Thursday, February 01, 2007

Running Commentary

Lots in the news today. I have seldom done a comment-as-I-go post. Which reminds me, I haven't done a Transylvania Update for a long time.

One of the commenters over at Dr. Sanity’s used a phrase I’m going to get future use from: “recreational compassion,” referring to the cheapness of a political compassion that costs you nothing, but allows you to sniff at others. It puts me in mind of a post I wrote two months ago entitled Not Good Enough.

Robert Fulghum has a mildly interesting piece about American tribal behavior. I recall similar pieces from college sociology and anthropology texts, purporting to view America from an objective standpoint. The most famous is Horace Miner’s Body Ritual Among the Nacirema. Cute. You will notice that these essays never satirize their own tribe, but take a condescending distance. You can easily guess Fulghum’s tribe. If you have any doubt, he’s a U-U minister.

You can learn how cars skid on ice over at Popular Science, with a great video of cars slowly crashing into each other.

Over at Oxblog, Dave Adesnik links to comments by Professor Wendy Doniger about religion and politics. Her observations are an excellent example of how liberalism is a religion.

Evan Coyne Maloney remarks on Great Moments in Objective Reporting

Some folks have recently gotten a lot of mileage over complaining that their patriotism is being challenged for dissenting from the president’s views. It is not mere dissent that is unpatriotic – neither dissent nor agreement is patriotic in itself – it is specific dissents that can be termed unpatriotic. Like this one. Don Surber summarizes the Arkin-Washington Post brouhaha. Arkin is unpatriotic. Has been for years.

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