Nate Knows Nada

I have found myself liking a fairly new journal of religion and society, The New Pantagruel. 

I’m a self-described iconoclastic liberal.  I find myself more
interested, in the end, in intelligence than in the underlying politics
of what I read.  It’s why I am not attracted to blogs like DailyKos
— I’ve met and talked with Kos, and he’s intelliegent, but the blog
puts service to partisan ends above intelligent discussion and
argument.  I may want to check it every so often, but I can’t read
it with any regularity.  And since there’s so much choice on the
interweb-thingy, I spedn my reading energies elsewhere.

Pantagruel has shown up fairly recently, in the last few months or
so.  And I have to admit that any blog that gets endorsement from
Christianity Today would probably be something that I would normally
steer clear of, as CT all too often puts service to ideology above
intelligent, questioning thought.  (This is at least true in the
print version of the CT mag.  Books and Culture,
however, provides the exception to the general CT rule; there you’ll
find intelligent argument, questioning of some received dogmas, and
such.  Less fear, more thought.)

Pantagruel offers intelligent thinking on religion and society. 
It purports to be sort of from the conservative side of the political
and religious playground, but my examination of it over the last few
days indicates that thinking is more important than ideological
subservience.  It’s intelligent and questioning in the same way The Revealer
is.  And the editors actually shy away from explicit statement of
political or religious creed, preferring to let the reader make his or
her own judgement.  Refreshing out there in a journal of religion
and society.  So take a look….

Someone in the last few hours did a Yahoo search on “Coco Chanel
Ethical Values.”  This blog came up as the first and second
results.

That’s fantastic.

Here’s a story about how it might change.  (Need Washington Post access, but just use bugmenot.com,
and you don’t have to register.  And if you use Firefox, there’s
an extension that’ll automate most of the BugMeNot process.)  Mind
you, he’s still regarded as sinful for being gay, but the fact that his
community rallied around him is a sign of significant progress, and
hopefully they’ll get further sooner rather than later.

This kid was lucky, but I’d like to think that his luck will be more common in the future.

I have wanted an iPod for some while now.  And this site will help me get one, as well as set you on the way to getting one, too.

This, amazingly, is legit.  The local student paper checked it out, and some of my students have actually gotten their iPods.

I am an information packrat.  I save all sorts of things because
they are printed and contain information that I have found amusing,
stimulating, informative, or unexpected.  I have all my New
Yorkers.  I have massive files of articles and notes.  I have
all my important, personal e-mails since I started e-mailing 11 years
ago (I think).  I have a ridiculous number of books.

Should I worry?  Can you go too far?

I still have my first two computers, although one is at my parents’ house.

Anyone want to be my paper-copy-backup, offsite location?

Check out this story over at Crooked Timber:

Now, some interesting evidence as to how this happens in the NYT. The Times has a story
today about how the current race is too close to call. However, for a
few minutes this morning, they had the wrong version of the story up on
their website – they’d posted the raw version, with all the editors’
comments included. A good friend spotted it in time, and sent it to me
– I enclose it below the fold. The smoking gun (I’ve bolded the
editor’s comments):

Bush supporters were also out. The driver of a Greyhound
bus stopped his vehicle on a Philadelphia street, got out and ripped
down a campaign poster for John Kerry.we cant let this stand as emblematic of Bush supporters. either get some quotes from bush supporters or leave it out

{pictureRef (, align:”left”)}I often peruse the couple
announcements in the Times, just to see what’s going on among the
Northeastern elite class.  Usually, they are pretty
standard.  At least one person has a parent in the
Boston-Washington corridor, or the couple are from New York. 
Someone has an Ivy League or Ivy-equivalent degree or two.  And
occasionally there’s a photo.

But this one made me retch.  Same for BF.  It’s not the text so much as the photo.  The obvious shmoopiness combined with the Burberry scarf wrapped around both of them. 
Power elite, party of two.  It’s all too reminiscent of the “Sex
in the City” episode where Charlotte spends a maddening amount of time
and effort to compose a picture of her fiance and her; she has studied
the wedding page in great detail to find out what the NYT is looking
for so she can guarantee that her picture goes in.  This one is so
obviously such an attempt, it’s hard to take it seriously.

Sends shivers up and down my spine.

Let it never be said that recent gay weddings have exhibited the height of bad taste.

A mix of Calvinism and paganism.

On the first day of the new economic quarter, Brad deLong of Berkeley’s
economics department (and a very nice guy, I’m told by friends who’ve
taken his grad classes) does a clean-up of bad economic analysis put out on the web, on one site in particular.

…An 0.3% upward revision in the second quqrter’s growth rate will raise
the 2004 annual GDP growth rate by 0.075%, and the 2003-2004 average
growth rate by 0.0375%. That’s not enough to cause anybody to change
their image of the strength of the economy under George W. Bush. And
this idea of a “Bush boom”… Over his term so far, the economy has
grown at an average rate of 2.5% per year. That’s a slower rate than
economic growth during… Clinton II, Clinton I, Reagan II, Reagan I,
Carter (yes, really), Nixon I, Johnson, Kennedy-Johnson, Eisenhower I,
and Truman. As measured by the growth of real GDP, the economy has
grown more slowly in only three presidential terms in the last 13: Bush
41, Nixon-Ford, and Eisenhower II. As measured by the growth of
employment, we have to go all the way back to Herbert Hoover to find
something worse.

Why is no one baying for this man’s head like they did for Jimmy
Carter?  I admit Kerry is no Ronald Reagan (although he did claim
Reagan’s mantle in the debate), but this administration has been pretty
bad for the mass of Americans pocketbooks.

Talk like a Pirate Day has passed, but I ran across a piece of Pirate Mass.

My contribution:   The Pieces of the Lord be always with ye!
Arr!  And with ye, as well, scurvy mates.

And check out ye piratical sermon.