…One writer argues travel has lost its romance because it is too easy. Sorry, but travel has lost its romance because it is too hard, though hard in a different way than it was fifty years ago. In 1957, travel was difficult like a safari. In 2007, travel is difficult like getting a hip replacement in the British medical system.
Society
Heckling the Families of Dead Soldiers, for Extra Credit
Orson Scott Card writes about a truly disgusting and infuriating phenomenon.
the airplane I was flying in held, in its cargo space, the body of a young man who had died in the service of America — in my service. His family was waiting to meet the airplane and say good-bye to their beloved son and brother. … The family was actually from another city, one with a much larger airport than this one. But they had opted to drive the extra miles to receive the coffin here … so they could avoid the demonstrators who had lately been showing up. … “Hippie college students,” … “They egged the hearse.” On that occasion, the brother of the dead soldier was so hurt and angry at these strangers who dared to defile his brother’s memory and worsen his family’s suffering that “he clocked one of them.” So the brother was arrested for assault and could not be with his family for the rest of the services in honor of one of America’s fallen. The demonstrators suffered no penalty. In fact, they received extra credit from a college professor because they had “taken part in a demonstration.”
Does anyone know if this is true? Does anyone know the name and place of employment of the “college professor” in question? Has anyone protested this conduct?
Please put any reliable information you may have about this in the comments.
UPDATE: I have seen nothing else about this. Nor apparently has anyone else. I am starting to think it is an urban legend, despite having some surface plausibility. If it were true the blogosphere would be all over it. Still, I’d be interested to hear from anyone who has facts affirming this tale.
The Cattiness of Women
The Lehrer Report did a puff piece on Pelosi (Mark Shields’ glowing praise might suggest they’d gone over the top). But if issues like the Jane Harmen chairmanship weren’t mentioned, they did make me look twice at an A&L link to the “Queen Bee” syndrome.
This is probably of little interest to the Chicagoboyz, so clearly boyz, but it does indicate a problem – both with women’s attitudes toward the women they employ and those employed toward their bosses. On the other hand, I feel quite lucky in my department chair, partially, I suspect, because we are both women of a certain age – when we speak, we understand each other, in more thorough ways than I (and I suspect she as well) do with much younger people or with men. Our allusions are not lost on one another, for instance. This is complicated territory and most of the time it is a good idea to assume something other than sexism is going on, but it is interesting, nonetheless.
Questioning Assumptions: Taxes and Expropriation of Financial Assets
Your analysis is good. But what happens if the assumptions on which you base your analysis change? Carl from Chicago explains how the analyses on which much conventional tax- and retirement-planning advice is based can fall apart if lawmakers change the rules of the game. Carl points out that the rules have been changed before and probably will be again. The conventional advice no longer looks so wise.
Review of “Annihilation from Withinâ€
Annihilation from Within
AfW is eminently worth reading and relatively likely to do some actual good in the world. But you haven’t grazed in here to read a blanket endorsement, and I’d be no blogger if I didn’t contend (with all-but-nonexistent credibility) with some portion of Iklé’s thesis; so for a thoroughgoingly unqualified critique, complete with annoyingly personal speculation and fuzzy intuition-laden commentary, read on!
(~2,700 words; approximate reading time 7-14 minutes, not counting lots of links.)