Tag Archives: rant

textolatry

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thickness

Sorel’s basic char­ac­ter flaws had all cement­ed by the age of fif­teen, a fact which fur­ther elicit­ed my sym­pa­thy.  To have all the build­ing blocks of your life in place by that age was, by any stan­dard, a tragedy.  It … Con­tin­ue read­ing

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the sense that the booker prize sucks

There are two book reviews I’d like to post, by way of com­par­ing great writ­ing with crap writ­ing.  My orig­i­nal thought was to inter­leave snip­pets from these two books, allow­ing one to make its own case and the oth­er to … Con­tin­ue read­ing

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hyperforeignism

I drove into Boul­der, Col­orado at mid­night on Wednes­day, my impulse to eat a late din­ner near­ly over­bal­anced by my need to declare the long day over.  It turns out that, even with throngs of kids boozi­ly wan­der­ing from bar … Con­tin­ue read­ing

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french coffee

We’ve had a won­der­ful time abroad.  More on that soon.  But a notable minus of Cor­si­ca: the cof­fee sucks. In fact, the cof­fee sucks in France as a whole.  For a cul­ture that so val­ues gas­tron­o­my, this is dif­fi­cult to … Con­tin­ue read­ing

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a reduction of pants

This is a sort of minor rant-begets-anoth­­er-rant.  I found myself writ­ing “pant” in the pre­vi­ous post, and this remind­ed me of an irri­tat­ing ‑ism which I think must be made in Amer­i­ca.  I want to call it sin­gu­lar­ism, but this … Con­tin­ue read­ing

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in praise of pockets

I’ve been told by sev­er­al friends that this par­tic­u­lar rant of mine is get­ting tedious and I should drop it, so con­sid­er this post a kind of purg­ing.  I promise not to bring it up again.  Unless you do first. … Con­tin­ue read­ing

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agora

While we’re at it, Ale­jan­dro Amenábar’s 2009 movie Ago­ra is pret­ty great.  It was dis­may­ing how late and how lit­tle dis­tri­b­u­tion it got in the US, one sus­pects because of its anti-reli­­gios­i­­ty.  While seem­ing­ly get­ting screen time only in a … Con­tin­ue read­ing

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atheism

What expres­sion of style could be more vio­lent than reli­gion? Accord­ing to our friends at the Pew Forum on Reli­gion & Pub­lic Life, about six in ten adults in the US con­sid­er reli­gion to be “very impor­tant” in their lives.  … Con­tin­ue read­ing

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logic as an exercise in style

Unlike the red sauce, this post falls in the cat­e­go­ry of “prob­a­bly use­less”. Once upon a time I took cours­es in log­ic at Uni­ver­si­ty.  I did fine, because if you know how to do math and pro­gram, there isn’t much … Con­tin­ue read­ing

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