"This was the voice of moderation until 13 Sept, 2025"
by liberal japonicus Immediately after I made my previous post, I saw in my FB feed that Robert Pirsig, author of Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, had passed away. At the risk of having everyone think that we are going to have more regular postings here, I’m posting something I wrote on Facebook … Read more
by liberal japonicus Something to prime the pump for the weekend. All readings of human history have to allow for the possibility of a negative outcome. It haunts us in the zombie movie, the disaster movie, in the post-apocalytic wasteland of films such as The Road or Elysium. But why should we not form a … Read more
by wj A couple of days ago, Russell wrote a comment that got me thinking**: for about 50 years in the middle of the 20th C things were progressively (not capital-P progressively, just the normal usage of that word) better for “regular folks”, however you want to define that. Not so much for black regular … Read more
by Ugh I saw the recent deportation of someone with status under DACA, which made me wonder how immigration law worked when it comes to proving/contesting immigration status. Specifically, who has the burden of proof – the individual or the state – when it comes to whether a person is an "alien." It also made … Read more
by Doctor Science It’s really been Spring here for the past week. I kind of melted down from medication-, Tax-, and Seder-related exhaustion last Monday, but within the last few days I’ve really perked up. And so has my yard! We have Goldfinches that come to the feeder all winter, but within the past few … Read more
by liberal japonicus from http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/heat-vision/fate-furious-director-tough-cuba-shoot-movies-hell-yeah-moment-993053 Did you have a personal favorite race sequence? Well, I'll give the filmmaker answer: I loved them all. But I will say that the New York sequence really stands out to me because for Charlize Theron's character to remotely control a thousand vehicles from a billion-dollar jet above Manhattan, weaponize these … Read more
by janiem The screenshot below is from boston.com as of this morning (Thursday 4/13). In case the text is blurred in the reproduction, the circled headline reads, “Jury in ex-NFL player’s trial to deliberate for 5th day.” The headline was there for a couple of days before I realized that the ex-NFL player referred to is … Read more
by wj Yesterday saw the first special Congressional election since the November general election. First, let's look at the district. Kansas 04 is a very strongly Republican district. It last elected a Democrat in 1992 — and that Democrat an exception to its historical pattern. In November, Mike Pompeo (now CIA Director) won with 60% … Read more
by Ugh Well golly, we bombed Syria. I've seen various reactions from so-called "serious" people on the tweets that this is "not an act of war" and "just a pin prick" strike to "send a message" and "not let thing go unpunished" etc. etc. etc. As someone else in the twits said, suppose someone dropped … Read more
by liberal japonicus Well, I guess we can't tell jokes all the time. This Guardian excerpt from Susan Bordo's book The Destruction of Hillary Clinton is up. Confession: I think she is spot on. A graf: Sanders’s branding of Hillary as establishment, however, seemed vastly unjust and corrosively divisive to me, especially when delivered to a … Read more