Meta and Meta

Our Greatest Snob

Interview with Gore Vidal here (via Arts & Letters Daily). Full of great lines. A taste:

"Is there anything in your character that you recognise as inherited [from your mother]?"

"No. If I did, I would take an emetic."

Why Seating FL and MI Won't De-Disenfranchise

Hillary's "disenfranchisement" argument to seat Florida and Michigan delegates is not on.

The Instability of Value

You've probably had the experience of seeing a film and enjoying it, but then on a subsequent viewing rather disliking it (the film "doesn't hold up"). Or the reverse -- hating the film on the first viewing but then enjoying it in subsequent viewing (you finally "get it").

Pity

"Stop feeling sorry for yourself."

To the extent that that's good advice, doesn't it follow that you should stop feeling sorry for others?

Wish List

In 2013, will everyone also have a pony?

Striving for Obscurity

Whitman famously celebrated that he contained multitudes. Me? I hate crowds.

69th Philosophers' Carnival

At Possibly Philosophy.

What the "Ought" Problem Really Is

You can't derive  an "ought" from an Id.

Watch Your Grammar

"Things can be different."
"Things could have been different."

Thus a change in tense transforms hope into regret.

Race to the Bottom

That being said, here is a piece of HRC criticism I can get behind.

I might quibble with the "reckless" charge ("negligence" seems more like it), but I wouldn't exactly call it unfair. Particularly given the stakes.

(Via Talking Points Memo.)