According to a Texas jury, it was OK for a man to say “shit” when referring to cat shit to a 13-year old neighbor child. More precisely, his use of the word “shit” didn’t constitute “disorderly conduct.”
I usually like the online magazine Slate. I listen to many of Slate’s podcasts, read several of the site’s posts a week, and peruse their author-run blogs on occasion, too. The site isn’t perfect, but I usually carry some respect for the site’s authors and its generally thoughtful, funny content. Exceptions being boneheaded pursuits like their recent attempt to track down the evolutionary origins of Facebook’s 25 Things meme (Hint to Slate: that trend dates back to the years before Facebook, the golden days of Livejournal).
But for all of Slate’s occasionally out-of-touch, misguided posts, nothing beats The Happiness Project. Authored by ex-lawyer and non-Slate author Gretchen Rubin, it’s a recent addition to Slate’s blog roll, and not truly a “part” of Slate itself. I still hold Slate somewhat responsible for sharing the drivel that the blog spews. I’ll give you a pretty representative taste: Five Ways to Outsmart Your 3-Year Old.
Let’s take Way #1. Gretchen writes:
Isn’t it time that we do away with the sentence, “He/She is doing computer work?” It made sense 20 years ago, when everyone was spending inordinate amounts of time trying to get their computers to work at all. But now we use our computers to actually accomplish an amazing variety of specific tasks, such as:
Writing [...]
We can label our attempts to stop politically motivated violence in a variety of ways. We could use the law enforcement metaphor or we could use the social epidemic metaphor. The Bush administration, however, has consciously chosen to invoke the metaphor of “war.” An article in the current edition of Scientific American Mind, “Talking about [...]
Imagine that a neighbor walks up today and tells you that he really cares about you. In fact, he loves you like a daughter/son and he wants to show his love. You might be delighted to hear such an expression of affection.
Then imagine that he tells you that he wants to prove to you that [...]
If you’ve ever had this thought that intelligent people never believe things they can’t prove, consider that some of the world’s sharpest and most skeptical minds have confessed in writing that they too believe things that they can’t prove. You can read all about it in the 2005 Annual Question at Edge.org. The question: “What [...]
Missouri’s first State Poet Laureate. Walter Bargen.
I can’t tell you how pleased I am by this. Walter is a first-rate poet and, just if not more importantly, a decent human being.
He will be formally introduced on February 13th at the state capitol. After that, he will serve a two-year-term, administered by the Missouri Center for [...]
Edge.org has just released it’s Annual Question. This year’s version: WHAT HAVE YOU CHANGED YOUR MIND ABOUT? WHY?” I’ve read a couple dozen answers so far. As always, the answers are intellectually stimulating, challenging to common sense and entertaining.
Television producer Karl Sabbagh weighs in this year with his realization that expertise has serious limitations. I agree with him that [...]
I’ve been long-intrigued by Hannah Arendt’s concept of the banality of evil. Philip Zimbardo turns that concept on its head in an article from Edge, “The banality of evil is matched by the banality of heroism.” (you’ll need to scroll down to the z’s). Zimbardo’s article appears as one of a series of articles responding [...]
I’m pondering an idea which is certainly not original, though it is an idea powerful enough to make a mockery of any moral system that looks to the consequences of actions to characterize the moral quality of those actions.
Here’s the thought: Every so often something really bad happens to me. I’m in an auto accident. [...]
One of my favorite current cartoonists is Brooke McEldowney. I discovered his work online a few years ago in the form of “A Fairy Merry Christmas”. In the interest of copyright non-violation, I’ll leave it to youse to Google up your own excerpts.
This cartoon series was an NEA sponsored 6 week series. Finally, a use [...]
The state of Missouri has never had an official poet laureate. Like many people, I didn’t know that, although unlike many of those many people, I should have. One of the hats I wear (besides the one in the cool profile photo above) is the president of the Missouri Center for the Book.
What, you may [...]
