Walls are things. Borders are ideas. Hadrian’s Wall used to be both. Now it’s neither. Some borders have walls. Most don’t. They don’t because they don’t need to. They don’t need to because most people think borders are things. More… Read More ›
Editorials
ACCENTISM
Okay, this is going to sound pretty curmudgeony, but dammit, someone’s gotta say it, so it might as well be me. I try to understand them. Honest I do. But more often than not I can’t. And when I can’t… Read More ›
THREE UNSEEMLY COMMENTS ABOUT THE BUTLER SHOOTING
For what little they’re worth, I have three unseemly comments about tonight’s shooting in Butler. The first is: I wonder how long it will be before the nothing-is-as-it-seems junkies decide it’s too much of a coincidence that the shooter went… Read More ›
TWO MILDLY BIGOTED COMPLAINTS
I started this blog off a number of years ago with a series of curmudgeon-isms, and embarrassed though I am to return to that theme, last week leaves me no choice. My first complaint is the indecipherability of public address… Read More ›
THE TOWER OF BABEL
Worrying about exactly how many Israelis were killed on October 7, or exactly how many Palestinians have been killed since, is a bit like debating whether the Holocaust killed six million, seven, or only five. Let’s just say that ’39… Read More ›
SHAME
Of the 16 million Jews in the world, just under half live in Israel. Of the other 8.5 million, most support the State of Israel, in the sense that they regard it as a mustering point “come the next pogrom”…. Read More ›
JUST DO THE MATH
At any given time, there are about 50,000 pregnant women in Gaza, which means at least 50,000 live births per year, which means about an extra, say, 24,000 young men reaching fighting age per year. So even if only a… Read More ›
THE MEANING OF OBSCENITY
I’m going to make up a stat, but I’m guessing it won’t be too far off the mark. I’m going to claim the mainstream media dedicated 17 times the coverage to the loss of those 5 would-be adventurers in a… Read More ›
CONVOLUTION
The fallacy of self-exclusion is an old saw in philosophy. Common example? Intolerance of intolerance. Or, “There’s no place for hate at the University of Fill-in-the-Blank!”, except of course for our hatred of haters. Or, “Our mandate is a university… Read More ›
TWO MINOR COMPLAINTS
The Holocaust happened. The Exodus didn’t. Exodus-denial isn’t antisemitism, so why is Holocaust-denial? It’s all about context, you say. Unlike Exodus-denial, Holocaust-denial is taken as an antisemitic trope. If a word means what it’s taken to mean, then why can’t… Read More ›
Paulosophical Vimplications 