"Has it occurred to you that the lust for certainty may be a sin?"

--John Habgood, then-Archbishop of York

From Patrick Nielsen Hayden:
The Motion Picture Association of America, chief sponsor and financier of SOPA and PIPA, addresses Wikipedia, Reddit, and other major sites going dark tomorrow, accusing them of “abuse of power.” “It’s a dangerous and troubling development when the platforms that serve as gateways to information intentionally skew the ( Read more... )

Isn't it the moment of most profound doubt that gives birth to new certainties? Perhaps hopelessness is the very soil that nourishes human hope; perhaps one could never find sense in life without first experiencing its absurdity.

--attributed to Václav Havel

"Think of the Hebrew word for question, she'elah," he [Elie Wiesel] continued. "There is ( Read more... )

There seems to be some reason to quote this every other week and a quick search for it in my own journal didn't turn it up, so it's about time for me to post this passage here.

I am a democrat because I believe that no man or group of men is good enough to be trusted with uncontrolled power over others. And the higher the pretensions of such ( Read more... )

Leaked: US government strategy to prevent leaks.

Also in U.S. news: We have snow in 49 states including Hawaii. Today, Florida is feeling left out. (Link via yasminke.)

In more serious weather news: You can donate to the flood relief appeal here.

Unrelated to current news: After I'd finished reading Why We Read What We Read, I looked around on the ( Read more... )

From a TechCrunch piece entitled "Can Anything Stop The Facebook Juggernaut?":
As usual, William Gibson put it best: “Facebook feels like a mall. Twitter feels like the street.” (Which I suppose makes Zynga the mall’s arcade.) It’s one thing to shop there occasionally, but quite another to be a full-fledged mallrat-and according to the stats, that’ ( Read more... )

Because I've been reminded of this by recent discussions in other journals (especially nellorat's), here's Dorothy L. Sayers, from her 1941 book Mind of the Maker, in the "Problem Picture" chapter (in which she is discussing both theology and detective stories):

2. The detective problem is completely soluble: no loose ends or unsatisfactory enigmas are ( Read more... )

Best description I've seen so far, in an entry with some fun photos:

The landscape passed Thomas Kinkade levels of threat quite a while ago and is now well in to what can only be described as Seussian.

Fear is the junk food of the soul, while love languishes in the vegetable aisle. One's easy to sell and quickly consumed, while the other actually nourishes you. To a grocer who's just interested in selling anything to keep the store ticking over, putting the junk food out front is the obvious move.

--Kit Whitfield, in a comment on this page(Note ( Read more... )

There are no exact guidelines. There are probably no guidelines at all. The only thing I can recommend at this stage is a sense of humor, an ability to see things in their ridiculous and absurd dimensions, to laugh at others and at ourselves, a sense of irony regarding everything that calls out for parody in this world. In other words, I can only ( Read more... )