I and the public know
What all schoolchildren learn,
Those to whom evil is done
Do evil in return.
-W.H. Auden
Miscellany – October 8, 2023
COVID: Zero stars. Not recommended.
Foreign policy and politics: Read Dan Drezner’s Substack. Read Heather Cox Richardson’s on domestic politics.
Dan Drezner, America Has Changed Since “NYPD Blue” Aired:
In today’s more polarized environment, I don’t know if a mainstream audience can buy a character who starts out bigoted and ends up being a more constructive member of society. For progressives, the initial racism would be too much; for conservatives, it would be viewed as woke culture run amok. Which is a shame — because the United States could use more characters like Andy Sipowicz. The country is littered with flawed human beings trying to be better. However the show has aged, NYPD Blue understood that compelling point.
Andrew Spencer, Hope for a Humane Agricultural Future: A Review of Saying NO to a Farm-Free Future:
Once someone accepts the significant human contribution to climate change, there are two possible options. The first option is to assume that things are too far gone so that exercising restraint is pointless. Based on this defeatist thinking we should either ride out the coming storm, hoping for the best, or accept that human extinction would be the best thing for the planet. The second option for those who recognize that the current form of human civilization is damaging the environment is to do something about it. What that something should be, however, is the subject of fierce debate.
Music for Sunday morning
Music for Friday Night
One of my favorite local bands from back in the day.
Thought for the Day – September 13, 2023
“Rejecting identity politics doesn’t mean rejecting your own distinct culture. It means that cultural and racial differences shouldn’t be organizing principles.”
– Razib Khan
Thought for the Day – Labor Day 2023
Labor is prior to, and independent of, capital; that, in fact, capital is the fruit of labor, and could never have existed if labor had not first existed—that labor can exist without capital, but that capital could never have existed without labor. Hence they hold that labor is the superior—greatly the superior of capital.
-Abraham Lincoln
Poem for Labor Day
I first him read this on the PBS News Hour on Labor Day probably twenty-five years ago. I’ve thought of it every Labor Day since.
Thought for the Day – August 24, 2023
“Parochial isolationism requires fantasy, and it’s deadly for others.”
– Kimberly St. Julian-Varnon
Thought for Today
“Whatever may have been my political opinions before, I have but one sentiment now: that is, we have a government, and laws, and a flag, and they must all be sustained. There are but two parties now: traitors and patriots. And I want hereafter to be ranked with the latter.”
-Ulysses S. Grant
Thought for the Day – August 4, 2023
