"The difference between the almost right word and the right word is really a large matter." —Mark Twain
Fighting for hearts and minds
There was an interesting thread on Facebook this morning. US Rider News, a motorcycle magazine, posted a link to a newspaper article about a veteran who didn’t want a veterans’ motorcycle group leading the local Veterans’ Day parade: “I don’t think that’s the image we want,” said Stephen Riggs of West Ashley, a former Army […]
What’s in Paul’s grab bag? Unconnected thoughts and observations which don’t rate separate blog posts, but when aggregated together might amount to something: The Tube I was 14 years old when The Flintstones began running on TV. Hanna-Barbara was already famous for introducing cartoons to prime time with Huckleberry Hound, so there was a lot […]
Today on Facebook I posted a link to this photo and accompanying story about a racist NASCAR fan, generating this heated comment from a friend, an understandably beleaguered non-racist NASCAR supporter: Probably the most misinformed bit of drivel written about NASCAR to date. Funny how the “journalist” leaps to unsubstantiated conclusions but would scream bloody […]
From an interesting blog post by Julian Sanchez: One of the more striking features of the contemporary conservative movement is the extent to which it has been moving toward epistemic closure. Reality is defined by a multimedia array of interconnected and cross promoting conservative blogs, radio programs, magazines, and of course, Fox News. Whatever conflicts […]
Unconnected thoughts and observations which don’t rate separate blog posts, but when aggregated together might just amount to something: Much was made of Stephen Colbert’s rescue of the US Olympic speed skating team, and the Colbert Nation patches they were wearing in practice. Has anyone seen a US speed skater wearing one in the Vancouver […]
Snagged from Facebook, five minutes ago: I’m currently struggling through Uncle Tom’s Cabin, a book I realized I had never read. The hardest part, for me, is the depiction of white attitudes toward blacks in mid-1800s America, and the language used to convey those attitudes. And then I remember growing up with whites who still […]