He's a genius. Not a hatchet man, as per his book, but a stiletto artist. Very, very skillful writing. Though "goggle-eyed melonhead" is definitely a hatchet blow.

I tend to agree with, well, everyone. It's a very useful tool as kind of an address book writ large; you're the product; and it'll probably be gone sooner than most people think.

This is really distressing. Well-Aged Soylent Green® is way too tough and chewy. Buy stock in A-1.

So, Rob, do you show up in Warren Littlefield's new book? Have you read it?

Oh, and let me promote my favorite Squeeze album, Argybargy. Buy it at iTunes here.

I actually think Squeeze may have been the best pop band out of the UK since the Beatles. Just terrific, hooky little songs marvelously performed.

Also, the Clash weren’t actually from the Authentic Prole® demographic. They were pretty much middle-class left-wing poseurs. John Graham “Joe Strummer” Mellor was the son of a Foreign Office diplomat, who grew up abroad and went to a traditional boarding school. Mick Jones went to a grammar school, then art school. Paul Simonon’s mother was a librarian and his father in the civil service, and lived for a year in Siena as a boy. Etc.

I thought of you when I saw that, Rob, because of Obama’s reaction, which for me really perfects the comedy. It’s like a sitcom scene, with Barry as the straight man, and Clinton as the wacky guy.

Western Chauvinist—should you steal, know it's "ad feminam," with an a. Hey, eighth-grade Latin! It's finally paying off!

Really makes me sick to see the Commissioner of Baseball fraternizing with a left-wing tinpot lowlife who manipulates a one-party legislature for his own personal enrichment and whose taking power resulted in the utter destruction of a theretofore thriving, successful enterprise at the hands of him and his immediate family.Also Fidel, that bloodsoaked tyrant.

Geraldine Hoff at the age of 17. Nice of the Germans to take notice. They say she first saw the poster in 1982, and that she never had biceps like that. She was preceded in death by her husband of 66 years, Leo.

Also, according to another page, she only worked in the plant for a week, but a UPI guy happened to be there that week and snapped a picture of her.

Two other pictures of the lovely Geraldine, here and here.

And, as I'm sure Mr. L has observed many a time, amazing how in the ’30s and ’40s, the teenagers looked like adults.

Give politicians power over anything and decisions get made according to political fashion. Depressing.

The question as stated doesn’t seem to distinguish between ends, though, right? I mean, if we define happiness as “what we think will make us happy,” then we sink into the mud of subjectivism—aren’t the Misses Bennet, Lucas, and Dashwood pursuing male attention, money, and Romance because they are made (transiently) happy by them?

I think what you’re arguing Austen is arguing is that the pursuit of a particular, properly-ordered, marital happiness is the proper end of courtship, but as her heroines’ experiences show, getting there is often an anything but happy experience. They often suffer terribly trying to sort out their feelings and those of their beaux, as well as the latter’s intentions and natures.

Meanwhile, those who are immediately, ecstatically enraptured by chimerae like admiration, the prospect of wealth, or great drama, end up following them into misery.

Pursuing happiness, then, depends on having a very hard-headed idea of the Good and more than a little toughness and practicality in obtaining it, often at the necessary cost of transitory pleasures—that is, unhappiness.

Then, finding a companion who shares your idea of the Good, your alliance generates that greater happiness sought.

No, that’s about right, I think. In the contemporary world, the law-and-custom stream you’re talking about is a specific stream of English liberalism that was fortunately crystalized in our Bill of Rights in 1789. Rather like the right-to-keep-and-bear-arms right and custom, it’s been preserved (and in the case of “speech,” extended) here, while, even in other Anglophone countries, those streams have elsewhere eddied or been narrowed or dammed.

I remember many years ago being surprised at the restrictions on political speech in France and West Germany. But really, they’re in the mainstream. We’re the weirdo.

Probably, he said not all that helpfully. I can’t think of another.

The dimension of law is critical, too, as you could have conceivably had places where people did have the ability to speak very freely, but were nevertheless at the risk of legal or physical threat. Like maybe Renaissance Italy. I’m guessing you could probably jabber on in all sorts of directions, but there was nothing stopping a prince from jailing or executing you if you really ticked him off. I don’t think. (It’s not like I’ve spent the last six months reading about 15th–16th-century Europe—oh wait, I have. In my defense, freedom of speech doesn’t come up much in the literature…)

He could have saved a lot of time by just saying, “You know, I was once bigoted against a guy because of his religion. But then he converted to my religion, so now I like him.”

Y U SO MAD LOLZ