Electric Josh

Fear
I'm indescribably glad at discovering lately that people other than me are starting to notice this:

If Americans are fearful, says Harper's magazine editor Lewis Lapham, a leading American commentator, it's because they are being sold fear by the government of George W. Bush.

"Pretty well all the Bush administration has got going for it now is this foreign war," Lapham said. "Fear is something this administration has been selling for two years. You sedate the populace with the drug of fear and maybe the electorate won't notice what a mess you have made, not only of domestic politics, but also our international relations.

"In order to conceal, disguise, dress up their own incompetence, they beat the constant threat of war and fear."

Tim Harper in the Toronto Star. Via cursor.
[permalink | reply | tb ]

Dead
How weird that Johnny Cash and John Ritter are getting mentioned in the same breath. One thing to be thankful for: it's not nearly as bad as when nobody noticed that E. B. White's death because Rock Hudson had just died of AIDS. The greatest American essayist ever died totally anonymously (well, Andy Rooney did his piece on White on 60 Minutes) because a weirdo movie star died of AIDS and was (therefore!) gay. Man.

For what it's worth, now I have Ring of Fire running incessantly through my head.
[permalink | reply | tb ]

CPR
Looking around at the Boston Red Cross's site in search of a CPR class when what should I stumble across at the very top but this:

URGE! PREPARE! UNEXPECTED! TERROR! THREAT!

Not only is it radically, irresponsibly hysterical---the Red Cross inciting hysteria?---but it's three-month-old hysteria. Geez. (I eventually signed us up for a class.)
[permalink | reply | tb ]

NYT
My little company in the Times the other day.
[permalink | reply | tb ]

Strings
A physicist buddy from work sends news of string theory on TV. You read that right. The television is going to try to tell us about cutting edge, extensively mathematical, tiny, tiny physics. Excellent.
[permalink | reply | tb ]

War
Get Your War On has the only reasonable tribute to the big terrorism anniversary that I've seen yet:

To avoid a quarrel is a setback for sin, for it is a hot temper that kindles quarrels.
A sinner sows trouble between friends and spreads scandal where before there was peace.
A fire is kept hot by stoking and a quarrel by persistence.
A man's rage is in proportion to his strength, and his anger in proportion to his wealth.
A hasty argument kindles a fire, and a hasty quarrel leads to bloodshed.

Blow on a spark to make it glow, or spit on it to put it out.
Both results come from the one mouth.

--Ecclesiasticus 28:8-12

[Update: It's gone now, replaced with the usual GYWO content, but it also had a Polaroid snapshot of the WTC smoke column from some non-Manhattan neighborhood of New York. You'll have to trust me.]
[permalink | reply | tb ]