Category: Paleoblogs
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Illegality of Marijuana May Cause Lung Disease
A few studies now suggest that marijuana may increase the risk of lung disease–not the marijuana itself, but its illegality, which makes it expensive, causing people to hold the smoke deep inside their lungs. The DEA is all about Public Health. They will undoubtedly now campaign to make marijuana legal and cheap, so the smoking…
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If Jews had met Budhists
Great religious coincidence. Last week I wrote to a friend: “But mainly the sense of Jewish superiority was in relation…to the idol worshipers. It would have been interesting if there were strong contact between Jews and Buddhists, but it didn’t happen. So there were not other high religions [in their world] to [give] respect [to],…
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New from Aristotle
This came in this morning’s Aristotle message: “To be conscious that we are perceiving or thinking is to be conscious of our own existence.” It came as news to me that he had said this. He never mentioned to me before. And if I am remembering the dates right, it must have come before Descartes’…
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Sitting next to my father
It could be a very curious experience sitting next to my father watching a bad movie. He thoroughly enjoyed anticipating the next line of a predictable dialog. This involved more than just getting the words right. There was also the timing. It had to be quick, and had to hit on the half-beat in the…
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Sort of about Chanukah and Christmas
Got this in the email today: The lasting achievement of the Maccabees was not that they won a war but that they rekindled the light of hope in Jewish hearts and saved the faith of monotheism from defeat. – Rabbi Jonathan Sacks, Chief Rabbi of Great Britain, 1997 [Background: Chanukah celebrates the victory in the…
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Community site responds to homicide epidemic in Oakland
I just heard today about Not Just A Number, a community journalism project coproduced by the Oakland Tribune and InsideBayArea.com. It endeavors to tell the real human stories of Oakland homicide victims, rather than letting them become merely statistics. The site speaks for itself, and I feel like I might be cheapening it by talking…
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Funundrum
Nobody knows what the Sun really looks like. –DKo
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Philosophical Courage
I’ve been getting an Aristotle Quote of the Day on my (Google) home page. Today it was, “Character is habitual action.” And–totally apart from the content–I am thinking, “What guts! To say something so flat out straightforward, so intellectually committed as those four words.” And there is nothing obviously true about these words. Where are…
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Drop by Drop
“In our sleep, pain which cannot forget falls drop by drop upon the heart until, in our own despair, against our will, comes wisdom through the awful grace of God.” –Aeschylus I wish to Hell I didn’t know what he was talking about. But I do. We all do. Or if you don’t know yet,…
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How honest WAS he?
“To the tune of” the stand-up comedian’s standard intonation. How honest WAS he? HE was so honest that when he got the “Bank Error in Your Favor” card in Monopoly, he paid the money back!
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Buried Alive in Water: Leave No Marks; Suffer No Penalties
This article in today’s Washington Post distills into one and half pages a straight-to-the-point legal history of Waterboarding, and plainspoken descriptions of the actual physical experience. It is worth more than all the other obtuse, vacillating, shallowly researched, tongue-tied, contortedly circumspect coverage I have seen, all of it, combined. The author, Evan Wallach, is a…
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All Time’s the Wrong Time
[My boldface] Vetoing health care for children. President Bush explained: “[W]ith federal revenues at an all-time high and the deficit declining, now is not the time to raise taxes.” It goes without saying that when federal revenues are low and the deficit rising, that is also not the time. So it’s a lot like Iraq…
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Snack-Size Candy Bars
At this time of year, nutrition experts urge parents to remember that “snack-size” candy bars only that. There’s just not enough there in one bar for an entire meal.
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The eerily missing word
Even if you slept through most of Social Studies in high school, the word “Extraterritoriality” was almost impossible to avoid. It was going to be on the test. Yet, in the weeks since the mass slaughter by Blackwater in Baghdad, it has been absolutely eerie in its total absence from the news. It referred to…
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Set the terms of the debate
TechPresident, a project of Personal Democracy Forum (which I used to write for), in cooperation with the New York Times and MSNBC, has launched a site called 10 Questions where anyone can suggest a question for the presidential candidates and anyone can vote the suggested questions up or down. It’s a kind of more open…
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Do these people even read what they write?
This was in a letter from my credit-card company: “So that you have no surprises, know that your APR’s, fees and other terms can change at any time.” –I guess they mean no surprising surprises.
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Oakland for Obama?
Just got a call from an organizer named Barbara with the local Barack Obama for President campaign, telling me they are opening a new Northern California campaign office in downtown Oakland….