-
Goodbye LiveJournal
Consider biasedbulldog.livejournal.com forever dead. I am leaving it up as an archive, essentially, but this will be my last post ever.
I've moved. Please do follow me at the new location. -
Budapest Coffeehouses, 1900
In Budapest "every intelligent person had spent a part of his youth in the coffeehouse . . . without that, the education of a young man would be imperfect and incomplete." -Jenõ Rákosi, 1926.
And, of course, John Lukacs:
In the history of Budapest the part played by coffee may have had more in common with the practice of Mediterranean countries than ( Read more... ) -
Come now, let us reason together
Jesus' demands always seem a little more than reasonable. Honestly, if he wasn't the Son of God, he was a little unhinged. And not exactly in a "Jesus the Original Gangsta" kind of way. More in a "You've got to be kidding" kind of way.
If you just get angry with your brother, you've murdered him. If you lust after a woman, you've committed adultery ( Read more... ) -
The New Pornographers
I've been listening to gobs of the New Pornographers the last month in anticipation of the upcoming Tucson show in eight days. The tour is, interestingly, skipping over Phoenix in lieu of Tucson.
And can I say that this band is just fantastic?
I started out by listening to the new album (Together). It's quite good. I actually think my favorite song ( Read more... ) -
Summer heat, a truck, music, and books
June is brutal. Temperatures hit 90's in the mid-morning and are up around 105º by the afternoon. The heat in a parking lot is astonishing. It has been monsoon season for a few weeks, technically speaking. There will not be any serious rain or storms until mid-July. In the late afternoon it clouds over as though about to rain, but it never does. ( Read more... ) -
Some Albums from 2010 (so far)
Jack Hittinger-journalist, sportswriter, and Sad Bear-and I have put together a list of fifteen albums we've been listening to this year. More specifically: five from me, five from him, and five from both of us. It's not actually a "best of"-more like a non-comprehensive list of what we've listened to. Please go check it out at the Sad Bear blog ( Read more... ) -
Mos Def
"Hip Hop" by Mos Def with Hypnotic Brass Ensemble (a pre-performance run-through... check out the album version too).
My favorite rapper, one of the most intelligent people in music, a very talented lyricist. I've been listening to him again lately because of his guest appearances on the new albums by Gorillaz and the Roots. He's also a very ( Read more... ) -
The Case for Asking Better Questions
A rule of thumb in the study of history is that you usually find what you're looking for, and the questions you ask largely define the answers you get. I like the basic conclusion of Bryan Caplan's essay in the Wall Street Journal ("The Case for Having More Kids"). It's Caplan's basic premise that disturbs me.
Caplan is an economist at George ( Read more... ) -
"Texico Bitches" by Broken Social Scene
On Fallon June 15. Better than the album version, I say. If you want to hear the second song, "Meet Me in the Basement," that's here.
-
"Knowing the Future by Studying the Past"
That is the somewhat misleading motto of Delta Pi Ni, the American Studies Honorary at Hillsdale College, though in a different context it could also have come out of Glenn Beck's mouth. Of course, there are different ways of saying-or acting upon-that statement. One can mean, as I believe the DPN statement implies, that to have any idea about ( Read more... )
Click to view