*The “transformer” joke in this post’s title, if it can be called a joke, came at the insistence of “spell check” in WordPress. From the LA Times, Sweden Poet Tomas Transtromer Awarded Nobel Prize in…
Date Archives October 2011
Punitive “withholding”: How NOT to Care About Health and Welfare
Jesus, in Matthew, chapter 25, seems a little mixed up, or maybe seems intent on confusing his listeners (that’s what parables a are for, right?)…but that for another post. I just wanted to pull out…
The Draft, the War at Home, and Occupy Wall Street
What do the demonstrations on Wall Street and those spreading across the country such as the one in Baltimore on Tuesday, praised and encouraged by the Baltimore Sun in an editorial with guts, and the…
Tony Bennett’s Barbarians of Profit Breach the Walls of Public Institutions
Yesterday the Bloomington Chamber of Commerce hosted a kind of dog and pony show they called an Education Forum that featured the salesmanship of one Tony Bennett (aka T.B. Sheets*), Indiana’s Minister of Public Deception. …
Stewart on al-Awlaki Assassination
It’s nice to have one’s point of view exonerated almost immediately after a contentious argument about said point of view (note the past three posts). I asked in “Idle Curriculum”, “What joke will Stewart make…
Leaning on Straws: Further Comments on Jon Stewart
Yesterday’s post that centered on Jon Stewart in the hopes of making a larger point about our inability to see just how we are “molded and mollified” by our systems of message conveyance instigated a…
A Dialogue on Jon Stewart and the Politics and Commerce of Comedy
A friend, Kenny Childers of Gentleman Caller renown, posted two words to his Facebook Wall yesterday morning: “Jon Stewart”. The comedian and political satirist was in Bloomington Friday night and Kenny had been in attendance….
An Idle Curriculum as Salvific
Update (in the body of the text) “What Can a Thoughtful Man Hope for Mankind on Earth, Given the Experience of the Past Million Years?” Vonnegut’s fictional holy man Bokonon asks in the “14th Book…
The First Amendment Renamed the Gallows Doctrine
An unsound system requires as accurate a description and as severe an analysis as a sound one;…Error is not disarmed or disenchanted by caricature or neglect. (Frothingham, O. B., “Transendentalism in New England: A History”,…