OK, this is one of the funniest trademark posts I’ve done in, like, days.
But, warning: If you’re much under 40, don’t bother clicking.
Hail, yes!
Posted by Ron Coleman on February 13, 2008
Posted in Blogophilia, Jocularity | Leave a Comment »
Sid, vicious
Posted by Ron Coleman on February 12, 2008
Is there really such a thing as an “off the record” email?!
Not even a little bit.
Posted in Medialites, Politics and Poker | Leave a Comment »
The long list
Posted by Ron Coleman on February 12, 2008
Right Wing News considers pretty much everyone you could possibly consider as a possible vice presidential candidate on the McCain ticket, and quite a few people you can hardly believe anyone would think of!
Posted in Politics and Poker | 1 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 »
Do they have this on cable?
Posted by Ron Coleman on February 12, 2008
Exit Zero brings us the Jew-eating rabbit.
Posted in Orient | 3 Comments »
Can love be commanded?
Posted by Ron Coleman on February 10, 2008
God, in fact, does command us to love — to love Him, to love our fellow, to love the proselyte.
This is an extraordinary challenge to our modern, democratic emotions, no?
So, how exactly does that work? Avakesh explains.
Posted in Faith and Works, Heart and spirit | 1 Comment »
Now, that’s terrorism!
Posted by Ron Coleman on February 10, 2008
WELL, DUH: Poll finds plummeting support for the Taliban, Osama bin Laden. Generally, once they start blowing up fellow-Muslims, their support plummets. And whatever else you say about the Bush Administration’s strategy, it seems almost as if it were tailor-made to produce this result.
Actually a rather hoary story, at this point, though yes, the opposition will not admit it. I just keep asking, though: What do we have to do get them to disapprove of blowing up the rest of us?
Posted in Orient, Sisyphus | 2 Comments »
What are you working with, and why?
Posted by Ron Coleman on February 10, 2008
My thoughts this morning on a Jewish religious discussion blog — 
sometimes I think of something original, or an original way to put it, and I think I hit on something today:
It is much easier to dedicate oneself to [spiritual / social religious goals] when working from a position of “strength” in terms of the [good fortune] and [blessings] that one is working with in life. God forbid a person who comes into the world with superior endowments — and these can take many, many forms of course — judges another person without realizing what [burden] that other one is carrying.
On the other hand, I think, woe to him who does have “everything” — and this, too, can be something very different from what an adolescent might consider a “fantasy life”; quite a little thing could, for the right person, be “everything” — and squanders the chance to be what he can be. The shadow of wasted potential hovers over so many of us, including those of us who can do just a little for someone else to give them, perhaps, the “everything” they have only ever needed…
One of my burdens in this life is a lack of humility. I kept going back and reading this today, like Narcissus in his mirror. Frankly I could have broken out the syntax a little more artfully; it is not the prettiest thing I have written in the last week.
But I really do think I hit on something here.
There is something thing worse than your own wasted potential which, after all, can take tremendous efforts to overcome. It is standing by watching someone else spin his wheels, and you can, with very little effort, help him out of the ditch. Your friend’s beast collapses under its burden? Surely you will help him raise it. This a moral obligation.
That I believe this, of course, is the reason I am not a libertarian, or anything like it.
Are these sentiments merely a sop for my own guilt over my natural, and unseemly, self-regard? Perhaps — but whatever it takes. Whatever it takes to make you feel it. Whatever it takes. As I said, that is the burden I have to bear, and that’s what I choose to make of it, and of myself.
Posted in Heart and spirit | 4 Comments »
Wither the GOP?
Posted by Ron Coleman on February 10, 2008
Everyone has his opinion — why shouldn’t I?
I peddle mine over at Right Wing News.
Posted in Politics and Poker | Leave a Comment »
The choices people make…
Posted by Ron Coleman on February 10, 2008
Posted in Heart and spirit | Leave a Comment »
