How, you might wonder, would my blog look with all the images and style removed?

It would look a lot like this.

Every time I hear a new artist I like, I tell my wife and she says I told you about her ages ago. Then I tell Matt and he says, dude, you should listen to your wife everyone knows about her.

Anyway, I just discovered Adele and, on first listening….pretty cool. So which one of you told me about Adele?

A rhapsody playlist for those of you who don’t have access to all the music in the world:
Adele

and….

The price of freedom is tolerating behavior by others that may be undignified by our own lights. I would be happy if Britney Spears and “American Idol” would go away, but I put up with them in return for not having to worry about being arrested by the ice-cream police.

and…

Worst of all, theocon bioethics flaunts a callousness toward the billions of non-geriatric people, born and unborn, whose lives or health could be saved by biomedical advances. Even if progress were delayed a mere decade by moratoria, red tape, and funding taboos (to say nothing of the threat of criminal prosecution), millions of people with degenerative diseases and failing organs would needlessly suffer and die. And that would be the biggest affront to human dignity of all.

In which Steven Pinker defends the notion that

“Dignity Is a Useless Concept.” Macklin argued that bioethics has done just fine with the principle of personal autonomy–the idea that, because all humans have the same minimum capacity to suffer, prosper, reason, and choose, no human has the right to impinge on the life, body, or freedom of another. This is why informed consent serves as the bedrock of ethical research and practice, and it clearly rules out the kinds of abuses that led to the birth of bioethics in the first place, such as Mengele’s sadistic pseudoexperiments in Nazi Germany and the withholding of treatment to indigent black patients in the infamous Tuskegee syphilis study. Once you recognize the principle of autonomy, Macklin argued, “dignity” adds nothing.

in a critique of President Bush’s council on Bioethics headed up by the man who said

There is a “mortal danger, that a person has a right over his body, a right that allows him to do whatever he wants to do with it.”

and offers up quotable gems such as

A free society disempowers the state from enforcing a conception of dignity on its citizens

and

In fact, every one of us voluntarily and repeatedly relinquishes dignity for other goods in life. Getting out of a small car is undignified. Having sex is undignified. Doffing your belt and spread- eagling to allow a security guard to slide a wand up your crotch is undignified. Most pointedly, modern medicine is a gantlet of indignities. Most readers of this article have undergone a pelvic or rectal examination, and many have had the pleasure of a colonoscopy as well. We repeatedly vote with our feet (and other body parts) that dignity is a trivial value, well worth trading off for life, health, and safety.

It’s long, but worth the read.

I had a late game last night and, as usual after a late game - especially when my goal was so spectacular - I didn’t get to sleep until very very late.

Before I went to sleep though, I googled for Portland English Premiership soccer tv. Among the hits was a forum post entitled “Where can I watch English Premier League football in Portland?” and the most popular answer was Kells Irish Pub at Second and Ash right next to the Burnside Bridge.

I set my alarm for 6:30 AM, went to sleep, woke up four hours later, put on my Red Devils shirt and set off to watch the thrilling climax to ManU’s season.

Central Portland has this neat feature where all the East/West streets are numbered from 1 to N (1 is next to the river) and all the North/South streets are in alphabetical order. I was headed for some Irish pub at 2nd and something beginning with A which, in my blurry mind, was just over the bridge.

I arrived at 2nd/Ash at 7:03 just after the kick off in a very inhospitable looking area. Not at all the kind of place where I would put a pub. In fact, not at all where anyone would put a pub. I had already missed the kick off so drove around frantically looking for an Irish pub and eventually got out of the car to search frantically on foot.

I found two very, very drunk guys getting out of a pickup and heading for a bar. I asked them if there was an Irish Pub in the area and the put their arms around me and said no but, although they liked Irish music, I should join them in this pub because the beer was better. I thanked them for the offer and got back in my car and drove around frantically some more.

I gave up and headed for The Pearl in search of any pub that might be showing it. No luck there either so I went home. By now, I was incredibly sleepy and planned to just get back in bed but my laptop was still open and I took one last look at the map that I had left open the night before. It was the other Second and Ash and I could still catch the second half of the game!

And what a second half it was!

The Kells is an excellent pub for watching sports and was absolutely packed. One half was a sea of red watching the ManU v Wigan game, the other half a sea of blue watching the Chelsea v Bolton game with everyone drinking Guinness (including me).

Giggs’s goal was sublime - what a way to celebrate equaling Bobby Charlton’s record of 758 appearances for ManU - and the whole red end of the pub was up on its feet.

I am sooooo glad, I didn’t get back in bed.

A friend asked me today if centre-forwards are typically the strongest or most skillful players on the field.

Judge for yourself (click on the photo for more).

One of the people who was involved in the Milgram experiment wrote his own story.

In retrospect, I believe that my upbringing in a socialist-oriented family steeped in a class struggle view of society taught me that authorities would often have a different view of right and wrong than mine.

Story so far…

In a thrilling climax to the English football season, Manchester United and Chelsea were level on points with two games to go. They also happen to be the last remaining teams in the Champions League.

ManU won their game on Saturday and were thus 3 points clear. Chelsea had a tough game vs Newcastle tonight that they had to win to draw level.

Imagine my delight when I saw the headline.

Imagine my confusion when I saw the picture. Imagine my disappointment when I read the read the caption.

[Hint for the non-savvy. Chelsea are the team in blue. Ballack scored and he plays for Chelsea.]

I still don’t like Gail Collins, but this is pretty funny.

Meanwhile, to make up for the lost revenue, McCain says “all we need to do is cut out hundreds of millions and billions of dollars of pork-barrel projects.” These are presumably different pork-barrel projects from the ones McCain is going to cut in order to pay for $613 billion in permanent tax cuts.

Hillary Clinton, who jumped on the gas-tax holiday bandwagon posthaste, wants to pay for it with a windfall profits tax on oil companies. This makes her plan much more fiscally responsible. Not only does she balance the books, she turns a proposal that was unlikely to ever get passed into one that could not make it through the Senate if Ronald Reagan and John F. Kennedy both rose from the dead and hand-carried it there.

There are few things more satisfying than taking a strong stand in favor of something that is never going to happen. Free pander!

Went to Powell’s today. After 10 years of appreciating the fact that Barnes and Noble had two whole shelves full of books about science, it was a shock to find a whole store - about the size of my previously local Barnes and Noble - full of books about science.

The first 8 books I picked up were OMG-I-could-read-this-all-day books. I had to get outta there before I became lost in the singularity.

If you ever find yourself wondering “Where’s Kevin?” the answer, to a first approximation, will be “he’s at Powell’s”.