Monthly Archives: August 2007

Rant: The Cult of The Expert, Or The Media Is Problematic In Exactly What They Get Right

An enor­mous amount of learn­ing is rep­e­ti­tion and the recit­ing that goes along with it. In com­plain­ing about the media being biased, many of us for­get that jour­nal­ists do go to peo­ple con­sid­ered the expert in their sub­ject and repeat that opin­ion, com­plete with the facts sup­port­ing that opin­ion, in their work. They’re learn­ing from peo­ple we’ve …

August 29, 2007 – 12:48 pm | By ashok | Posted in media | Tagged , | Comments (1)

Hopefully, A New Beginning

My Mom and I just dropped off my brother at the air­port. He’s going to be attend­ing a Min­istry Acad­emy where he will work with peo­ple in inner-city St. Louis, help­ing out in mis­sion activ­i­ties there. He’ll be gone for a year doing this.He seemed scared when I left him at the air­port, wor­ried about …

August 27, 2007 – 6:10 am | By ashok | Posted in personal | Comments (0)

Is Being Serious Something You Work For, Or A Natural Product of Having Fun?

Soul and body have no bounds:To lovers as they lie upon­Her tol­er­ant enchanted slopeIn their ordi­nary swoon,Grave the vision Venus send­sOf super­nat­ural sym­pa­thy,Uni­ver­sal love and hope;While abstract insight wake­sA­mong the glac­i­ers and the rock­s­The hermit’s sen­sual ecstasy.- from W. H. Auden’s “Lul­laby“Some­one asserted the other day that there were bands try­ing too hard to be …

August 26, 2007 – 3:22 pm | By ashok | Posted in poetry | Tagged | Comments (0)

Tact

When you deal with peo­ple — in fact, espe­cially when you deal with lots of peo­ple and are very good at deal­ing with peo­ple — mis­takes get made. It is not pos­si­ble to avoid get­ting on someone’s nerves for a small thing. What will inevitably hap­pen is that the small thing won’t be let go. It …

August 26, 2007 – 10:20 am | By ashok | Posted in personal | Tagged | Comments (0)

Humanity Caught Up: On Yeats’ “Leda and the Swan”

Leda and the Swan William But­ler Yeats A sud­den blow: the great wings beat­ing still Above the stag­ger­ing girl, her thighs caressed By his dark webs, her nape caught in his bill, He holds her help­less breast upon his breast. How can those ter­ri­fied vague fin­gers push The feath­ered glory from her loos­en­ing thighs? How can …

August 22, 2007 – 8:01 pm | By ashok | Posted in poetry, yeats | Tagged , | Comments (1)