NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE SAN FRANCISCO CA
600 AM PDT WED JUL 18 2007
…UPDATE: 0.01 INCHES OF RAIN HAS BEEN OFFICIALLY RECORDED AT THE DOWNTOWN SAN FRANCISCO CLIMATE SITE SETTING A RECORD FOR THE DATE. A RECORD EVENT REPORT HAS ALREADY BEEN SENT.
Any blog named Pragmatos (including this one) must mark the passing of Richard Rorty.
I confess that I never found Rorty’s work all that congenial (I note that his Wikipedia entry has a reference to Henry, but not to William, James). Naetheless.
On NPR this morning there was a piece on the ten-year anniversary of the Grand Rapids flood (I come from that neck of the woods, down river from (which is to say north of) Grand Forks, Kittson County MN). The piece is upbeat; Grand Forks and East Grand Forks (on the Minnesota side of the [...]
Kurt Vonnegut, dead at 84.
I have had one heck of a good time. Listen: We are here on Earth to fart around. Don’t let anybody tell you any different!
So it goes.
Dahlia Lithwik in Slate:
No, the real concern here is that Goodling and her ilk somehow began to conflate God’s work with the president’s. Probably not a lesson she learned in law school. The dream of Regent and its counterparts, like Jerry Falwell’s Liberty University, is to redress perceived wrongs to Christians, to reclaim the [...]
Verily, we celebrate the memory of Righteous Jonathan. Through him we implore thee, O Lord, save our souls.
This Icon is by the hand of Nicholas Papas. You can have one of your very own.
Via Sister Juliann.
Courtesy of Kyril Bonfiglioli, who uses it a a chapter epigraph in Something Nasty in the Woodshed.
Yea, he is strong, thou say’st,
A mystery many-faced,
The wild beasts know him and the wild birds flee;
The blind night sees him, death
Shrinks beaten at his breath,
And his right hand is heavy on the sea:
We know he hath made us, [...]
Don’t Point That Thing At Me is the first book of Kyril Bonfiglioli’s Charlie Mortdecai trilogy (After You with the Pistol and Something Nasty in the Woodshed round it out). Don’t Point dates to 1972 (Bonfiglioli died in 1985), but the books and the author are new to me.
I stumbled on the audio version of [...]
Gar Lipow at Gristmill.
CyberTran: Ultra-light rail for cities and suburbs
CyberTran[1] is a form of mass transit suitable for most parts of the nation, from suburbs to the densest parts of Manhattan. It is not so much a new system as an overlooked one. The advantages:
It offers 24-hour availability.
Your journey [...]
Andrew Brown says:
The Helsinki Complaints Choir is one of the most magnificent productions of Finnish civilisation since Sibelius, or, just possibly, the Leningrad Cowboys.
A Prayer for War
O Lord our Father, our young patriots, idols of our hearts, go forth to battle - be Thou near them! With them, in spirit, we also go forth from the sweet peace of our beloved firesides to smite the foe.
O Lord our God, help us to tear their soldiers to bloody [...]
Bruce Schneier.
What the Terrorists Want
The point of terrorism is to cause terror, sometimes to further a political goal and sometimes out of sheer hatred. The people terrorists kill are not the targets; they are collateral damage. And blowing up planes, trains, markets or buses is not the goal; those are just tactics. The [...]
Beyond Belief: A Buddhist Critique of Christianity, by A. L. de Silva. The host (The Buddhist Society of Queensland) comments,
This is the electronic version of a Book printed in Sri Lanka. It is reproduced here to make its contents known more widely. The original book contains no mention of publisher or of a copyright notice. [...]
Neturei Karta
Neturei Karta oppose the so-called “State of Israel” not because it operates secularly, but because the entire concept of a sovereign Jewish state is contrary to Jewish Law.
All the great rabbis who in accordance with Jewish Law opposed Zionism at its inception did not do so merely due to consideration of the secular lifestyles [...]
…and the people shouted with a great shout,
that the wall fell down flat,
so that the people went up into the city,
every man straight before him,
and they took the city.
And they utterly destroyed all that was in the city,
both man and woman,
young and old,
and ox, and sheep, and ass,
with the edge of the sword.
–Joshua 6:20-21
Mark Morford, Windows Gives No Tongue:
Then, once more, it gives you that famous overpriced, overrated, overcooked leer. “C’mon, baby, let’s do it again,” Windows oozes. “This time it’ll be different, I promise.”
Via TNH
American Scientist Online: The Source of Europe’s Mild Climate :
If you grow up in England, as I did, a few items of unquestioned wisdom are passed down to you from the preceding generation. Along with stories of a plucky island race with a glorious past and the benefits of drinking unbelievable quantities of milky [...]
Interview With A Godless Conservative:
DarkSyde: You’re an atheist, what does that mean to you and why are you one?
Brent Rasmussen: It means that I am a human being in which god-belief is absent. Please notice the lack of the mention of an actual god (whatever that is). Atheists are folks in whom god-belief, of [...]
David Plotz, a self-described not-very-observant Jew, has lately been reading and blogging the Bible over at Slate.
Plotz’s latest installment, “Why Joseph is my hero”, treats the last few chapters of Genesis: Joseph in Egypt, Jacob’s death.
Please bear with me for a minute while I digress to tackle a strange subject: Egyptian public policy during the [...]
Freeman Dyson reviews Daniel Dennett’s Breaking the Spell: Religion as a Natural Phenomenon in the current NYRB. Wonderful stuff, as usual. Dyson concludes,
To end this review, I would like to introduce anothe recently published book, Kamikaze Diaries: Reflections of Japanese Student Soldiers, by Emiko Ohnuki-Tierney. This contains extensive extracts from diaries written by seven [...]