August 2010
63 posts
“The former Republican speaker of the House of Representatives [Mr Newt Gingrich]...”
– Oh snap.
This week’s Lexington column in The Economist argues that the campaign against the construction of the mosque at Ground Zero is both “unjust” and “dangerous.”
Did I mention Jason gave me a subscription to The Economist today? Yep. In case you needed more...
Gentle Wisdom
Having had my own fair share of broken hearts before so wonderfully crashing into this beautiful person I now share my life with, this reminded me of two things that stayed with me until today and hopefully forever.
I was in the back of a taxi with my mother, crying on her shoulder about yet another flawed affair and then laughing about my stupidity for not being able to just walk away from it....
1 tag
Gentle Psychopath.
You probably know him, or someone like him.
You may have stood on the sidelines, in complete disbelief, watching him do his thing with one of your friends. You may have been on the receiving end of his actions, for months, maybe years, floating on air and crashing down, intermittently. You may have waited a long time and then snapped out of it, or something may have happened, and all you were...
Spying: a Freelancer's Trade?
The Economist ran two weeks ago a story which suggests that spying has been dealt a near-fatal blow by technology: moving around inconspicuously behind fake documents, new credit cards and untraceable phone calls is now next to impossible, thanks (or because of) systematic fingerprinting, shadow analysis, billing records and, yes, the internet.
What now, it asks? Intelligence may have to rely...
“Gods? Plural? I mean I’m an atheist, but a monotheistic atheist.”
– Sarah Vowell, in conversation with Daniel Handler at the Herbst theater in San Francisco last April, recounts her bafflement whilst visiting the Mormon Temple in Salt Lake City. And how many of us can claim not to know what she means?
— From SF.
July 2010
54 posts
The dentures that saved the world
The son of Winston Churchill’s dentist is auctioning off the hero’s dentures, revealing a cunning detail of how Churchill coped with difficult situations:
“Churchill used to flick out his dentures when he was angry and throw them across the room,” said Mr Cudlipp.
“My father used to say he could tell how the war was going by how far they flew.”
—...
