rantlust

Posted by tafkap on November 30th 2006 in Books, History, Language, Law, Politics, Raves
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Just and Unjust Wars: A Moral Argument With Historical Illustrations. The title says it all. I haven’t finished reading the book. I have very little free time these days and the book is not exactly an easy read. But I can already tell you that it is a most excellent book. The kind of book that I will come back to in years to come.

The book is a reprinting of an earlier edition with some new updates. The author Michael Walzer among other things is a moral philosopher. He is particularly concerned with practical philosophizing and avoids the metaphysical. For example he presupposes the existence of a moral world about which rational people can reason about using a shared vocabulary. He does in the beginning expound a little bit about this, but moves on to the main topic of the book.
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Posted by tafkap on November 30th 2006 in Religion, Society, Technology, Thoughts, Travel
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I flew to Chicago over Thanksgiving for a wedding. Yeah - perfect timing. I don’t consider myself to be a person with too many prejudices, but I was surprised by thoughts that went through my mind as I observed people at the gate and on the flight on my way back to Boston.

A middle aged woman. Friendly. Reading an article. It was entitled something like “Why I am against prayer at games - an Evangelist’s story”. Must be from Kansas or something. Probably hates Boston.

An elderly African American couple. Flying to Atlanta so they said. The man had a newspaper in his hand and he was doing a crossword. I am irrationally surprised.
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Posted by tafkap on November 30th 2006 in Parenting
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So the saying goes. But it occurs to me now that it may refer to pulling out somebody else’s teeth rather than having one’s own teeth pulled out. In this case, it was my daughter’s two front teeth. They decided to start shaking a few weeks ago.

I decided to help her along in the extraction process, but as it turns out I found it to be an extremely difficult proposition. Try as I might, I could not get myself to yank at them with any conviction. In the end, it became evident that the wife wore the pants in our household. She managed to get both teeth. My daughter offered more resistance for the second one even though I don’t think it was particularly painful for her. She seemed surprised both times the tooth came out.

I, of course, was in charge of tooth fairy management. My daughter treasures her two dollar bills and has no intention of spending them.

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Posted by riyer on November 30th 2006 in Politics, Rants, USA
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I just read that Mr Vilsack will seek the Democratic party’s nomination for presidency. Jaded as we are with politicians, I was pleasantly surprised that someone who was not born with a silver spoon in his mouth aspires to the presidency. What little I have learnt about him from his speech makes me think that he doesn’t suffer from a “fear of failure”.

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Posted by renéejo on November 29th 2006 in Middle East, Politics
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Moving on from one nutcase dictator to another… The Iranian president (I find it difficult to spell out his last name) has written a letter to ‘Noble Americans’. It’s full of his usual anti-Bush rhetoric. Well, at least this guy likes writing letters and he even has a blog. And he doesn’t look as clownish as Kim Jong-Il.

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Posted by anupcs on November 29th 2006 in Developing Nations, Movies, Rants, World
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“Bloody Americans,” says a North Korean woman when the lights go out in her apartment. Everything from food shortage to lack of power is blamed on American Imperialism in this isolated country. The propaganda machines run at full strength glorifying the virtues of the Great Leader (the late Kim Il Sung) and his buffoonish son, the Dear Leader or the General (Kim Jong Il). We get a rare inside look into the country that very few people visit (I once looked into going here but it requires a lot of paperwork and a guide has to accompany you the entire time) in an interesting, if not captivating, documentary by the BBC called “A State of Mind” (2003).

The documentary follows two young female gymnasts as they prepare for the Mass Games. The Mass Games is a massive performance with thousands of gymnasts, musicians and dancers to show off the communist and patriotic zeal of the country’s hapless citizens. The goal for the performers is to please the General if he bothers to show up. The daily lives and training regimen of these two girls and their families are shown in this film. The people are fed daily propaganda in the form of a single TV channel and a radio which is installed in every dwelling. The radio cannot even be turned off though the volume can be lowered. The Mass Games has to be seen to be believed shaming the massive productions of most Olympic Games opening ceremonies. Even the children believe that their goal in life is to please the General and that every thing that ails their country is due to the Americans.

[tags]north korea, kim jong-il[/tags]

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Posted by anupcs on November 23rd 2006 in History, Rants, Society, Television, USA
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Today is Thanksgiving in the United States. A day when families and friends get together to eat a meal primarily consisting of a bird I really despise: turkey. Before last weekend, I knew only a bit of the history of this holiday. It was the captivating documentary “Desperate Crossing: The Untold Story of the Mayflower” from The History Channel (premiered last weekend) that provided a full account. The documentary is a re-enacted version of the Pilgrims’ journey to North America interspersed with interviews of historians and surviving members of the Wampanoag tribe.

Thanksgiving is a holdover from the Harvest festival celebrated in Britain at the end of each year’s harvest (hærfest means autumn in old English). In the fall of 1621, almost a year after they had set foot on Plymouth in modern Massachusetts, 52 Pilgrims, and 90 Wampanoag Indians gathered for a three-day feast to celebrate a successful harvest. They had waterfowl and wild turkeys, bass, cod, mussels, corn, lobsters, grapes etc. The Wampanoag also presented the colonists with five deer that they had hunted and killed. If only venison was the food of choice on this holiday instead of turkey!
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Posted by renéejo on November 21st 2006 in Rants, Television
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I think this is it for washed up actor Michael Richards (Kramer on Seinfeld) after he used the N-word on a couple of audience members during a recent show.

And the apology on David Letterman (with Jerry Seinfeld as a guest) is not likely to rescue whatever he had left in his career. I think he is on crack or something. In the apology he refers to Blacks as ‘Afro-Americans’. What a nut job!

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