Results of my first weekly poll have finally been formatted to fit my page, so here they are. Please vote in the current weekly poll, which you can find lower down in the right sidebar on my blog’s main page. What do you think? (all votes are anonymous) Give me liberty or give me… death. (2) 11% another beer. (2) 11% something closely resembling freedom and a bad enough education not to know the difference. (3) 17% someone to love! (1) 5% 15 minutes of fame. (0) 0% a net connection, at least. (2) 11% a little hot action in …
Author: gordsellar
Watchblog
Gee, I seem to be posting a lot about political stuff. Well, anyway, here’s one more, called WatchBlog. It’s a great multi-author blog that presents news and opinions on American politics from three different perspectives: Republican, Democrat, and Third-Party. While the scope of perspectives in American politics is rather limited in my opinion, it’s nice (and sometimes rather illuminating) to find examples and commentary on all three in the same venue. Personally, I think the whole left vs. right thing is pretty damaging to the public’s ability to reason about political issues. But it’s what America has to work with …
Korean Sweatshops, Sweatshops Abroad
In this article, Chinese Girls’ Toil Brings Pain, Not Riches, I found something that got me thinking: She and her friend Wei Qi, also 16 and also a Chinese farm girl barely out of junior high school, had been lured here by a South Korean boss who said he was prepared to pay $120 a month, a princely sum for unskilled peasants, to make false eyelashes. I sometimes hear from friends here how their siblings are starting businesses in China, and how it’s the land of opportunity for young Koreans who want to make a lot of money. But I …
Anti-Americanism from a French point of view…
Having spent time online with a number of Americans, I know that there are three kinds of writing about anti-Americanism: the kind mostly by Americans, which I have little time to listen to because it’s usually rather decontextualized and whiney; the kind which is simply foreigners justifying anti-Americanism, which is boring as hell; and, finally, the kind that’s usually (though not always) by non-Americans, which is often interesting because it’s often a criticism of blind anti-Americanism which nonetheless still manages not to completely embrace pro-Americanism, or which celebrates non-American culture as well. As a Canadian, that being a person from …
Mel Gibon’s Passion and AntiSemitism
Rabbi Daniel Lapin on Mel Gibson’s Passion on National Review Online Fascinating. The only thing I fear is his conclusion is wrong, and that Bush is the biggest threat to Western Civilization. Hm.
Lush Life
Sometimes when you feel like crap, it helps to listen to happy songs. And sometimes you have to listen to something that makes you feel sad. This is one of the classics of jazz, and one of the saddest songs I know. Sung by Johnny Hartman, sax by John Coltrane, and composed, of course, by Billy Strayhorn (I got mine from this page). Heartbreaking, sad, somehow hopeless but pretty anyway, like cut roses dying in normal air. (And by the way, the “gay” mentioned in the song is early enough to be understood as “happy” though this could easily be …
Bush Administration Hides Global Warming Data
This is old news, but I never heard it. Listen to a piece from NPR : All Things Considered for Thursday, June 19, 2003. Here’s the blurb for that show: ‘N.Y. Times’ : EPA Report Omitted Global Warming Data The New York Times reports that the Bush administration edited out information on the effects of global warming from an upcoming Environmental Protection Agency study. The tone of the edited document puts more emphasis on uncertainties about climate change. Hear New York Times environmental reporter Andrew Revkin. Yeah, that’s what we need. Bush editing our science reports. And we trust this …
Franz Kafka, The Metamorphosis
Not having read Kafka’s The Metamorphosis is an oversight that it took me years to address. It’s probably strange that this wasn’t the first Kafka work I’d read… I think most people read The Metamorphosis first and then move on to other tales or to Kafka’s novels. Yet what I’d heard about The Trial was much more compelling to me in the past, and I read that book last year. It wasn’t until this morning that I decided to pick up the beaten old copy of The Metamorphosis that I’d picked up a few weeks ago at the Foreign Book …
The Dentist Said…
… well, a lot of things that I didn’t quite understand, but the gist was, “Look, guy, I’m not going to just pull that tooth out today. You don’t have a health card yet, and that would be expensive and painful for you to do like that. So go buy these here pills and take them for a few days and see if the swelling goes down. If it still hurts in a few days, come back and see me and we’ll yank that tooth clean outta your skull. Okay?” So, I’m assuming these are antibiotics. The three-days-run is maddening, …
이발 아프다!
내… 금요일에, 좋은 주말 보고싶었지만 금요일 아침에 일작 일어났어… 왜? 원야하면 사랑니 하나 너무 너우 아프다! 오늘은 칙과에 가야되… 아이고. 언재 재미 있는 주말 있을 수 있어요? 하지만 오재 오후 부터 밤까지 좋은 친구 만났고 공나물 국밥 먹었고 이상한 영화 봤어요. 만남는 시간에 이상한 것은 많이 봤지만 좋은 금요일 이였어요. 빨리 칙과에 가요… 안녕!