Binny’s Beverage Depot single-malt Scotch. Just for fun, I sorted by price, high-to-low.
Eegads!
Binny’s Beverage Depot single-malt Scotch. Just for fun, I sorted by price, high-to-low.
Eegads!
For all you pen-and-longhand fans: On the Gift of Longhand (via Arts & Letters Daily)
I got my middle-aged son’s Christmas wish list, topped by a couple of Ahmad Jamal CD sets, one collecting back to 1963, when I gave my then-girlfriend an Ahmad Jamal LP as a Christmas gift.
Man, I’m old!
Reading Tim Weiner, Legacy of Ashes: The History of the CIA. 📚Some very appalling stuff. Is Weiner a Howard Zinn wannabe, or is this the straight dope?
Oh, no! How could I have forgotten that Purdue was playing Duke yesterday in the PKI? Beating Gonzaga and Duke by double-digits in one weekend is pretty great. 🏀
Not limited to religious fundamentalisms, but to any ideology prone to say “Error has no rights.” How Fundamentalism Fails - The Dispatch.
I guess I’m not as un-tribal as I thought.
That some of the usual suspects are attacking David French, who announced his endorsement for the Respect for Marriage Act passed by the Senate (in which endorsement he carefully “showed his work”), and even questioning his Christian faith, I find myself viscerally more inclined to support it myself.
I’m no TV critic, but my wife and I have really enjoyed Shetland on BritBox (other British mysteries, too). Just finished Season 7, which had a very satisfying surprise ending.
Ees OUTRAGE!!! Qatar bans sale of beer at World Cup stadiums in about-face
I’m already worn out with stories on SBF, FTX, EA, ESG and the whole solar system of which SBF was star. Crypto has been a scammy cesspool from the beginning, and I don’t need details post-mortems to tell me details on how this iteration ran the scam.
Ronald Reagan’s natural affability was heightened by Peggy Noonan’s speechwriting. Bush II’s relatively tied tongue was loosed by the speechwriting skill of Michael Gerson, later a Washington Post columnist. Sad to read of his untimely death.
A lovely discovery from my days in Jordan late last month: Barazek Cookies. Mostly sesame and pistachio, they don’t spike my blood sugar. And they’re yummy. (Expensive, though.)
I rarely tout technology here, but I’m a bit paranoid about bad actors on the internet. I’ve been very happy with Bitdefender Box, which protects my whole network right down to IOT thermostats and my deaf Alexa device. Renewed it.
I decided Karl Popper, The Open Society and Its Enemies, starting with a long dissection of Plato, was more trouble than it was worth. Now reading Ernst Jünger, A German Officer in Occupied Paris and starting to think the same thing. Too many books, too few years left. 📚
Today, I am moderately reassured that the bozos and grifters the refashioned GOP nominated around the nation have underperformed.
That is all.
I had a choice this afternoon:
I should have taken the Opera option. Iowa 24, Purdue 3. Oof!
Sheer delight: Yassine Meskhout, I Fought The PayPal And I Won
New minor annoyance noted: Email that arrives pre-flagged, so my “flagged mail” folder becomes less useful. The otherwise-nice folks at Proton are prime offenders.
My overall “secular” impression of my past two weeks in the Holy Land: if you really want to see a lot of authentic sites, important to the historic (i.e., pre-Reformation) Church, bring good shoes, socks, walking stick, and be prepared to walk over a lot of very uneven rubble and pavers that have heaved over 1500-2000 years. Even the Church of Anastasis (a/k/a Holy Sepulchre) isn’t entirely safe for those, like me, of unsteady gait and poor balance.
Also, don’t miss the sacred sites in current Jordan, which astonished me in how successful it has been chasing Mammon. (It feels surprisingly like the U.S., especially in Amman.)
A pair of Ecco walkers and a second of Mephistos, worn with Wright Socks, kept me blister-free, but didn’t prevent mildly turned ankles.
Oh yeah: everybody seems to smoke almost everywhere.
And I’m ready to eat me some pig.
Liturgy in Jerusalem at the Tomb of the Theotokos, a cavern many steps underground.
Unexpected and more than a bit infuriating: Leah Libresco Sargeant, How Reversible are LARCs?.
Five proposals worthy of consideration: National Constitution Center Project Offers Constitutional Amendment Proposals with Broad Cross-Ideological Support.