Poem-of-the-Day Dept.:

"A Noiseless Patient Spider," taken from Leaves of Grass by Walt Whitman, is what I'm currently memorizing.

"Army Papers Reinforce Allegations of Systemic Prison Abuse in Iraq" at The NewStandard.

Poem-of-the-Day Dept.:

"The Eagle and the Mole" by Elinor Wylie is the latest poem I've committed to memory. A traditionally formal poem, immitation-Victorian maybe, a hint of Tennyson and Robert Browning maybe; not a finger-wagging admonishment exactly but a sort of moral-lesson poem . . . ; so it starts, but it seems to me that it concludes in a very strange place, which is what I like about it.

Report from the Land of Fear #768:

"Another student demanded to take over my class. I swear I’m not making this up.

"A conservative student actually tried to push me aside at the beginning of class, dressed for the occasion in his tie and suit, with a digital camera, to deliver his Thou SHALL Kill presentation. It never occurred to him to discuss his proposal with me after class or during my office hours. He simply presumed that he was at equal status with the teacher, and that he has the 'Academic Freedom' to take up precious class time with his flaky opinions on interpreting the word 'kill' in the 6th Commandment.

"I explained that students are paying to learn from an accredited teacher with degrees in philosophy/humanities. They’re not paying to hear HIS opinions. The test will be on Plato. He stormed out of the class and then dropped out the next day. (Praise the Lord!)"

"Targeted by Conservatives for Teaching Philosophy" by Jacqueline Marcus at Common Dreams.

"Creative work makes for slippery private property online" by Gregory M. Lamb at the Christian Science Monitor's website.

"The End of Reason" by David Morris at AlterNet.

An excellent and informative essay. One of the interesting bits: "And [U.S. Supreme Court Justice] Scalia declared that the death penalty is God's will. 'The more Christian a country is the less likely it is to regard the death penalty as immoral,' he observed. 'I attribute that to the fact that, for the believing Christian, death is no big deal.'" Hmm. What about the decidedly un-Christian People's Republic of China? Or Saudi Arabia? Lots and lots of Christians there in Saudi Arabia, I guess; they even execute people the good ol' fashioned way--by beheading, with a nice sharp sword, just like in the Bible. And those guys who flew the planes into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon four years ago . . . obviously, death was "no big deal" to them. They must have been "believing Christian"s.

I feel like praying . . . Jesus Christ save us from all of these assholes.

A very Happy Birthday to Air America. (Yeah it says Friday, April 1 for this post, but this blog is set to display GMT, not Honolulu time; and where I am now--in Honolulu--it is still quite definitely Friday, March 31st, one day after my mother's birthday.)