Recent Blog Posts

  • Some random musings on “forever”

    When I lived in Denmark, a friend told me that no one there receives a prison sentence longer than fourteen years, regardless of their crime.  I’ve since learned that that’s not true, but the idea still baffles and appeals to me, and that has nothing to do with the specific number.  It’s because it suggests…

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  • If…

    …you don’t already read Hyperbole and a Half, what is wrong with you?  What are you doing here?  Just go.  Find a bit of hilarity there once or twice each month, or a whole lot at once if you decide, as I did, to go back and read all of the entries in one bout…

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  • Equality worth working for

    I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: “We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal.” The true meaning, mind you– not merely what is reflected in the law, but in how we see each other.  How…

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  • What basis for equality?

    Cross-posted from State of Formation. I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: “We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal.” The true meaning, mind you– not merely what is reflected in the law, but in how we…

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  • Wow

     That’s all I can say at the moment– just, wow.  From Casaubon’s Book, an excerpt from a post entitled “On Sentiment…And Against Sentimentality“:  Sentiment officially has no place in agriculture, but I’ve met precious few smaller farmers who don’t have a spot of it. Indeed, I’ve come to suspect that a sentimental attachment to things…

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  • Some thoughts on “opting out.”

    To return to a Michael Pollen note for a bit (sorry), I came across a section of Omnivore’s Dilemma today that devoted some discussion to “opting out.”  The context was home-schooling parents who also decide to buy their food from local farmers rather than from the grocery store, and Pollan described them as having “opted…

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