You behold in me, Stephen said with grim displeasure, a horrible example of free thought.

Originally from John Hodgman’s Twitter feed, noted by Andy Baio, here.

By definition, it may mean disinterest (although simple silence would be a more damning and sincere response, in that case)  […]  But in use, it almost universally seems to signal: I am just interested enough to make one last joyless, nitpicky swipe and then disappear

Twelve Virtues of Rationality, by Eliezer S. Yudkowsky.

The first virtue is curiosity.  A burning itch to know is higher than a solemn vow to pursue truth.  To feel the burning itch of curiosity requires both that you be ignorant, and that you desire to relinquish your ignorance.  If in your heart you believe you already know, or if in your heart you do not wish to know, then your questioning will be purposeless and your skills without direction.  Curiosity seeks to annihilate itself; there is no curiosity that does not want an answer.  The glory of glorious mystery is to be solved, after which it ceases to be mystery.  Be wary of those who speak of being open-minded and modestly confess their ignorance.  There is a time to confess your ignorance and a time to relinquish your ignorance.

From Dave Pell:

My guy is finally ahead.

…

And all it took was the collapse of the economy, a banking catastrophe, a stock market crash, a failed and expensive war, a dramatic drop in the world’s esteem for America, a sitting president with the lowest approval ratings ever measured (each time he spoke last week, the market plunged immediately), an over-stretched military, a housing crisis, a jump in joblessness, an overall sense that we are going in the wrong direction, an incredible low level of confidence in the notion that anyone in any position of leadership knows how to get us out of this or any mess, all combined with an opposing candidate who has been erratic, off-message, sluggish, poorly organized, unimpressive, unclear, angry, weird, old, badly handled, endlessly irritating to his own party, and who picked a lying, scandal-laden, and remarkably (hilariously if this were fiction) idiotic sidekick (I am a vegetarian animal-loving pacifist and frankly, the moose-killing is by far my favorite of her qualities). Just mix that with stadiums filled with idol-worshipping fans and the most money ever raised by anyone doing anything other than bailing out the world’s banks (in the next three weeks, my guy will be on the tube more than Regis) and you’ve got yourself a recipe for success.

Read the original post here.

David Sedaris on Undecided voters.

“Last Call, Bohemia”

It isn’t possible to quantify the extent to which society and culture are indebted to Bohemia. In every age in every successful country, it has been important that at least a small part of the cityscape is not dominated by bankers, developers, chain stores, generic restaurants, and railway terminals. This little quarter should instead be the preserve of—in no special order—insomniacs and restaurants and bars that never close; bibliophiles and the little stores and stalls that cater to them; alcoholics and addicts and deviants and the proprietors who understand them; aspirant painters and musicians and the modest studios that can accommodate them; ladies of easy virtue and the men who require them; misfits and poets from foreign shores and exiles from remote and cruel dictatorships. Though it should be no disadvantage to be young in such a quartier, the atmosphere should not by any means discourage the veteran.

Christopher Hitchens, Vanity Fair.

Oh, gentlemen, perhaps I really regard myself as an intelligent man only because throughout my entire life I’ve never been able to start or finish anything.  Granted, granted I’m a babbler, a harmless, irksome babbler, as we all are.  But what’s to be done if the sole and express purpose of every intelligent man is babble—that is, a deliberate pouring from empty into void.

Fyodor Dostoevsky, Notes From Underground

More from the now year-old “Gothamitis” piece in The New Yorker by Adam Gopnik:

By a city we don’t mean, or just mean, a place where many people live; we mean a place where many kinds of people live, all more or less on top of each other.  Though Mrs. Astor knew nothing of the Lower East Side, and the Lower East Side could only dream of Mrs. Astor, they were still nodes on one grid.  In the course of any even semiconscious wandering through the city—much less the kind of conscious wondering that marks the city’s poetry and literature from Walt Whitman to Alfred Kazin and beyond—each group bumped visually and tangibly into the other.  Only twenty-five years ago, a walk from Tribeca to SoHo and the Lower East Side would show as many kinds and classes—rich, aspiring, immigrant—as it had a century before; now that walk is likely to show only the same six stores and the same two banks and the same one shopper.

Read the full article here.

By Adam Gopnik, from over a year ago in The New Yorker.

It is the sense that the city’s recovery has come at the cost of a part of its identity: that New York is safer and richer but less like itself, an old lover who has gone for a face-lift and come out looking like no one in particular.  The wrinkles are gone, but so is the face.  This transformation is one you see on every street corner in Manhattan, and now in Brooklyn, too, where another local toy store or smoked-fish emporium disappears and another bank branch or mall store opens.  For the first time in Manhattan’s history, it has no bohemian frontier.  Another bookstore closes, another theatre becomes a condo, another soulful place becomes a sealed residence.  These are small things, but they are the small things that the city’s soul clings to.

Read the full piece here.

Words with no direct English translation fascinate me.  Like mamihlapinatapai.  Or l’esprit de l’escalier.  There are plenty of others, of course.

In Three Lines or Less, by Ben Joseph.

Moby-Dick
ISHMAEL:  I’m existential.
AHAB:  Really?  Try vengeance.
ISHMAEL:  I dig this dynamic.  Can we drag it out for 600 pages?

You have got to be fucking kidding me.  Bush’s parting words, leaving the G8 summit in Japan:  “Goodbye from the world’s biggest polluter.”

The late George Carlin, a great idol of mine, on religion:

So rather than be just another mindless religious robot, mindlessly and aimlessly and blindly believing that all of this is in the hands of some spooky incompetent father figure who doesn’t give a shit, I decided to look around for something else to worship.  Something I could really count on.

And immediately, I thought of the sun.  Happened like that.  Overnight I became a sun-worshiper.  Well, not overnight—you can’t see the sun at night.  But, first thing the next morning, I became a sun-worshiper.  Several reasons:  First of all, I can see the sun—okay?  Unlike some other gods I could mention, I can actually see the sun.  I’m big on that.  If I can see something, I don’t know, it kind of helps the credibility along, you know?  So, everyday I can see the sun as it gives me everything I need:  heat, light, food, flowers in the park, reflections on the lake, an occasional skin cancer.  But hey, at least there are no crucifixions, and we’re not setting people on fire simply because they don’t agree with us.

Sun worship is fairly simple.  There’s no mystery, no miracles, no pageantry, no one asks for money, there are no songs to learn, and we don’t have a special building where we all gather once a week to compare clothing.  And the best thing about the sun: it never tells me I’m unworthy.  Doesn’t tell me I’m a bad person who needs to be saved.  Hasn’t said an unkind word.  Treats me fine.  So, I worship the sun.  But, I don’t pray to the sun.  Know why?  I wouldn’t presume on our friendship—it’s not polite.

From You Are All Diseased (1999).

And another favorite of mine.

If I were to start a blog, the first post might look something like this…