere sentiment.  Read more 

Part the First. Xan notes:

Hamilton and Baker are backed by a 40-person media team operating out of a public relations firm and a hot-selling paperback edition of their report.

Their dawn-to-dark parade of interviews, in which they always appear as a pair to underscore their bipartisanship, will culminate with a run of the Sunday morning talk shows.

“We’ve been spinning like a top,” Baker said Thursday, ushered into a paneled conference room with 14 news reporters at Edelman, a Chicago-based public relations firm that has detailed 40 members of its 200-person Washington office to manage the media blitz.

Question: How’s that working out, media team? Can you make people not see the egg on your face, as Bush essentially has told you and every one of your members in the chatter rooms, “I don’t give a shit?”  Read more 

Going All the Way, or, Why Moderation is Killing America

A comment at this post got me thinking, as well as motivated to leave a reply there, about the discourse and drawbacks of “moderation.” If you’ve ever read any of my writing, you’ll now that the concept and I are not exactly bosom buddies, but I have respect for the various social and cultural ideologies that teach that it is a “good thing.” And yet- two bottles of wine a day, $200 a quarter to the Lieberman campaign, or two dozen widely read voices calling for the execution of half the populous for the “treason” of wanting and end to the war: none of these are “good things.”  Read more