Iqra’i

I am (slowly) catching up on my missed reading. There has, in my absence, been a lot of silliness.

The Absurd — Bill Kristol, in eulogizing Tony Snow, writes:

For quite a while now, optimism has had a bad reputation in intellectual circles. The fashionable books of my youth — and they are good books — were darkly foreboding ones… We who read Albert Camus — and if you had any pretensions to being a non-Marxist intellectual, you read Camus — loved the melancholy close of his essay “The Myth of Sisyphus”: “One must imagine Sisyphus happy.”

Melancholy? Has the man read “The Myth of Sisyphus“? (I suppose it’s his father who was the Marxist intellectual.) That’s the least melancholy passage of the entire book — the statement that there is meaning and heroism in struggle even in a struggle you know you’ll lose makes it a powerfully optimistic close. Call this the Applebee’s salad bar of literary criticism.

Justice is Sweet – Obama seems to get the hint:

I said I wouldn’t give because of the FISA vote, and the caller instantly launched into some talking points about how the law expired in August, which is why Obama voted for it even though it wasn’t a perfect bill.

Luckily, if we want to know more we can just ask AT&T for a transcript of the call!

My Cold, Dead Hands — Details of proposed DC gun legislation:

Firearms in the home must be stored unloaded and disassembled, and secured with either a trigger lock, gun safe, or similar device. The new law will allow an exception for a firearm while it is being used against an intruder in the home.

“Just hang on a sec, Mr. Burglar — I have to unlock, reassemble, and load my gun.” Yeah. Really effective.

The Doctor May Dance — But he doesn’t smoke. I will, however, make an exception on the basis that the Tennant eyebrow-raise looks good on Julian.

Puppy Love — I am heartened to hear that the Obamas are getting a dog, but this phrasing makes me suspect either insufficient copy-editing or a wicked sense of humor:

While we don’t disagree that it’s important to choose a dog that matches well with the family, mixed breeds should certainly be considered along with pure breeds.

I Don’t Care If You Burn — San Francisco legislators propose to prohibit tobacco sales in pharmacies and limit outdoor smoking:

“Tobacco remains the No. 1 cause of preventable death in the U.S. - period,” [Mitch Katz, director of the Department of Public Health] said. “It’s government’s responsibility to protect people from obvious risks.”

Then just outlaw the damn thing! Enough of this namby-pamby combination of death-in-a-box rhetoric and irritating-but-ineffective legislation.

Try to do better next time, world.