the art of writing is discovering what you believe
We had a class picnic the other night and I made chili: it was a huge hit, more based on the fact it was warm(ing) on a cool fall evening.
We had a class picnic the other night and I made chili: it was a huge hit, more based on the fact it was warm(ing) on a cool fall evening. It was very good, all the same: an empty pot is a good sign. It has the added benefit of being easy to make and as it’s meatless, pretty good for you.
Continue reading “it’s chili season”
Thanks to some contested ballots in a state governed by the president’s brother, a once-proud country has been delivered into the hands of liars, thugs, bullies, fanatics and thieves. The world pities or despises us, even as it fears us. What this election will test is the power of money and media to fool us, to obscure the truth and alter the obvious, to hide a great crime against the public trust under a blood-soaked flag.
This ties in well with the NYTimes piece by Ron Suskind: there’s a mistrust, bordering on hatred, from the heartland for the skeptics who live on the coasts (yes, I know these are generalizations but they’re not completely meaningless).
Crowther/With Trembling Fingers:
I don’t think it’s accurate to describe America as polarized between Democrats and Republicans, or between liberals and conservatives. It’s polarized between the people who believe George Bush and the people who do not.
[via]
The New York Times > Magazine > Without a Doubt:”We’re an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you’re studying that reality — judiciously, as you will — we’ll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that’s how things will sort out.
By (the president’s) faith are we to be saved . . . .
The New York Times > Magazine > Without a Doubt:
“When I was first with Bush in Austin, what I saw was a self-help Methodist, very open, seeking,” Wallis says now. “What I started to see at this point was the man that would emerge over the next year — a messianic American Calvinist. He doesn’t want to hear from anyone who doubts him.”
An interesting overview of the making of the president, how he turned his back on the weakness of introspection and deliberation and embraced certainty.
No great deed, private or public, had ever been undertaken in a bliss of certainty.
Leon Wieseltier, in The New Republic
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Bin Laden is in China: The capture of Bin Laden would virtually guarantee the reelection of George Bush Jr., as it would confirm to the millions of undecided voters of the U.S. that the war against terrorism was judstified after Bin Laden had authorized the attacks of 9/11 against New York and Washington…. He added that only a small number of “members of very high rank†in the Bush administration knew about the plan to “seize Bin Laden in exchange for a special relationship with China.â€
The capture of Bin Laden would virtually guarantee the reelection of George Bush Jr., as it would confirm to the millions of undecided voters of the U.S. that the war against terrorism was judstified after Bin Laden had authorized the attacks of 9/11 against New York and Washington.
“A new administration Bush would present China as its great new ally in the war against terrorism. China would enjoy in Washington the status of a most favored nation with all of its facets. Contracts worth hundreds of millions of dollars would be approved by fast track. The history of human rights violations in China would be ignored,” confirmed last week a high-level representative of the Pentagon. He added that only a small number of “members of very high rank” in the Bush administration knew about the plan to “seize Bin Laden in exchange for a special relationship with China.” With almost certainty, among them would be the vice-president, Dick Cheney, and the defense secretary, Donald Rumsfeld.
Original here.
So is this the reason why Bush won’t have bilateral talks with N. Korea, with his insistence that China stay in the loop? He needs China to play ball with him and he’s willing to do a deal with them to ensure his re-election?
George Bush Bulges:Does Bush have a device under his Jacket?… You be the judge.
Does Bush have a device under his Jacket? Is it an earpiece/transmitter? You be the judge.
A slideshow of images purporting to show either shoddy tailoring or a seekrit device under the president’s jacket.
Julie Leung: Seedlings & Sprouts: A few notes on products and services:Microsoft’s Robert Scoble took it in the teeth with grace and curiousity: he responded to someone’s complaint that your products suck by listening and taking notes…. Scobleizer: Microsoft Geek Blogger:I tell that story because for the past two weeks I’ve gotten quite a few people to tell me just how our products (or our company) suck.
Julie Leung: Seedlings & Sprouts: A few notes on products and services:
Microsoft’s Robert Scoble took it in the teeth with grace and curiousity: he responded to someone’s complaint that your products suck by listening and taking notes. He asked in return How do they suck? Wow!
Jeez, you’d think he would know . . . don’t they run Windows over there?
Scobleizer: Microsoft Geek Blogger:
I tell that story because for the past two weeks I’ve gotten quite a few people to tell me just how our products (or our company) suck. The thing is, there’s a group of us at Microsoft who are tired of being told this and who are going to turn around the world’s perception of the products we build. This group is growing in size.
I feel like I’m heaping scorn on the guy, but come on, two weeks he’s been hearing this? I’m still fond of my description that “using Windows in a multidisciplinary way was like driving nails with your bare hands—bloody, painful, and unproductive” from somewhat more than two weeks back.
Seriously, if they wanted to sit down with users of all types — the hunt and peck typists to the power users — and really watch them work and then sat down with the opinion leaders who care about stuff like DRM and users owning their own data, Scoble’s dream might be taken seriously. He’s well-liked, widely-quoted/cited but does that translate to results?
This post from Jason Kottke might put this into perspective. It doesn’t have to be a comparison between Apple and MSFT but hey, that’s how Scoble’s piece opens: he sees Apple as his competition, but I’m not sure Apple, ie Steve Jobs, sees it the same way. He’s pursuing an ideal, while his imitators are chasing him.
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Rhetoric is hollow, mere tinkling brass, without health care, health insurance, jobs, child care, and a living wage. Pro-life in deed, not merely in word, means we need policies that provide jobs and health insurance and support for prospective mothers.
Economic policy and abortion are not separate issues; they form one moral imperative. Rhetoric is hollow, mere tinkling brass, without health care, health insurance, jobs, child care, and a living wage. Pro-life in deed, not merely in word, means we need policies that provide jobs and health insurance and support for prospective mothers.
The author researches the abortion rate for the past 20+ years and finds a “counter-intuitive, disturbing” result: abortion rates dropped during the 1990s, most during the latter half of the decade. Enter George W. Bush and a resulting 52,000 abortions that would not have occurred, had the downward trend continued.
The author points to three factors but they all tie back to one issue:
* 2/3rd of women terminated their pregnancies because they could not afford the child. “Not since Hoover had there been a net loss of jobs during a presidency until the current administration. Average real incomes decreased, and for seven years the minimum wage has not been raised to match inflation. With less income, many prospective mothers fear another mouth to feed.”
* Half of all women who abort say they lack a reliable mate. “In the 16 states overall, there were 16,392 fewer marriages than the year before, and 7,869 more abortions. As male unemployment increases, marriages fall and abortion rises.”
* Women worry about healthcare for themselves and their children. “Since 5.2 million more people have no health insurance now than before this presidency – with women of childbearing age overrepresented in those 5.2 million – abortion increases.”
This all comes down to the economic policies we’ve seen since 2000: it’s hard to claim we value children and families with statistics — and the stories to back them up — like these.
What’s more, though you may find you can write with just short words for a while, in the end don’t you have to give in and reach for one of those terms which, like it or not, is made up of bits, more bits and yet more bits, and that adds up to a word which is long?Then there is the ban on new words, or at least a puff for the old…. Yet soon they grew to be grunts with a gist, and time has shown that, add to the length of your words as you may, it is hard to beat a good grunt with a good gist.That is why the short words, when old, are still the tops.
From The Economist print edition
Eschew ornate verbiage . . .
“Short words are best”, said Winston Churchill, “and old words when short are the best of all”
AND, not for the first time, he was right: short words are best. Plain they may be, but that is their strength. They are clear, sharp and to the point. You can get your tongue round them. You can spell them. Eye, brain and mouth work as one to greet them as friends, not foes. For that is what they are. They do all that you want of them, and they do it well. On a good day, when all is right with the world, they are one more cause for cheer. On a bad day, when the head aches, you can get to grips with them, grasp their drift and take hold of what they mean. And thus they make you want to read on, not turn the page.
Yes, yes, you may say, that all sounds fine. But from time to time good prose needs a change of pace—a burst of speed, a touch of the brake, a slow swoop, a spring, a bound, a stop. Some might say a shaft of light and then a dim glow, some warp as well as weft, both fire and ice, a roll on the drum as much as a toot on the flute. Call it what you will. The point is that to get a range of step, stride and gait means you have to use some long words, some short and some, well, just run of the mill, those whose place is in the mid range. What’s more, though you may find you can write with just short words for a while, in the end don’t you have to give in and reach for one of those terms which, like it or not, is made up of bits, more bits and yet more bits, and that adds up to a word which is long?
Then there is the ban on new words, or at least a puff for the old. Why? Time has moved on. The tongues of yore need help if they are to serve the way we live now. And, come to that, are you sure that the Greeks and Gauls and scribes of Rome were as great as they are cracked up to be? Singe my white head, they could make long words as well as any Hun or Yank or French homme de lettres who plies his trade these days.
Well, yes, some of those old folks’ words were on the long side, but long ones were by no means the rule. And though the tongue in which you read this stole words from here and there, and still does, at the start, if there was one, its words were short. Huh, you may say, those first “words” were no more than grunts. Yet soon they grew to be grunts with a gist, and time has shown that, add to the length of your words as you may, it is hard to beat a good grunt with a good gist.
That is why the short words, when old, are still the tops. Tough as boots or soft as silk, sharp as steel or blunt as toast, there are old, short words to fit each need. You want to make love, have a chat, ask the way, thank your stars, curse your luck or swear, scold and rail? Just pluck an old, short word at will. If you doubt that you will find the one you seek, look at what can be done with not much: “To be or not to be?” “And God said, Let there be light; and there was light,” “We are such stuff as dreams are made on,” “The year’s at the spring/And day’s at the morn…/The lark’s on the wing;/The snail’s on the thorn.”
It can be done, you see. If you but try, you can write well, and say what you want to say, with short words. And you may not need a lot of them: some words add just length to your prose. That piece of string, the one whose length you all the time have to guess, is no less fine if it is short than if it is long; on its own, its length is not good, not bad, just the sum of its two halves. So it is with words. The worth of each lies in the ends to which it is put. Tie your string well, or ill, and its length counts for naught. Make your point well with short words, and you will have no use for long ones. Make it not so well, and you will be glad that you kept them crisp. So, by God, will those who have to read you.
Osama: important or not?
Amazon.com: Books: Lanark: A Life in 4 Books (Harvest Book):Have I mentioned how much I think my local library rocks? I was looking for the above named book and the library didn’t own a copy (gasp!
Amazon.com: Books: Lanark: A Life in 4 Books (Harvest Book)
Have I mentioned how much I think my local library rocks? I was looking for the above-named book and the library didn’t own a copy (gasp! one of the 99 best novels of all time?). So I made a purchase request a couple of weeks ago and was notified this morning that it’s waiting for me.
