New York Magazine (NSFW if you read out loud) has a good rundown. Literally. You have got to see the magazine cover — which, actually, has it wrong.
Spitzer’s Folly was absolutely not about that thing. The article actually makes this pretty clear.
Archive for the ‘Homo sapiens’ Category
Der Spitz, post mortem
Posted by Ron Coleman on March 19, 2008
Posted in Homo sapiens, Politics and Poker | Leave a Comment »
Holocaustism idiocy
Posted by Ron Coleman on March 14, 2008
“Ala. building can’t shake swastika shape”
From the ground, the Wesley Acres Methodist retirement home looks like any other building. But fly over in an airplane, and the outline is unmistakable: It’s one big swastika.
Prompted by complaints from a Jewish activist, the agency that owns the government-funded building is planning to alter its shape to disguise the Nazi symbol.
This is the most idiotic thing I have read in a while, and I do a lot of reading for someone who still moves his lips on the big words.
This is what a “Jewish activist” has to be “active” about? An efficiently designed building that invokes his or her superstitious emotions when viewed from the sky?!
Good things the Jews don’t have any real problems.
Posted in Americana, Homo sapiens, Sisyphus | 5 Comments »
Hall of shame
Posted by Ron Coleman on March 11, 2008
Right Wing News has a collection of “Pics From Past ‘Press Conferences Of Shame.'”
Obviously, what’s really notable here is that these political wives, so accustomed to acting as props for their candidate / incumbent husbands, zombily trot themselves out for the highest-intensity humiliation that frankly could be imagined for a woman.
That is the only explanation for why these women do this. It’s hardly good enough.
And the egotism in the man who would demand, or even request — or even permit! — his wife to accompany him at such a moment is incomprehensible… even to me.
Yet so is the makeup of a man or woman who can run for political office in any but a local election. Constantly talking about yourself. Printing bumper stickers, posters, buttons with your name on them. This will distort anyone’s judgment.
This will make almost anyone, it seems, think he can get away with anything.
UPDATE: Her story.
UPDATE SQUARED: Instapundit:
Comparing Eliot Spitzer and Bill Clinton. “I know there are distinctions, but what are the morally and legally relevant ones? Here is one: Many people believe that prostitution should be legal; no one believes that perjury should be legal. . . . But this much is certainly true. Spitzer is a hundred times more of a hypocrite than Clinton.”
In conversation I have made the same point. If you telescope the timing on the perjury piece, the cases are perfectly comparable, and if Clinton did not leave, I am not clear why Spitzer should. But perhaps the higher level of hypocrisy makes him more insufferable politically — to his own party.
UPDATE CUBED: Ah yes. The high hypocrisy card has now been dealt. This degree of it, I had not known.
Posted in Heart and spirit, Homo sapiens, Politics and Poker | 5 Comments »
Der Spitz
Posted by Ron Coleman on March 10, 2008
Overlawyered: perhaps the place to go for snark, fun and learned commentary on the story of the day!
UPDATE: Oh yeah, we did deal a little with this topic, here, after all.
Posted in Blogophilia, Homo sapiens, Jocularity | Leave a Comment »
Blogging While Female
Posted by Ron Coleman on March 4, 2008
Naturally I can’t deny it: I’ve used raw animal magnetism to get to this prominent spot on the blogging heap. For me, it’s all I’ve got; and if you had what I do, you’d use it too.
But it’s different for girls. John Hawkins has just published a piece at Right Wing News in which he interviewed conservative bloggers Michelle Malkin, Amanda Carpenter, Pamela Geller, Ericka Anderson, and Rachel Lucas about gender issues and the blogosphere. The staggering level of abuse aimed at some of these women is grisly.
Posted in Blogophilia, Homo sapiens | 17 Comments »
Hopeless!
Posted by Ron Coleman on February 26, 2008
Jonathan Rogers links to a story that pretty much puts the lie to diet soda.
Posted in Homo sapiens, Scientificus | Leave a Comment »
Diagnosis
Posted by Ron Coleman on February 24, 2008
Lisa Sanders in the New York Times:
“[T]he very hardest kind of diagnosis — an unusual presentation of an unusual disease.”
This is a fascinating article about the workings of great medical minds and technology in our time.
Posted in Homo sapiens, Nuvo-Techno, Scientificus | Leave a Comment »
It’s all about me
Posted by Ron Coleman on February 12, 2008
The New York Times reports on what everyone in the business of persuasion, such as people who try cases before juries, already knows: The more you can make yourself come across to the people you are trying to persuade as one of them, the more open they will be to your message. The article discusses the extent to which actual, but subtle, mimicry is the key to persuasion.
Naturally this is easier to do if you’re a salesman, who interacts directly with his potential customer, than if you are trial lawyer. Jurors can’t talk to us during a trial, so we have to pick up other cues to figure out who they are. The idea is not to distort the message or to mislead, but rather to find that frequency at which other human beings are most likely to be receptive to what you have to say.
You still have to have a good case. But if you don’t, you shouldn’t be anywhere near the jury, anyway.
Posted in Homo sapiens, Scientificus, Stragety | 3 Comments »
Individualism versus individuality
Posted by Ron Coleman on January 22, 2008
Over in the discussion at another blog I am having trouble getting some people to recognize that the distinction between individualism and individuality is more than semantic. I am adapting from my comments there to raise the issue here.
Is “individualism” a desideratum at all? I think perhaps it is not. Now, individuality is a fact and is something to be embraced. But individualism is primarily defined thus: “Belief in the primary importance of the individual and in the virtues of self-reliance and personal independence.” That is: Assertion of the primary importance of the individual is primary.
There are many paths to living a meaningful life (which is not to say that there is infinite number of paths). Individuality is unique to humans, and God surely must expect us to utilize it in our lives — individuality, that is — but not to make individual expression the purpose of our lives, which is individualism, a sort of narcissism.
Posted in Faith and Works, Heart and spirit, Homo sapiens | 3 Comments »
Middle aged madness
Posted by Ron Coleman on January 15, 2008
The New York Times has an article questioning the application of the term “midlife crisis” to excuse philandering males:
[Y]ou have to admit that “I’m having a midlife crisis” sounds a lot better than “I’m a narcissistic jerk having a meltdown.”Another patient, a 49-year-old man at the pinnacle of his legal career, started an affair with an office colleague. “I love my wife,” he said, “and I don’t know what possessed me.”
It didn’t take long to find out. The first five years of his marriage were exciting. “It was like we were dating all the time,” he recalled wistfully. But once they had a child, he felt an unwelcome sense of drudgery and responsibility creep into his life.
Being middle-aged had nothing to do with his predicament; it was just that it took him 49 years to reach a situation where he had to seriously take account of someone else’s needs, namely those of his baby son. In all likelihood, the same thing would have happened if he had become a father at 25.
Why do we have to label a common reaction of the male species to one of life’s challenges — the boredom of the routine — as a crisis? True, men are generally more novelty-seeking than women, but they certainly can decide what they do with their impulses.
It’s true, that, but it really only begs the question. The article seems to be based on a premise, not exactly spoken out, that people who refer to midlife crisis mean to excuse immoral behavior. I have never gotten the impression that this is how people use the term, however.
I think they are just talking about a real phenomenon that the psychologist who wrote this article acknowledges exists: Men reach a point where they face a different set of feelings and choices from those they have faced before, typically in middle age. They then choose either to resist the bad choices or they don’t.
This is midlife crisis. For people who never confronted such a moment in their lives — where things they thought made them happy, no longer do; or where drives they thought were quiescent or that they never even knew they had, resurface or are born — this is already a sort of crisis. And if they don’t behave, why, they will then turn this crisis of the spirit into a crisis greater still. It is possible also to take this moment to build on what one has.
That remains, always, the choice.
Now, I am only in my early 40’s (for two more months!) — so this cannot be about me. What do you think a blogger like me is, anyway — a narcissist?
Posted in Heart and spirit, Homo sapiens | 30 Comments »
