Well, little G is coming to the big D, and he’ll be spitting distance from SMU. He and his lady are moving into 10141 DARIA PL in Preston Hollow. The property goes for a little over two million, making it a veritable shack for the neighborhood. The rumour is that they are having a tire swing installed in the front yard, something dubya has wanted since he was a boy.
Just got this video forwarded from my friend and economic badger Saltuk Ozerturk. Peter Schiff, against laughter and ridicule, correctly analyzes our economic plight and for the right reasons–two years ago. It’s a lesson, I think, in sticking with the fundamentals and not being cowed by mockery when you know what you are saying. Makes Fox News once again look awful.
Today was animal rights day in my intro class. It was probably the preachiest I’ve been all year. (Next class, though, is Famine, Affluence and Morality. That’ll take the cake.) I refrained from forcing them to sit through Meet your Meat, so I’ve decided to post it here.
If you eat factory farm meat, which if you eat meat you probably do, I’d suggest giving this a look.
I would feel remiss if I went without mentioning the passing of writer David Foster Wallace who ended his own life one week ago today. When I was an undergrad at Iowa, my friends and I treasured his collection Girl with Curious Hair, and when Infinite Jest came out, we were the first ones lined up at Prairie Lights to claim our copies. (I recall, actually, taking back my copy because I was unhappy with the glue job on the binding. I wanted it to be that perfect.) In recent years, I admit to have fallen off the bandwagon, but a good friend of mine has written a reminiscence for the Observer UK that has brought it all back to me. (Look for Joshua Ferris’ piece in the next day or so.)
We saw in DFW a DeLillo for our generation. He was the first guy anywhere close to our age who began to point in a new direction. I can’t say for sure, but my guess is that without him, we would have no Dave Eggers, no McSweeney’s , and for all its differences from the DFW style we might not have The Corrections. For all his genius, though, it’s my opinion that Wallace never really reached the true zenith of his talent–not because of his lack of accomplishment, but because his every line was so roaring with energy and potential that expectations were impossibly high. One wonders whether or not Wallace felt the same.
I recall something DFW said to Josh in 96. He said he felt like everyone he knew was sad–that sadness seemed to be a sort of earmark of his generation. (My own words.) The odd thing was, he didn’t seem sad. He was pleasant, funny, and despite some awkwardness he seemed pretty comfortable in his own skin. (I get most of this from his reading in IC–my own contact amounted to little more than asking him to sign my books.) His prose was electric–how could he be sad? But really, it is impossible to read his work now without seeing it.
We’ve really lost someone great. My heart goes out to his family, because they have obviously lost the most. But all of us have lost something as well, perhaps more than we’ll ever know.
The New York Times reported on Thursday that in Harrold, Texas the schoolboard has approved a motion to allow teachers to carry concealed handguns at school. The idea, apparently, is that this will help prevent a massacre by discontented students.
This is a really dumb idea, for several reasons.
1. This makes teachers an easy source for a weapon. These people are not trained to fend off attackers. If someone wants to shoot students and teachers in the school, now they don’t have to prepare by planning and purchasing a gun–they can, in the heat of the moment, overpower a teacher, take his/her weapon, and have at it. Criminals who cannot purchase guns but want to go out in a bang can do the same thing.
2. Teachers can go crazy too, and as mentioned above, this allows the heat of the moment to become a factor.
3. Misplaced weapons. One mistake, and a kid has a gun in his/her hands. No matter how careful you are, over a period of years, carelessness will happen.
There are more reasons, but it seems to me that these three simple points should be persuasive to people on both sides of the gun control fence.
If you really want a gun in your school,if you really think the students are such a threat, hire a cop who is trained to handle himself in tough situations.
Ok, so I’m basically a piscatarian, so I’m not causing lots of pain when I eat. So, I’m morally good, right? And don’t give me the vegan line, cause I ain’t buying it.
Well, it’s been gnawing at me (turnabout’s fair play, after all): overfishing and the destruction of marinestuffs. I’m not about to stop eating fish, but a helpful article at foodluvin gives a list–and links to other lists–and explanations for which fish are “sustainable” and therefore moral pangless. I’m not sure I can follow it to the T, but it’s good to be aware.
Thanks to the panicky reactions of University of Texas professor Denise Spellberg, outrage about a novel depicting the life of Mohammed’s child bride Aisha has led Random House to nix its publication. I’m so pleased to see that Texas can now claim to be home to idiotic religious zealots of more than one stripe.
As reported in the Wall Street Journal today, Spellberg was asked to read the book for a possible endorsement. But:
But Ms. Spellberg wasn’t a fan of Ms. Jones’s book. On
April 30, Shahed Amanullah, a guest lecturer in Ms. Spellberg’s classes
and the editor of a popular Muslim Web site, got a frantic call from
her. “She was upset,” Mr. Amanullah recalls. He says Ms. Spellberg told
him the novel “made fun of Muslims and their history,” and asked him to
warn Muslims.
In an interview, Ms. Spellberg told me the novel is a
“very ugly, stupid piece of work.” The novel, for example, includes a
scene on the night when Muhammad consummated his marriage with Aisha:
“the pain of consummation soon melted away. Muhammad was so gentle. I
hardly felt the scorpion’s sting. To be in his arms, skin to skin, was
the bliss I had longed for all my life.” Says Ms. Spellberg: “I walked
through a metal detector to see ‘Last Temptation of Christ,’” the
controversial 1980s film adaptation of a novel that depicted a
relationship between Jesus and Mary Magdalene. “I don’t have a problem
with historical fiction. I do have a problem with the deliberate
misinterpretation of history. You can’t play with a sacred history and
turn it into soft core pornography.”
This is absurd. It is a little hard to tell whether the quoted section of the novel was cited by Spellberg as one of the offensive parts or not, but it hardly matters. This is an example of an academic betraying the very intellectual freedoms the academy stands for. I’m sickened.
Still not eating chicken, and still glad about it.
Pilgrim’s Pride dumping chicken parts in East Texas landfill
03:37 PM CDT on Sunday, August 3, 2008
Associated Press
MOUNT PLEASANT, Texas — A processing plant has begun dumping chicken byproducts into an East Texas industrial landfill, causing a stench and angering residents who say they live “in the line of fire.”
“It’s not neighborly to be dumping so much waste that it stinks up the countryside for over half a mile,” said Scott Thompson, who lives near the landfill.
Thompson told the Mount Pleasant Daily Tribune for a story in its Sunday editions that the stink from chicken parts is “so strong that it gave me a headache and made me nauseous.”
For those still eating meat…
I just learned that Kate Bush turns 50 today. That freaks me out. It’s like finding out that Tinkerbell is an octogenarian.
