It’s Michelle Yeoh’s Face

A skeptical friend asked why I like Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon so much… so the following, off the top of my head, even though I recognize de gustibus non est disputandum… Why is it the best (for…

The Last Sentence of Middlemarch

For the growing good of the world is partly dependent on unhistoric acts; and that things are not so ill with you and me as they might have been, is half owing to the number…

Be Here Now

In one of Tolstoy’s parables, a peasant is plowing a field. The narrator asks the old man what he would do if he knew that Death was coming to take him away within the hour….

Two Views on Civilization

1. The civilized have created the wretched, quite coldly and deliberately, and do not intend to change the status quo; are responsible for their slaughter and enslavement; rain down bombs on defenseless children whenever and…

Finkelstein’s Pessimism and Optimism

Philosopher Paul Ricoeur identified Marx, Freud, and Nietzsche as three masters of suspicion in the modern West.  Over the last three decades, Norman Finkelstein has shown himself to be a contemporary  maven of suspicion when…

Please Bodhisattva

For All Allen Ginsbergs Everywhere Oh Bodhisattva I’m a slacker Ach Bodhisattva My mind sometimes is so many-pointed Dear Bodhisattva I’ve grown weary of always having an angle Woe is me Bodhisattva My middle name…

The Way It Is

“Those honey-coloured ramparts at your ear” Anicca, anicca The life of the party Anicca, anicca 20/20 vision Anicca, anicca BFF Anicca, anicca BMW Anicca, anicca “Thy eternal summer” Anicca, anicca

Lessons

The lesson of the Holocaust is the facility with which most people, put into a situation that does not contain a good choice, or renders such a good choice very costly, argue themselves away from…