Links With Your Coffee - Monday
- The Official Village Voice Election-Season Guide to the Right-Wing Blogosphere by Roy Edroso (This is today's must read)
- Open to the World
One may make a distinction between two types of novel: the self-enclosed and the open. The distinction is not absolute. Such things never are. Genre fiction may merge with what is called the literary novel, for instance. Still the categories I have in mind are useful, or at least interesting. By the self-enclosed novel, I mean one which makes no reference — or almost no reference — to anything beyond itself. It belongs to its age of course, but it does not appear to be set in time. Time naturally passes, as it must in a narrative, but there is no suggestion that events in the world of fact beyond the novel might impinge on its characters, influence their behaviour, or affect the course of their lives. The doors of the novel are closed against the winds of the world.
- Donald Hall: Deciding to become a poet(video)
- IN CONVERSATION . . . With Tobias Wolff Our Story Begins
- Interview with Tobias Wolff : Edward Champion’s Filthy HabitsAmazon Link to the book Our Story Begins
- denialism blog : Christian Apologists don't have enough faith
I don't normally blog on religion, but there has been an jump in foolish writing coming from the wacky end of the religious spectrum. On the top of the list are folks like Vox Day and Geisler and Turek (I Don't Have Enough FAITH to Be an ATHEIST). For some Christians, faith isn't enough, apparently---they want logic and science to be on their side. Apologists perform some crazy cognitive acrobatics to try to prove that their beliefs have some objective reality.
- Fight erupts in Jerusalem church The peace loving Christians are at it again.
- The Reading Experience: We Are Responsible for Errors It was true in 1968 and it's true today.
- A stupid book
Chris Hedges has a new book out, a really terrible book on the putative 'new' atheists. It's so stupid it's unreadable. This is a little surprising, since he was a foreign correspondent for the NY Times for several years, and even though the Times is not nearly as clever as it thinks it is, I would expect it to be above the kind of counter-factual drivel Hedges perpetrates in I Don't Believe in Atheists. Or would I. No on second thought maybe I wouldn't. Anyway the book is the kind of stupid that makes your jaw drop as you read.
- No Fortissimo? Symphony Told to Keep It Down - New York Times
- Senator McCain Digs In
- Language Log » Conjunctions and logical connectives
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Comments
A few things regarding the NYT and decibels:
Professional earplugs - the ones around $300, which are made from molds of each person's ears, work great, so the naysayers need to get over this.
Conductors should wear them at least during really loud rehearsal spots so that they don't damage their hearing so they don't ask the ensemble for too much sound.
(this is akin to blues musicians who keep turning up their monitors so they have to play louder to cover up the monitor, so they have to beef up the monitor volume again to hear it...cycle in to progressive hearing loss.
Posted by: gypsy sister
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April 21, 2008 11:48 AM
As for McCain, he's now adopted the GOP unstated maxim that slash and spend is oh so much better than tax and spend.
Don't get me started on his suggested approach to the gas tax!
Posted by: gypsy sister
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April 21, 2008 11:50 AM
Concerning Hedges' book: I haven't read this one, but I found his American Fascists to be intelligent, well-considered and -researched. Don't know about the pangloss bit cited by Butterflies and Wheels, but I've certainly read enough judgmentalism, defensiveness and conceit from atheists and agnostics on blogs to know that that part of human nature is not exclusive to theists. Atheists can be pricks, too, while espousing their beliefs. Hitchens, whom I find charming except when it comes to post-9/11 pontifications, is an excellent case in point. Dawkins has had his moments, too. Is this a surprise? It may or may not be a point of Hedges' book, but it surely can't be a surprise to anyone that those who agree with one are not, by virtue of that fact, exempt from standard human foibles.
Posted by: Phidippides
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April 21, 2008 1:29 PM
Re: Donald Hall, I always wanted to be a fly on the wall in his and Jane Kenyon's kitchen.
Posted by: Phidippides
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April 21, 2008 5:28 PM
Norm, i read the article about the right wing bloggers, somehow this led to the you the bloggers cook off. libertarian versus liberal.....
http://bloggingheads.tv/diavlogs/8745
Posted by: k | April 21, 2008 6:40 PM
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