Oscar Jr. Was Here

Uncanny!

Could that be true? If you trust the quiz, it is.

Take the The Secret Language of Sleep quiz.

(via The Presurfer, of course.)

Update: "A quiz just weird enough that I couldn't resist it."

Lyric of the Day (Late Again)

Soul Asylum:

It’s hard to be nice when hate becomes your vice,

And you can’t find peace anywhere.

Love is just not for lovers,

Get off your high horse brother.

Drop your fists and get out of here.

19

Yes, it's 19, today.

Genius!

It's been done, but I think I am still the first to link ahead.

In any event, goodnight. If you know better tricks than I do about avoiding the lines at Penn Station or making sneezes subside, please let me know.

What Happened to Maureen? At least her posts were funny...

I'm not sure what happened to her, but she has moved on up to here. Please join me in welcoming her, Grover, and her mystery "someone else" (seven-year friend), who may or may not be writing, to this crazy blogosphere. It only gets bigger.

As I understand it, Maureen does intend to write a post after August 19, 2005.

Then again, so did I.

Number du Jour?

I can't decide on one, but you can. Just click on one of the two, and change the URL to your favorite (low) number. And click away!

I'll try to do better tomorrow.

Lyric of the Day (Late)

Wilco:

I always thought that if I held you tightly,

You would always love me like you did back then.

Then I fell asleep, and the city kept blinking.

What was I thinking when I let you back in?

Does Today Have a Number?

Indeed it does. The number of the day for today is 6.

On Manliness

Also on NRO, Kathryn Jean Lopez has a short interview with Harvard professor Harvey Mansfield on his new book, Manliness, that is worth reading. Here are a couple of excerpts:

Lopez: What's your one sentence definition of manliness?

Mansfield: Manliness is confidence and command in a situation of risk.

Lopez: How deeply has feminism wounded manliness? I'd hate to see manliness fall, wimp-like, victim to little old aging bra burners.

Mansfield: Feminism abolished the idea of femininity but only wounded manliness.

It claimed and still claims that women can be as manly as men, but on condition that manliness is redefined in the direction of womanly sensitivity. Manly men did not fight back because they are not in the habit of fighting women, and because we all believe in democratic equality.

Lopez: What's the most practical manliness advice you have to offer — to men or women or both?

Mansfield: Avoid the sensitive male. He will be more sensitive to other women and to himself than to you.

Judging by many of the Amazon reviews, the book seems to have upset many readers. I may order a copy of this one, too.

Update: I'm having second thoughts, though.

"The Generals War"

The Wall Street Journal and National Review both have interesting editorials up today discussing the comments of a handful of retired generals who are criticizing the Iraq War and calling for Defense Secretary Rumsfeld's resignation.

Jeff Goldstein has good, related posts here and here.

All are worth reading for some perspective on what appears to be the issue-of-the-week.

Update: See also InstaPundit.

Copy and Paste

A quote:

I could have not said any thing as that could have cost less harm but i am so impulsed to tell the truth now that i can't cope with the littleist lie. even if telling the truth after liaring cost me the love of my life i will accept it with grace as i have made my bed, and i must lie in it. he has given me the gift of love and trust for the first time in my life and i have been destroyong it by reflecting my past problems on to a true human being.

(from here, an interesting and depressing discussion that I found while researching another topic.)

World of Photography

I really enjoy stuff like this. As of now, the site displays 89,118 photographs uploaded by users. The photos are organized by city (11,920 of them so far). I could happily spend all day clicking and searching.

But I really should get back to work.

(via The Presurfer.)

Number of the Day

The number of the day is 13.

Gentle Regrets

In the March 27, 2006 issue of National Review (link for subscribers only), Roger Kimball reviews Roger Scruton's memoir, Gentle Regrets: Thoughts from a Life. Excerpt:

Scruton comes bearing news about permanent things, one part of which is the evanescence of human aspiration. Hence the governing word “loss.” There is a sense in which conservatism is anti-Romantic, since it is constitutionally suspicious of the schemes of perfection Romanticism typically espouses. But there is another sense in which conservatism is deeply Romantic: the sense in which it recognizes and embraces the ineradicable frailty, the ultimate futility of things human. “And so,” Scruton writes at the end of his chapter on Burke, “I acquired the consciousness of death and dying, without which the world cannot be loved for what it is. That, in essence, is what it means to be a conservative.” Which is to say that without the consciousness of loss, there is nothing a conservative would find worth conserving. It is only by facing up to necessary loss, Scruton writes, that we can build on the dream of ultimate recuperation.

The philosopher Leszek Kolakowski once wrote that religion teaches us how to be a failure. In the essay “Regaining My Religion,” which concludes Gentle Regrets, Scruton endorses that insight and shows how one of the most harrowing depredations of the modern world is to rob us of the religious sense, which is to say the sense of loss. Too often, he notes, “there is neither love nor happiness — only fun. For us, one might be tempted to suggest, the loss of religion is the loss of loss.” The central teaching of this wise and companionable book is that the acknowledgment of loss is not the end but the prelude to the possession of joy.

I think I'll order a copy of the book this week.

Happy Easter to all.

Back?

Let's try this again.

Posting is likely to be sporadic for a little while, as I'm still quite busy with work, but I do feel like blogging again.

Comments will remain closed until I find a pleasing way to reduce the amount of comment spam that I was receiving. Suggestions via email are eagerly sought.

It will be good, I think, to be back.