Internal Monologue

" I've since clued in to the perfect analogy for the way Canadians (generally speaking - there are of course exceptions) think about religion. We treat it like underwear. We acknowledge that it exists and plays a role in the life of most people; we believe people should be able to obtain whatever kind of it they are comfortable in; we are even beginning to recognise that some people don't have much use for it and that's okay. But we are really not comfortable with people who run around showing theirs off in public and get a little freaked out about people who exhibit an interest in other people's, especially complete strangers'. To drag the analogy to the breaking point, relative to the Canadian political landscape, American politicians walk around without trousers on quite frequently." - Indigo commenting on slacktivist (HT: Mad Latinist via Facebook )

“Whom the Gods would destroy, they first put on the cover of Business Week.” - Paul Krugman , who just appeared on the cover of Newsweek as a critic of Obama's bank plan.

From Bad Gods . D&D fans should check out the " Monster Manual Comix " series.

The first post on Internal Monologue went up 3 years ago last Wednesday. What a lot has transpired in that time. It's wacky to think I've been writing that long. Coinciding with this nicely is my third Google Ad revenue deposit ($104.11), which just came in yesterday. Thanks everyone for reading.

By the way, I officially claim to have coined the phrase "Loogie of Disrespect", based on this post from December of 2006. The only other reference Google shows is from a much later date. If its meaning is not obvious to you, here's a definition: Hawking the Loogie of Disrespect on something is a way of indicating that it is not worthy of the sacred aura with which our culture has endowed it. " To Hawk " in this context means to audibly expel phlegm from the throat. A loogie is a wad of spit or phlegm. Note that the loogie definition linked to in the previous sentence uses "hock" instead of "hawk". I don't think you can "hock" a loogie, because most pawnshops don't accept loogies as collateral. (If you hear of one, let me know next time I have a cold.)

The U.N. Human Rights Council decided that people's oh-so-tender religious sensibilities need to be protected from the likes of me: GENEVA (Reuters) - A United Nations forum on Thursday passed a resolution condemning "defamation of religion" as a human rights violation, despite wide concerns that it could be used to justify curbs on free speech in Muslim countries. The U.N. Human Rights Council adopted the non-binding text, proposed by Pakistan on behalf of Islamic states, with a vote of 23 states in favour and 11 against, with 13 abstentions. [...] It called on states to ensure that religious places, sites, shrines and symbols are protected, to reinforce laws "to deny impunity" for those exhibiting intolerance of ethnic and religious minorities, and "to take all possible measures to promote tolerance and respect for all religions and beliefs" . (via vastleft ) Emphasis added. Certainly I agree with some of this. Religious places should be pr

...like this one quite often. Freud wrote about this dream, and mentioned that it tends to be good students who have this dream. Which makes sense: this dream is about being anxious about failure. And that impulse would probably be stronger on average in those who do well in school than those who do not.