A sentence written by Jack Kerouac, submitted in a contest to pick the best sentences, chosen as one of the 3 best sentences, by Stanley Fish, who has written a book called "How to Write a Sentence: And How to Read One," which I just bought, and you could buy too, using this link, causing Amazon to send 8% of the purchase price to me and making me go "Awww!"
Showing posts with label fire. Show all posts
Showing posts with label fire. Show all posts
"The only people for me are the mad ones..."
"... the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn, like fabulous yellow roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars and in the middle you see the blue centerlight pop and everybody goes 'Awww!'"
A sentence written by Jack Kerouac, submitted in a contest to pick the best sentences, chosen as one of the 3 best sentences, by Stanley Fish, who has written a book called "How to Write a Sentence: And How to Read One," which I just bought, and you could buy too, using this link, causing Amazon to send 8% of the purchase price to me and making me go "Awww!"
A sentence written by Jack Kerouac, submitted in a contest to pick the best sentences, chosen as one of the 3 best sentences, by Stanley Fish, who has written a book called "How to Write a Sentence: And How to Read One," which I just bought, and you could buy too, using this link, causing Amazon to send 8% of the purchase price to me and making me go "Awww!"
"When Mr. Miller informs you that he’s going to burn the California and American flags onstage... you know he’s not going to do it."
"And if he did, would anyone mind? Flag burning was much, ahem, hotter during the George H. W. Bush administration, when Tim Miller was known as one of the N.E.A. Four..."
Ah, it's late in human history to be a performance artist. But one must soldier on.
Ah, it's late in human history to be a performance artist. But one must soldier on.
In the UK, a 15-year-old girl is arrested for burning the Koran — and posting a video of her conduct/speech on Facebook.
This is happening in the U.K.!
It is thought the girl, who lives in the Sandwell Council area, was allegedly filmed setting the booklet alight while other pupils watched.Booklet?
It is understood that the group who published that version of the Koran have since been to the school to talk to pupils.Were Korans distributed by public school officials? Under what circumstances? If you want a book to be treated with respect, don't hand it out free to teenagers. Maybe the school officials should be arrested.
Bob Badham, Sandwell Metropolitan Borough Council cabinet member for education, said he had visited the school and believed the atmosphere was generally good among pupils. He added that he did not believe there was a "deeper problem" in the area.Is contempt for religious indoctrination a "deeper problem" that government should concern itself with? I think the deeper problem is that government officials in the U.K. seem to have lost touch with basic principles of freedom of speech and freedom of religion.
Neil Young's hybrid car emits some serious carbon.
It bursts into flames and destroys a million dollars worth of his memorabilia.
This is like that story about the reusable shopping bags that turn out to contain lead. You try so hard to do what's right and that's the very thing that takes you into the wrong.
This is like that story about the reusable shopping bags that turn out to contain lead. You try so hard to do what's right and that's the very thing that takes you into the wrong.
"There were no chimneys up until about 14th century. What you did was you had an open fire..."
"... and all the smoke just kind of leaked out a hole in the roof. A fire in the middle of the room radiates heat much better than a fireplace does, but it also meant that there was a lot of smoke and sparks and things drifting about."
Then the chimney was invented, Bill Bryson tells us, and with all that area near the roof newly cleared of smoke, it became possible to have an upstairs:
Then the chimney was invented, Bill Bryson tells us, and with all that area near the roof newly cleared of smoke, it became possible to have an upstairs:
"From that point, they started to discover the whole concept of privacy and having space of your own," he adds.Ah! A new Bill Bryson book is out today. It's "At Home: A Short History Of Private Life." I chose the audio version, because I adore Bryson's reading voice. It's charming and humorous, but also gentle enough to listen to while falling asleep. I buy all Bryson's books in audio form, and I listen to them hundreds of times. Since I fall asleep — in my boudoir! — while listening, I never really know when I've heard everything, but it doesn't matter. I'm never done listening.
It was at this point that the different rooms we take for granted — bedroom, study, closet — began to enter the common vernacular. However, Bryson notes that many of these rooms served very different functions hundreds of years ago than they do today.
Though a boudoir is now commonly connected with a sense of sexual intrigue, Bryson says that the French word actually translates into "a place to sulk."...
"Right from the very beginning," Bryson says, "[the boudoir] was a place for the mistress of the house to retreat to, and those private rooms upstairs were also where people now began to invite guests. So while we now think of a bedroom as a place that's dedicated to sleeping ... [in the Middle Ages, a boudoir] might be where you'd have a little dinner party."
At the Meadhouse Campsite... in Blue Mounds.
The accommodations... at dawn.
From the inside:
The ring of fire... at breakfast:
A morning tablescape:
A vintage label:
Was your sleeping bag manufactured in Berkeley?
ADDED: I laughed a lot when I took that picture of the Snow Lion label. My camera has face recognition and it identified the picture of the lion on the left as a face.
From the inside:
The ring of fire... at breakfast:
A morning tablescape:
A vintage label:
Was your sleeping bag manufactured in Berkeley?
ADDED: I laughed a lot when I took that picture of the Snow Lion label. My camera has face recognition and it identified the picture of the lion on the left as a face.
I overblogged yesterday. 14 posts.
Surely, you haven't read them all. I'm not going to weigh them down just yet with a lot of new material on top. I'd rather call attention to the 2 posts about the small-time Florida pastor who captured the attention of the entire world — with the help of a lot of foolish journalists and the President of the United States.
So, if you're looking for something to read on the Althouse, let me suggest "What's so terrible about book burning?" and the post that concludes:
So, if you're looking for something to read on the Althouse, let me suggest "What's so terrible about book burning?" and the post that concludes:
Obama propounds the stereotype of irrational Muslims who resort to acts of violence when they don't like what people are saying.And here's a picture in the NYT showing a bunch of men posing in the embarrassing stereotype that the President isn't ashamed to use.
Ironically, Rev. Jones wanted to burn the Koran because it seemed to him that it "incites radical, violent behavior among Muslims." And Obama wanted Jones to refrain from burning the Koran because it would incite radical, violent behavior among Muslims.
What's so terrible about book burning?
I'm wondering, after reading this hyperventilation in the always-awful "On Faith" section of the Washington Post. The author is Gustav Niebuhr:
It's offensive to say "I hate this book" about a book that some people revere, but that's the point. It's a vigorous, vicious expression. Burning your own copy of a book is the same thing. Unless you possess the only copy of the book — or, perhaps, an artistically or historically distinctive copy — the burning is just a way of being showily expressive and getting a big audience. It's absurd that any clown who wants attention can light a tiny fire and become world famous. Get a grip, people.
I find it hard to believe that Niebuhr and hyperventilators like him are big readers of important books, because their minds seem pretty feeble to me. "Torch a book and you at least symbolically deny your fellow men and women that freedom." At least symbolically. Or, to put it another way, i.e., truthfully: You don't deny other people anything. You give them something: the information that is your hatred of a book. And as they "decide for themselves whether what they read has meaning," they can take into account that you hate the book. It's not going to be a very influential piece of information, because you're just some attention whore who burned a book instead of articulating a pithy critique of it.
Yes, conceivably, a private group burning its own books might be intimidating, but that would only be because we have other, much greater reasons to fear that group or the movement it represents. And yes, when you burn a book, you adopt an image associated with the Nazis, but that marginalizes you. We don't cower every time some marginal idiot draws a swastika or does the Hitler salute. You're free to express yourself, but I think lavishing outrage on some nobody empowers him. Why not ignore what is worthless? It's a marketplace of ideas. Why are you even browsing the crap?
UPDATE: Pastor Terry Jones has announced that he won't be burning the Koran after all.
In the United States, short of causing arson, you can burn a book, just as you can America's most sacred symbol, the U.S. flag. It's Constitutionally guaranteed. Free speech.Good lord. There's an immense difference between burning your own book as a way of saying "I hate this book" — which adds more expression to the marketplace of ideas — and the confiscation and destruction of other people's books — which is about depriving people of access to expression that they want to consume.
The moral question here is, how do we handle our freedom, which permits us appalling, anti-social acts?
As an American who deeply believes in free speech, I regard burning a book as a nearly unspeakably terrible thing. It is an assault on knowledge, and the societal value of allowing people to read and decide for themselves whether what they read has meaning to them. Torch a book and you at least symbolically deny your fellow men and women that freedom.
What's more, you replicate images of a political brutality--book burnings in Germany in the 1930s--that will haunt our planet for generations to come.
It's offensive to say "I hate this book" about a book that some people revere, but that's the point. It's a vigorous, vicious expression. Burning your own copy of a book is the same thing. Unless you possess the only copy of the book — or, perhaps, an artistically or historically distinctive copy — the burning is just a way of being showily expressive and getting a big audience. It's absurd that any clown who wants attention can light a tiny fire and become world famous. Get a grip, people.
I find it hard to believe that Niebuhr and hyperventilators like him are big readers of important books, because their minds seem pretty feeble to me. "Torch a book and you at least symbolically deny your fellow men and women that freedom." At least symbolically. Or, to put it another way, i.e., truthfully: You don't deny other people anything. You give them something: the information that is your hatred of a book. And as they "decide for themselves whether what they read has meaning," they can take into account that you hate the book. It's not going to be a very influential piece of information, because you're just some attention whore who burned a book instead of articulating a pithy critique of it.
Yes, conceivably, a private group burning its own books might be intimidating, but that would only be because we have other, much greater reasons to fear that group or the movement it represents. And yes, when you burn a book, you adopt an image associated with the Nazis, but that marginalizes you. We don't cower every time some marginal idiot draws a swastika or does the Hitler salute. You're free to express yourself, but I think lavishing outrage on some nobody empowers him. Why not ignore what is worthless? It's a marketplace of ideas. Why are you even browsing the crap?
UPDATE: Pastor Terry Jones has announced that he won't be burning the Koran after all.
"Brooklyn College said it was 'regrettable that Mr. Bruce Kesler misunderstands the intentions of the Common Reader experience and the broader context of this selection.'"
Reports The Daily News, picking up the story that we were talking about here yesterday.
Hey, now we get to check out the Daily News comments. Continuum says:
Continuum continues:
Joezoo says:
StoutKraut says:
It's a marketplace of ideas, and there are powerful buyers and sellers in that marketplace. The professors have market power, but they aren't the only ones.
"Our lives are defined by opportunities, even the ones we miss."
Hey, now we get to check out the Daily News comments. Continuum says:
I guess if you can't physically burn the books yourself, you can burn the school financially where they're allowed to be read."Allowed to be read"? (Yes, ’n’ how many books can exist in a school/Before they’re allowed to be read?) It's an assigned text, one book for all. It's the book we want in your head, the school says to the incoming freshman, who, presumably, were chosen for their diversity.
Continuum continues:
It's his money, so he can do with it as he chooses. This won't be the first, nor will it be the last time, that some rightwinger will try to prevent an opposing view using his money or lack thereof . . . . .Prevent an opposing view?
Joezoo says:
The gentleman misunderstands the purpose of a college education - to be exposed to a wide variety of ideas, and learn how to be critical of them.Yet, ironically, Kesler is being critical of a book — and teaching a lesson in criticism.
I wonder what books he read while at Brookly College were high on the list of books-to-be-burned by donors at that time.Where did this "burned" concept come from? Kesler never said the book shouldn't be available in the library and assigned in some courses where it has some relevance. He objected to its being chosen as the one book to give to freshmen to create a sense of "common experience." That's a much stronger statement by the school of how it sees itself. And the book is assigned in the required freshman English course. Imagine a set of transcribed interviews with young people as the text to be studied in an English class. Think of the rich pool of English literature... and weep.
StoutKraut says:
Its about time someone has the 'pair' to stand up and be counted. With freedom comes responsibility and NOT radicalism. Besides its his money and he can do whatever he wants with him.Alumni provide an important check. Look at what happened at Harvard Law School:
In 1987, our last year as students at Harvard Law School, we formed a group called NOPE. No matter how rich we became, even if we could credit Harvard for our careers, we vowed to never contribute anything of financial value to its endowment: Not One Penny Ever. NOPE...That's a long side track that I won't travel down today, but Elena Kagan is in that story. In the 80s, I worked at a Wall Street law firm (Sullivan & Cromwell), hearing Harvard alumni partners fretting over what was happening to their law school. Suffice it to say that radical politics were a big problem... and the alumni were not powerless.
It's a marketplace of ideas, and there are powerful buyers and sellers in that marketplace. The professors have market power, but they aren't the only ones.
You’ve been with the professorsAh! There was a time when the professors at least saw fit, when imposing a book, to impose an exemplar of great writing.
And they’ve all liked your looks
With great lawyers you have
Discussed lepers and crooks
You’ve been through all of
F. Scott Fitzgerald’s books
You’re very well read
It’s well known
***
"Our lives are defined by opportunities, even the ones we miss."
Burn, Davey, Burn — The Self-Immolation of David Weigel.
Consider poor, conflicted David Weigel. Hired by the Washington Post, he had the trappings of prestige and therefore he deserved the admiration of the cool young journalists of Washington, D.C. But his assignment was to cover the conservative movement, and that threatened to make him toxic, a man to be shunned. He needed a way to wriggle — to wiggle-Weigel — into the good graces of the cool kids. He had to show that he was covering conservatives, but he was not one of them.
He could try to do that subtly, and without deviating from the good-faith performance of his assigned task, perhaps by writing in a neutral, questioning style about what was going on with the righties these days and carefully raising doubts, undermining foundations, and strategically inserting a knife blade now and then. But would they get it? Didn't he need something a little more emphatic... and a little hipper?
So David started letting his need for lefty approval express itself on the email list, the Journolist, where the cool kids were being intimate and snarky. But those other kids were not tasked with covering conservatives. While they might have been embarrassed if the mean things they wrote in the email were ever leaked, they didn't have careers founded on their suitability for covering conservatives. The risk poor Dave took was of an entirely different nature. Why, Dave, why? Why did you risk the plum job?
UPDATE: Weigel resigns.
AND: In smugger days:
He could try to do that subtly, and without deviating from the good-faith performance of his assigned task, perhaps by writing in a neutral, questioning style about what was going on with the righties these days and carefully raising doubts, undermining foundations, and strategically inserting a knife blade now and then. But would they get it? Didn't he need something a little more emphatic... and a little hipper?
So David started letting his need for lefty approval express itself on the email list, the Journolist, where the cool kids were being intimate and snarky. But those other kids were not tasked with covering conservatives. While they might have been embarrassed if the mean things they wrote in the email were ever leaked, they didn't have careers founded on their suitability for covering conservatives. The risk poor Dave took was of an entirely different nature. Why, Dave, why? Why did you risk the plum job?
“Honestly, it’s been tough to find fresh angles sometimes–how many times can I report that these [tea party] activists are joyfully signing up with the agenda of discredited right-winger X and discredited right-wing group Y?” Weigel lamented in one February email.He also said:
In other posts, Weigel describes conservatives as using the media to “violently, angrily divide America.” According to Weigel, their motives include “racism” and protecting “white privilege,” and for some of the top conservatives in D.C., a nihilistic thirst for power....
Of Matt Drudge, Weigel remarked, “It’s really a disgrace that an amoral shut-in like Drudge maintains the influence he does on the news cycle while gay-baiting, lying, and flubbing facts to this degree.”
“This would be a vastly better world to live in if Matt Drudge decided to handle his emotional problems more responsibly, and set himself on fire.”Such nastiness doesn't hurt Matt of course. Matt drops another link, gets all the traffic, and moves on. Ironically, it is Dave who is undone. Having shown us his vivid hostility to the conservatives he was supposed to explain to us, we no longer have any reason to read him. Having destroyed the appearance of his capacity to enlighten us, he has lit the flame of his own self-immolation.
UPDATE: Weigel resigns.
Various readers suggest that the email-leaker was after Dave’s job. I think the WaPo should have a no-journolister rule for Weigel’s replacement, which would solve that problem, among others.Indeed. One of the problems that might be somewhat solved is the cheeky smugness of the young journalists. The exclusive little club turned deadly for one of its members. And isn't funny how people who should be in the know still don't get modern technology. Tiger Woods brought down by texting, Dave Weigel by email, etc. etc.
AND: In smugger days:
David Weigel|6.14.10 @ 5:01PM|#(Thanks to C3 for pointing to that.)
Well, I really enjoyed the two and a half years I spent here, and I'm constantly confused as to why mentions of my name lead to a lot of schoolyard insults. I really can't figure out why they do it -- lack of fulfillment seems like a good enough theory. After all, I'm here, and they're where I left them in 2008.
Now if you'll excuse me, I have to return to my rewarding job and large circle of friends. I don't know how my ego will ever recover...
"This would be a vastly better world to live in if Matt Drudge decided to handle his emotional problems more responsibly, and set himself on fire."
Wrote the WaPo's Dave Weigel, who covers conservatives but writes things he's ashamed to see get beyond the confines of the lefty "Journolist" email list.
Lightning hit a 62-foot-high Jesus Christ at the Solid Rock Church in Ohio and burned it down.
Pics of "Touchdown Jesus" and video of the fire at the link."
As fire gorged the iconic statue, several motorists along I-75 pulled over to photograph the sight....Plastic foam and fiberglass... at the Solid Rock Church.
The sculpture stretches 40 feet wide at the base. It was made of plastic form and fiberglass over a steel frame.
A pond surrounding the statue that used to be full of fish is now filled with remnants of the structure, made of fiber glass and foam. All the fish are either dead or dying....No miracle for these fish. I was going to Google some relevant stuff about the miracle of the fish, but Google being what it is, a search for "miracle of the fish" turned up things like:
How Miracle Whip, Plenty of Fish Tap Lady Gaga's 'Telephone ...Ah! The world is strange, but perhaps God is trying to tell us something.
Mar 13, 2010 ... At least nine different brands make appearances in Lady Gaga's nine-minute music video, "Telephone," from HP Envy to Miracle Whip and Wonder ...adage.com/madisonandvine/article?article_id=142794 - Cached
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