Some years ago, as a gift, my grandmother (Boop) gave me a book of family recipes that she had gathered, and which, as these were not overly numerous, she had complemented with a number of…
Browsing Category Society/Culture
The Abject Failure of Humanity’s “Promise”
In Salon there is this horrifying little piece (“Let’s Watch a Murder“) regarding the popularity of reality horror-porn. Here’s how it begins: The YouTube video shows Robert, a 28-year-old from Dayton, Ohio, grimace and light…
“Choice!” The Mindless Battle Cry of the Addicted
In a local newspaper opinion piece today the editors cry “Choice!” regarding the proposal by New York Mayor Bloomberg which seeks to ban the sale of toxic liquids in containers over 16 0z to human…
The Clarity of Thinking in Motion
I’ve been pondering trying to offer something more thorough on walking and thinking (and talking and thinking, but that for another time) and had imagined we have yet to improve on Aristotle’s method of philosophizing…
Indolence! Undercutting the Cult of Mammon
A recent report on Inequality in America from Stanford details the extent of the wealth disparities. Salon has a brief post on it (United States of Inequality) offering this example of the self-perpetuation of winners…
I placed a jarhead in afghanistan
In Stevens’ poem “Anecdote of the Jar” we are given a figuration of the way mind creates order but further of the way mind allows the rules of order to imprison our perception and limit…
What Manner of Creature Be This?
The Errant has frequently offered for your edification detailed reports on the fraudulent nature of the corporate reforms in “education.” I do not plan on writing anymore about this, though will still encourage our stalwart…
The Money Virtue As American Rational Religion
The most virtuous and honest character in Dickens’ Hard Times, Stephen Blackpool, often confronts the confusion, ambiguity, paradox, and unfairness of “interests” with an aggrieved and exasperated cry that “it’s all such a muddle.” Even…
Clausewitz On the Modern Condition
So, don’t ask me why, but I fell into Clausewitz this morning. From the Ubiquipedia: Carl von Clausewitz was a Prussian soldier and military theorist who stressed the moral (in modern terms, “psychological”) and political…
The Child of the Marketplace Metaphor
Since the Puritans of Massachusetts Bay, organized in covenants as a joint stock company, imagined themselves a mystic brotherhood reborn in the body of Christ, American history has progressed under the sway of two, conflicting…