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Monthly Archives: December 2011

Pagan Driving School.

26-Dec-11

http://theglutengal.com/chili-time Was walking by the Cloisters this morning when a car drove by with the eyebrow-raising motto “Pagan Driving School.”  Sure enough, there’s one in New York.

“Her clay-built streets are again the blown dust of the wilderness.”

26-Dec-11

http://justrpg.com/wp-json/wp/v2/posts/3161 A fine short essay, an introduction to an abridgement, on the astonishing Travels in Arabia Deserta by Charles Doughty.  By Barnaby Rogerson, who appears to have some talent.

“Until that is changed, these crimes will go on repeating themselves.”

20-Dec-11

Of all the Hitchens videos posted recently, this is my favorite.  He is eloquent without stint after a slow exordium, chronicling various ecclesiastical offenses, moving from ones the hierarchy acknowledges to fresh and contemporary outrages.  “I don’t know I think I’d like to hear more shame about this. I’d like to see a bit more […]

Christopher Hitchens, Flagellum Dei.

19-Dec-11

I see no particular reason to call Christopher Hitchens a good person – anyone, as I have said, who leaves his wife when she is pregnant with their second child is safely distancing himself from all the more benign forms of respectability – but I must confess that despite the obvious – despite Greenwald’s pointing […]

Fixing the Wood Stove.

15-Dec-11

A few nights ago, I dropped a log into the wood stove from the top, and it split in half the iron grill which separates the wood compartment from the ash compartment.  I suppose it should be welded together, or replaced, but doing so means taking the entire stove apart, including the flue, and then […]

Logic.

15-Dec-11

I think it must be true that we do not have a democracy if we are unable to (legally) discomfort a small minority (let’s call them the 1%) by means of an incredibly popular and fiscally and morally wise law. It was a key Democratic demand but party leaders abandoned a surtax on millionaires to […]

An Interesting Princetonian in the News…

15-Dec-11

Vladimir Teichberg: We want to change the principles under which we operate as a society. This is a revolution against hierarchy.

The Broke New York Mets.

15-Dec-11

I went to a Mets game last fall – free tickets via a One Percenter – and thoroughly enjoyed it.  There was a good crowd, the ballpark was nice, the home team won, etc.  A nice evening out.  The only bad thing was the part I didn’t have to worry about – the face value […]

Rereading Dante.

15-Dec-11

I’ve been reading the Divine Comedy recently.  It continues to astonish me.  I remember reading it in college, as a freshman, and feeling quite certain that Purgatorio was better than the Inferno, and Paradiso was best of all.  As time has gone on I have become only more aware that this is most emphatically a […]

Mountains in Winter.

12-Dec-11