Jeff reminded me to be careful when we book our funereal silent clowns in case we get mimes by mistake. That would suck. Fortunately, these people are on the case.

Timoth Garton-Ash describes in The Guardian what he sees as the root cause in the difference between the US outlook on the War on terror and the European outlook.

He compares the pro-war conservatives in the US with the militaristic imperialists (”Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori“) in pre-World War I Europe and suggests that the seminal event which ended such thinking in Europe was, in fact, The Great War.

Interesting analysis that I need time to digest but I can’t let the Dulce et Decorum reference to pass without quoting Wilfred Owen.

Bent double, like old beggars under sacks,
Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge,
Till on the haunting flares we turned our backs
And towards our distant rest began to trudge.
Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots
But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame; all blind;
Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots
Of disappointed shells that dropped behind.

GAS! Gas! Quick, boys!– An ecstasy of fumbling,
Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time;
But someone still was yelling out and stumbling
And floundering like a man in fire or lime.–
Dim, through the misty panes and thick green light
As under a green sea, I saw him drowning.

In all my dreams, before my helpless sight,
He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning.

If in some smothering dreams you too could pace
Behind the wagon that we flung him in,
And watch the white eyes writhing in his face,
His hanging face, like a devil’s sick of sin;
If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood
Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs,
Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud
Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,–
My friend, you would not tell with such high zest
To children ardent for some desperate glory,
The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est
Pro patria mori.

Historical note : Wilfred Owen completed this in 1918 but still found time to die before the end of the war a few months later.

It’s official! John Derbyshire says so…

Trouble is, Jesus was not a philosopher. The Bible is full of inspiration and spiritual insights, but as a handbook for conducting worldly affairs, it needs to be taken with a dash of, well, worldliness. Taking in strangers may get you robbed. Turning the other cheek may get you killed.

Like many liberal, atheist types I have always been a big admirer of Jesus’s philosophy and have struggled to reconcile the conservative worldview with Jesus’s outlook on social affairs - What would Jesus drive? What kind of gun would Jesus own? etc. and, most germane to this post,

Ye have heard that it hath been said, An eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth [Matthew 5:38]

Thanks to the Derb, I no longer have to struggle with the paradox. The Christian Right isn’t.

Took the family to the fireworks on Tuesday and I was dying for a pee. When I got back, I felt so relieved that I shouted

Hooray, pee!

at the top of my lungs. Jazz immediately shouted back

Pee? Brilliant!

One of the great things about the World Cup is that the standard of the commercials goes sky high - much better than the superbowl commercials, sorry. Who can forget the Brazilians playing football in the airport in ‘98 ?

[Pssst - Madison Avenue. TiVo owners don't use the skip-30-seconds button to skip the commercials. They use it to skip the bad commercials.]

The high water mark this year was the Jose+11 series for Adidas.

¡Jose! ¡A casa!

After watching it at least 73 times, I only noticed last night that the soundtrack goes something like “If you don’t give my football back, I’m gonna get my dad on you.”

Like the best of art, the best lines from the best commercials leak into the culture so that I can now walk into any house in California and shout

I have found a way to carry six beers at the same time!

and get the immediate response

You’ve found a way to carry six beers at the same time? Brilliant!