I try to pay attention to recurring thoughts, and I’ve been having thoughts of Fred Rogers for the last few months. Why, I ask myself, am I thinking of “Mister Rogers” – and why now? I don’t often get haunted by thoughts, and I thought I had better listen to myself and find out what it was that I should do about it. I thought – “maybe I’ll watch the show with Ben later on and figure it out.” So…
In answer to NOW’s Question of the Week: Do you read blogs? Tell us if blogs change your views on political issues. Blogs are of many kinds: scrapbooks, personal journals, advertising spaces, photo logs. Political blogs are only one form of the blog. The blogosphere is about freedom of expression – dittoheads, propaganda portals, soap boxes, fake identities, but also debate, discussion, original ideas, and scrapbooked information/evidence/argument. Some political blogs actually investigate and report news. Some are focused tightly on…
Ben got the Citizen of the Month Award (for August) at his Elementary School. Awwww. (We could even almost overlook that they spelled his name “Benjamim” on the award.)
Have a good Labor Day, America! Labor Day is meant to celebrate the contributions of the working class. The labor unions promoted it as a testament to the cause of worker’s rights. I don’t expect to see much on the origins of the holiday in America’s media this year. In 1898, Samuel Gompers, head of the American Federation of Labor, called it “the day for which the toilers in past centuries looked forward, when their rights and their wrongs would…
I am really looking forward to Thomas Pynchon’s new book Against the Day, which is due out near the end of the year. The Crying of Lot 49, Vineland and Gravity’s Rainbow are already considered classics. This guy is a genius. Vineland is probably my favorite read. The Crying of Lot 49 is a perfect logical construction of undecidability, and if you’ve never read Pynchon, it’s a good place to start. Gravity’s Rainbow is something you have to read to…
Mr. Cheney, Mr. Rumsfeld, Ms. Rice: We are America’s citizens. We are not defeatists. We are not pessimists. We are not appeasers. I don’t hear anyone arguing that the militant anti-USA movements in the middle east are not a threat. Not “Dean democrats,” not anyone. Many of us simply have come to believe that you back-alley players are the last people in America who should be making decisions on how to deal with that threat. You seem to escalate the…