"This was the voice of moderation until 13 Sept, 2025"
by Doctor Science To start off the open thread, here’s a video of polar bears encountering spy cameras: Links to other videos of seasonal interest: The Luttrell Psalter Film: life in a medieval English village. Man in a Blizzard, and why Roger Ebert thinks it deserves an Oscar nomination. The Knitted Christmas Tree. It’s *15 … Read more
by Doctor Science
In the discussion to Sebastian’s post celebrating the end of DADT, commenter avedis took issue. I found avedis’ comments more honest and comprehensible than most defenses of DADT, but they raise disturbing questions about rape culture in the military.
WARNING: POTENTIALLY TRIGGERY DISCUSSION OF RAPE AND RAPE CULTURE
by russell "E pluribus unum", of course, being the motto on the obverse side of the Great Seal of the United States. It's written on the swirly banner flying over the eagle's head. The reverse side, of course, has that weird spooky pyramid with the radiant eyeball on top and those other cryptic Latin mottoes. … Read more
by Doctor Science In the spirit of the season, and also “More Frequent Posting” — Jim and Dylan are a gay couple living in the Chelsea area of New York City, and for some reason they’re getting Santa’s mail: letters addressed to their specific address and apartment, with gift requests for Santa from poor children. … Read more
–by Sebastian I don't have much to say on the underlying issue that isn't being said better elsewhere. It was unjust, ridiculous, and it is well for the country and the armed forces that it is gone. I'm not going to tell the stories of friends whose lives will be made better by this–though … Read more
by Doctor Science First of all, this is what a War on Christmas looks like: I recall being taught that one reason Washington attacked on Christmas was specifically because (English) American colonists didn’t celebrate the holiday. The German Hessian mercenaries did, though, and so would be hung over and vulnerable when Washington and his army … Read more
by Gary Farber
This new Google tool, which Bob Mackey mentioning reminded me that I'd bookmarked for blogging Analyzing Literature by Words and Numbers by Patricia Cohen, is truly useful and neat, at first look: Books Ngram Viewer. Look up key words, and phrases, and thus track concepts over time, and much else, in hundreds of millions of books over the past couple of centuries, by frequency.
Then dig. Yum.
Some link-dumping for you: How To Use PeaceTalk 101 by Suzette Haden Elgin. Check out her writings on the Gentle Art of Verbal Self-Defense.
Use of some of these techniques, which I first started reading Elgin's writings on in the early Eighties, might be helpful to some, but not to others.
See also popularizer Deborah Tannen, though I agree with Elgin's critique of Tannen's extreme over-reliance on gender stereotyping. As usual, I don't endorse everything either writer says, but they're both worth reading, in my opinion.
Which could lead one to G.K. Chesterton on this topic, if one ever feels cranky:
There is an apostolic injunction to suffer fools gladly. We always lay the stress on the word “suffer,” and interpret the passage as one urging resignation. It might be better, perhaps, to lay the stress upon the word “gladly,” and make our familiarity with fools a delight, and almost a dissipation. Nor is it necessary that our pleasure in fools (or at least in great and godlike fools) should be merely satiric or cruel. The great fool is he in whom we cannot tell which is the conscious and which the unconscious humour; we laugh with him and laugh at him at the same time. An obvious instance is that of ordinary and happy marriage. A man and a woman cannot live together without having against each other a kind of everlasting joke. Each has discovered that the other is a fool, but a great fool. This largeness, this grossness and gorgeousness of folly is the thing which we all find about those with whom we are in intimate contact; and it is the one enduring basis of affection, and even of respect.
by Jacob Davies And for once, it looks like I might get what I want: The Senate voted 66 to 32 to bring the treaty to the floor in a procedural vote that fell one short of the 67 required under the Constitution for approval once it comes to a final vote. Since one Democrat … Read more
by Jacob Davies Just a quick link to a nifty mapping tool at the New York Times that illustrates how and where people of different races live; a little like the ones I posted a while back, but scalable. One thing apparent in the Bay Area maps – I suspect elsewhere too, but I only … Read more
by Eric Martin “The degree of civilization in a society can be judged by entering its prisons.” -Fyodor Dostoevsky Glenn Greenwald has unearthed some disturbing accounts of the five month (and counting) detention of Army Private Bradley Manning, the suspect accused of leaking classified material to WikiLeaks. Again, he is a suspect who is accused of … Read more