- On interminable bores – a bit over the top, but well-worth the read. fta: I often have the feeling that bores want to be addressing a whole crowd but can’t seem to find one. A friend once told me that when a mutual acquaintance of ours spoke to him, he felt like a town meeting. They are everywhere, these kingly aspiring characters, who go on and on. Confronted with one in the publishing world, Bellow reputedly said, “One of the great things about Hamlet is that Polonius gets stabbed.”
- Charles Murray, “Tax Withholding is Bad for Democracy” – fta: For once, we face a problem with a solution that costs nothing. Most families who pay little or no personal income taxes are paying Social Security and Medicare taxes. All we need to do is make an accounting change, no longer pretending that payroll taxes are sequestered in trust funds. Fold payroll taxes into the personal tax code, adjusting the rules so that everyone still pays the same total, but the tax bill shows up on the 1040. Doing so will tell everyone the truth: Their payroll taxes are being used to pay whatever bills the federal government brings upon itself, among which are the costs of Social Security and Medicare.
- As some of you are aware, Yale University Press published a book on the Danish cartoons that did not feature the cartoons themselves.
- A look inside jail, and the problems jailers face and the new techniques they’re using to combat those issues (h/t aldaily.com)
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About Ashok
I am a graduate student in political science at the University of Dallas who thinks the media is dumb for the most part, yet am immersed myself. I am looking to break my addiction, and this blog is part of the solution: Why not try to see what the past can tell us about the present, as opposed to seeing what the present has to say about the present only?
Currently residing in Cherry Hill, NJ. Facebook. Contact me.
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OK, I’m sold. What should I read here?
- Analysis of The Gettysburg Address: Is Democracy Feasible?
- Analysis of Lincoln's "Second Inaugural:" Where do American virtues lie?
- Commentary on the Book of Jonah
- On "Batman Begins"
- From Love to God: On Hopkins' "As Kingfishers Catch Fire"
- On Emily Dickinson's "These are the days when birds come back..."
- The Coming Age: Macbeth and the Birth of the Modern World
- On Polemarchus: Commentary on the Republic of Plato, 331d-336a
- A Reading of Plato's "Crito"
- Towards a Nietzschean Understanding of Politics: Notes on "The Case of Wagner"
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The bit about original sin is interesting; the quote about Polonius, hilarious