6 things Palin pick says about McCain. Most relevant is this observation, which acknowledges the ironic/hypocritical direction the GOP has taken.
The McCain campaign has made a calculation that most voters don’t really care about the national experience or credentials of a vice president, and that Palin’s ebullient personality and reputation as a reformer who took on cesspool politics in Alaska matters more.
Eclipse over the Great Wall (Credit & Copyright: Mike Simmons (Astronomers Without Borders, TWAN))
James Dobson’s religious right organization Focus on the Family recently posted a video on its website urging people to pray for “rain of biblical proportions” during Sen. Barack Obama’s acceptance speech in Denver. The video has since been taken down allegedly due to complaints. The religious right, to paraphrase the bumper sticker, is becoming less religious and less right.
UPDATE: Oh, this is sooo good. I now believe in a just, merciful god. After Dobson’s puerile call for prayers asking God to deliver flash floods that would “swamp the intersections” around Invesco Field in Denver “two minutes before [Obama's] acceptance speech begins,” it appears that Hurricane Gustav is set to dampen the GOP convention in Minnesota on Monday. This goes beyond poetic justice. This simply has to be direct divine intervention.
The Peace of Wild Things
When despair for the world grows in me
and I wake in the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.
I come into the peace of wild things
who do not tax their lives with forethought
of grief. I come into the presence of still water.
And I feel above me the day-blind stars
waiting with their light. For a time
I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.
— Wendell Berry
This book may go far in debunking the unfortunate misperception that Islam is incompatible with democracy.
Archaeologists are calling a labyrinth filled with stone temples and pyramids found in the Yucatan a “Mayan underworld portal.”
On this historical note, this is a good gallery of ancient observatories viewed by satellite.
A map of John McCain’s houses, just in case he forgets again.
I take it you already know,
Of tough and bough and cough and dough.
Others may stumble, but not you,
On hiccough, thorough, laugh and through.
Well done! And now you wish, perhaps,
To learn of less familiar traps.
Beware of heard, a dreadful word,
That looks like beard and sounds like bird.
And dead - it’s said like bed, not bead,
For goodness’ sake, don’t call it ‘deed’!
Watch out for meat and great and threat,
(They rhyme with suite and straight and debt).
A moth is not a moth in mother,
Nor both in bother, broth in brother.
And here is not a match for there,
Nor dear and fear for bear and pear.
And then there’s dose and rose and lose –
Just look them up – and goose and choose.
And cork and work and card and ward,
And font and front and word and sword.
And do and go and thwart and cart –
Come, come, I’ve hardly made a start!
A dreadful language? Why man alive!
I’d mastered it when I was five.
As part of a research project, Robin Goldstein submitted an application for a Wine Spectator Award of Excellence for a restaurant that doesn’t exist. And it won an award. As one commenter on Goldstein’s website put it, this could be the equivalent of the Sokal Affair in the world of gastronomy and wine. Consumerist article is here.
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