In which I blog about curious things that strike me, in the hope of piquing your curiousity. Also, perhaps, of getting some feedback on things that I can't figure out.
Common ground
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In these divisive times, it is import to cherish moments when we agree with those on the other side of the aisle. This is such a time.
When I began this blog about 6 months ago, I did not expect it would attract a large audience. My expectations have been fully met. The only exception came when Linkiest decided (at my request) to link to my blog post on liberal denial of media bias . That created a viewership spike that screwed up the graph on Google analytics, because it was totally off the scale. In case some of those new viewers from Linkiest are still around, I figured the hundreth post would be a good time to highlight some of the most interesting previous blog entries. Here are my completely subjective choices: Etiology of a Medical Crisis The Nuclear Threat The Awful Truth Gates, Boxer, and Race Dumb Political Slogans Acorn Cracked Obama's Citizenship Peace of Westphalia Day Self-interest Environmental Pathos
I have just read the article Straight White Male: The Lowest Difficulty Level , and the comments, and the follow-up and its comments. The author claims that straight white males (SWM, for short) don't like being told they are "privileged," so he is going to try to explain their advantages in terms they understand. He then very condescendingly compares their lives to playing a game on the easiest difficulty level, whereas people in other categories have it harder, and black lesbians are playing on the hardest level of all. I understand that this is a metaphor, or an analogy. I understand that it is not supposed to be a perfect model of reality. There are, however, several reasons why I think it is a very poor and misleading metaphor. First of all, using the gaming-difficulty metaphor implies that SWMs have an easy life. No one plays at the easiest level unless he is a total noob, and only college students with lots of time on their hands play at the hard...
Today is Peace of Westphalia day -- the 365th anniversary of the signing of the Peace of Westphalia -- in honour of which I traditionally make a Mazarin cake . Cardinal Mazarin was the French premier throughout the negotiations leading up to the peace. Admittedly, I have no evidence that the cake was named after him, but how many other people named Mazarin have you ever heard of? In fact, Mazarin is the namesake of a surprising number of modern items. There is the Mazarin cut diamond, which is a precursor to the modern brilliant cut; and the Mazarin desk, or " bureau Mazarin ," an early kneehole desk. He was a renowned collector: a famous Japanese chest is known as the Mazarin chest because it is believed he owned it, and there is also a " Mazarin Venus ." He was especially avid about collecting books; the Gutenberg Bible is sometimes known as the Mazarin Bible because it was in his collection. In fact, his personal library bec...
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