Bush + Detainee Bill + Responsibility

This makes me sick to be an American. I hope everyone knows what are this piece of news' ramifications. There's more to life than drinking, listening to music and being young. And there's more than contemplation and philosophy. In the tradition of Aristotle, Spinoza, Moore and Levinas: Ethics = First Philosophy. As human beings we have a responsibility to other human beings. There is no justification for this responsibility; but its existence is manifest in every one of our dealings with other people. You can call that shared culture, reason or whatever the fuck.

Stemwinders + Lieberman + November In Any Even Number-Ending Year

I love the phrase stemwinder. It's one of those olde-timey newspaper phrases, like ombudsman, from whose frequent use I get the feeling that no one knows what they mean, exactly. That's ok, though. If a words well-defined use is to be used as an ill-defined word, well then--all the better. Like using the word nebulous to describe 'today's office conditions at four pm'. It's all a little nebulous. (Like when Wittgenstein says in the TLP, "Roughly speaking, objects are colorless." Like, WTF does that mean?? I love the phrase 'roughly speaking'. Roughly speaking, my I shit gold doubloons; likewise roughly speaking, objects are made from tiny, odorless, colorless....OH MY GOD OBJECTS ARE MADE OF RADON!)

Crazy-ass Cynthia McKinney (D-GA) lost her primary.

Despite her defeat, McKinney was unbowed, unleashing a stemwinder of a concession speech in which she barely mentioned her opponent but praised leftist leaders in Cuba and Venezuela, took aim at the efficacy of electronic voting machines and offered several swipes at the media.

and so did Sore Loserman. The WP article makes little reference to stemwinding or ombudspeople, so I'll refrain from quoting it. I'm absolutely reading Nozick's Anarchy, State, and Utopia. I hope to have finished by the midterms. Bleh.

I hope to have finished it by this weekend. Nozick makes some claims. Boy does that Nozick make some claims. He seems to be a little in love with explaining everything. I suppose that's a good-ish thing; but I could do with some elliptical reasoning sometimes. Just think of all the trees that could be saved if everyone wrote like Derrida. (Not prolifically--that defeat's the enterprise--I mean elliptically.)