speaking of Nick (my friend, not my cat)
Jun. 23rd, 2004 09:21 amYou should check out his jazz page at http://nicholas_bruner.tripod.com/the_a_train/ I'm sure he'd welcome both more visitors and more feedback.
Immature people crave and demand moral certainty: This is bad, this is good. Kids and adolescents struggle to find a sure moral foothold in this bewildering world; they long to feel they're on the winning side, or at least a member of the team. To them, heroic fantasy may offer a vision of moral clarity. Unfortunately, the pretended Battle Between (unquestioned) Good and (unexamined) Evil obscures instead of clarifying, serving as a mere excuse for violence—as brainless, useless, and base as aggressive war in the real world.
The world's most difficult word to translate has been identified as "ilunga" from the Tshiluba language spoken in south-eastern DR Congo.
It came top of a list drawn up in consultation with 1,000 linguists.
Ilunga means "a person who is ready to forgive any abuse for the first time, to tolerate it a second time, but never a third time".
It seems straightforward enough, but the 1,000 language experts identified it as the hardest word to translate.
In second place was shlimazl which is Yiddish for "a chronically unlucky person".
Third was Naa, used in the Kansai area of Japan to emphasise statements or agree with someone.
Saudi Arabia has announced an amnesty for terror suspects who turn themselves in within a month.
A statement read out on state TV on behalf of King Fahd said the amnesty would cover anyone who had "committed a crime in the name of religion".
...
Correspondents say King Fahd's amnesty offer appears to amount to a pardon for those who do not have blood on their hands.
It was read out by the de facto ruler, Crown Prince Abdullah.
If you're not going to vote against Bush because he panders to his wealthy supporters at the expense of the middle class and poor; because of his utterly ineffectual response to the threat of international terrorism, both before and after 9/11; because he led us into an unnecessary, bloody war and then butchered its execution; because he surrounds himself with arrogant, corrupt and incompetent advisors; because when his theories come into conflict with facts, he throws out the facts; because his tax cuts place a crushing burden of debt on future generations without even providing temporary relief to the majority of Americans; because he assists those who would make the United States a theocracy; because he has squandered our international alliances; because he tells bold-faced lies; because no civil liberty appears to be safe from him save the right to own firearms; because he has said that his ideal Supreme Court Justices are Scalia and Thomas, and there are likely to be vacancies on the Court next term - if any or all of these reasons don't lead you to oppose Bush, are you really going to be swayed by concerns about his childhood survivor's guilt? If you're unmoved by the thousands of Afghan and Iraqi civilians killed, the hundreds of dead American soldiers, will it really make a difference to hear that as a boy, Bush shot frogs with a B.B. gun?