I'm still relatively new at administering a blog, but it has now become clear that we need to give our readers notice as to what will and won't fly regarding comments. The starting point is that we love comments. Without them, our posts lack life. Therefore, if you are tempted to…
I've seen a couple of those independantly produced DVD "exposes" about the 9/11 disaster--you know, the ones attributing sinsister intent to the United States government, that, in fact, we "knew" and did nothing in order to promote subsequent insanity. I've been taking these things with large grains of salt for…
Greetings to the readers of Dangerous Intersection! My name is Adam Lee, though on the internet I usually go by Ebonmuse, and I’m the owner and proprietor of the weblog Daylight Atheism. Erich Vieth has given me the opportunity to write a guest post here, and I couldn’t turn down his generous offer.
As it happens, there is a topic I’ve been wanting to write about for a while. In particular, I was inspired by Michael Moore’s wonderful op-ed, A Liberal’s Pledge to Disheartened Conservatives, which I came across from a recent post on this very site. Say what you will about Michael Moore – many people have – but his essay, to me, stands out for its compassionate and gracious tone. It contains no gloating over the Republicans’ defeat, no mocking them for their loss. On the contrary, it empathizes with them and assures them that they have nothing to fear.
Especially noteworthy, I thought, was this point:
We will always respect you. We will never, ever, call you “unpatriotic” simply because you disagree with us. In fact, we encourage you to dissent and disagree with us.
Now, the question: Does anyone believe for even a moment that, if the Republican party had won these elections, we would be hearing the same tune from their pundits and spokespeople? The answer, which I hope should be obvious to everyone, is: Of course not.
Had the Republicans won, they would be gloating to high heaven, mocking and ridiculing their …
Last evening, I wasted about 1½ hours working in the basement on some uninteresting but useful titanium accessories that I call Fat Wires on MrTitanium.com. I had a dyslexic moment, and made them slightly wrong. Just wrong enough that I can’t in good conscience sell them. I found this very frustrating. A big waste of time.
This morning I started over. This sort of fine craft allows my mind to wander as I cut, hammer, punch, drill, grind, band-aid, polish, bend, re-polish, and assemble. I reflected on Erich’s post on Fungible time: The principle that time, like money, is commutative in an accounting sense. In brief, time is spent whatever you do, so you should make the best of it.
So I wondered (in between thinking about the imminent Buy Nothing Day and listening to FM blather) why I was so upset at having wasted 1½ hours on honing my craft but getting no product, yet a comparable time wasted playing Doom2 or watching YouTube doesn’t bother me. I quit TV several weeks ago.
We recently received this comment from Scholar:
Erich or Grumpy,
May I please have some more links to the discussions here at dangerous intersections which you have found to be most interesting, *must read*, or highlights in general.
Thanks,
Scholar
—
I took Scholar’s request seriously and went back to review many of our posts. I still can’t get over how many topics we’ve addressed in nine months, covering 592 posts!
Rather than call these posts the “best of,” I would merely call them the more memorable posts to me, keeping in mind the triple asterisk that comes with the assembly of this list: 1) I simply didn’t have the time to review each of the posts again. Therefore, this list is only representative, not complete. 2) It is difficult to determine any meaningful criteria on which to base such a list, other than (as I’ve already suggested) the idea that this list includes many of the posts I found memorable. Other people will certainly have different ideas of what posts are worthy 3) Scholar’s request puts me in an awkward spot, given that I write for the blog.
To the extent that I’ve included my own posts, then, it should be with the understanding that I am not trying to judge the writing so much as considering whether the ideas addressed are memorable to me, whether the ideas expressed therein seemed important or whether they moved me. Here’s another way of looking at it: if you want …