Aesthetics/Ethics

When does bad taste rise to the level of immorality?

Steven Pinker, in Conversation with Bill Gates on Climate Change

"When people subscribe to an ideology, they suck up evidence that supports their preconceptions and filter out evidence that goes against them.  Contrary to the belief of most scientists that denial of climate change is an effect of scientific illiteracy, it is not at all correlated with scientific literacy.  People who believe in man-made climate change don't know any more about climate or science than those who deny it.  It's almost perfectly correlated with left-wing versus right-wing orientation.  And a move toward greater rationality would unbundle them and let evidence inform what the optimal policies ought to be."

You Left Me

Not drawn and quartered --
But splayed and dissected,
Dissected and splayed
In malevolent air.

The smell of your pillow,
The dots now connected,
The knot in your neck
When I tousled your hair.

Let me rock you in my arms.
I'll hold you safe and small --
A refugee from the Seraphim
With your rich girl rags and all ...

TFTD:

It's easy to describe the leaves in the autumn,
And it's oh so easy in the spring,
But down through January and February
It's a very different thing.

TFTD:

It don't mean a thing if it ain't got that swing.

Leonard Cohen Felt It Unseemly to Write Down

That he slept the soundest and most peaceful sleep,
Lubricated by his lover's extreme unction.

Arthur Miller on the Fate of Marilyn, on the Day of Her Funeral -- 8 Aug 1962

Instead of jetting to the funeral to get my picture taken I decided to stay home and let the public mourners finish the mockery.  Not that everyone there will be false, but enough.  Most of them there destroyed her, ladies and gentlemen.  She was destroyed by many things, and some of those things are you.  And some of those things are destroying you.  Destroying you now.  Now as you stand there weeping and gawking, glad that it is not you going into the earth, glad that it is this lovely girl who at last you killed.

Two Snippets from "Boardwalk Empire"

"It is remarkable how large small irritations can loom in the minds of great men."

[and]

"What do you do for fun Esther?"
"I run naked through the pages of the United States Criminal Code."

TFTD:

They say that bears have love affairs
And so do camels.
We're mini-mammals.
Let's misbehave.