A life in words

  • Super-Quick

    A super-quick, late-night post: Craziness of project for school, craziness of trying (with varying degrees of success) to keep the dinner group organized, craziness with temple committee stuff, craziness starting a poetry club…. Craziness! Did I say craziness? All of that contrasted with The Most Relaxing Weekend EVAR (to vernaculate). I attribute the relaxatiousness of…

  • A Healthy Little Dose of Doom and Gloom (Plus Prophecies!)

    [Update: This editorial wasn’t really written by the guy I originally said it was written by. I’m not sure who actually wrote it, but they gave rights to freely distribute it, so we’re OK.] We’re going to call this Monstropolitan’s very first guest editorial, although the guest who wrote the editorial isn’t yet aware of…

  • Thus Quoth Kissinger

    Russia Blog is running a recent editorial from the International Herald Tribune in which Henry Kissinger and George Schultz discuss the past and prospects of Russian-Western relations. I thank these two former Secretaries of State for their level-headedness. Let’s cut the rhetoric and be forward-thinking. Read it here.

He who knows only his own side of the case, knows little of that. His reasons may be good, and no one may have been able to refute them. But if he is equally unable to refute the reasons on the opposite side; if he does not so much as know what they are, he has no ground for preferring either opinion…. Nor is it enough that he should hear the arguments of adversaries from his own teachers, presented as they state them, and accompanied by what they offer as refutations…. He must be able to hear them from persons who actually believe them; who defend them in earnest, and do their very utmost for them. He must know them in their most plausible and persuasive form….John Stuart Mill, On LIberty