This page (one of several):
Lee Egerstrom (quoted) Bruce E. Mahall and F. Herbert Bormann Judith Martin obituary of Thomas Matthews | Category: | index pages:
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Bruce E. Mahall and F. Herbert Bormann | ||
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On this planet, we are but guests
published in the |
The Earth has its own rules, grounded in physics and chemistry, geology and biology. [...] Earthquakes, tsunamis, volcanic eruptions, hurricanes, tornadoes, 100-year floods, massive wildfires and epidemics are dramatic parts of nature, neither all service nor all harm, creating and destroying, and governed by rules that are indifferent to humans. Our anthropocentric economic model ignores Earths rules and is on a collision course with them. We need to see ourselves as part of nature, governed by nature, not economics, beholden to nature for ecosystem services and subject to natures disturbances. We need to view our existence in nature as dependent on functions we are unable to perform ourselves. And we need to recognize that we now have the power and the reckless inclination, driven by shortsighted anthropocentrism, to disrupt these functions to the degree that Earth will become uninhabitable for us. | Topics: |
Ecosystem services need to advance from recognition of services to humans to recognition of services to our planet. We need to find ways to avoid changing Earth in irreversible directions. We need to soberly evaluate anthropocentric economics sacred cow, growth, in light of sustainability. And we need to think beyond our own brief lifetimes. | ||
text checked (see note) Apr 2010 |
Michael E. Mann | ||
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In denial of warming, lies were repeated
in the Star Tribune, July 30, 2010 |
Havanac objects to the term climate-change denier to describe him and his fellow travelers. Perhaps he prefers to think of himself as a skeptic instead? Well, skepticism is a good thing in science. But when it is applied in only one direction (that is, to reject all evidence of climate change while uncritically accepting transparently flawed arguments against it), it is not skepticism at all, but indeed denial. | Topic: |
text checked (see note) Jul 2010 |
Judith Martin
Miss Manners | ||
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in the Star Tribune February 6, 2008 |
Gentle Reader: The Law of the Air, as Miss Manners recognizes it, is Try to stay out of my space and Ill try to stay out of yours. You may notice that the wording is rather loose for an etiquette rule. This is because passenger space keeps getting smaller, and we may all soon be sitting in one anothers laps instead of just leaning back on one another like fallen dominoes. | Topic: |
in the Star Tribune December 12, 2007 |
Miss Manners does not advise you to taunt a person who has just been proven to be rude. Your answer should be a soft, Why, thats very kind of you to point that out. The phrasing prompts the other person to say an automatic thank you that is choked off with the realization that gratitude is neither meant nor deserved. | Topic: |
in the Star Tribune July 25, 2007 |
Did you never see anything wrong with the idea that brides should be publicly packaged and labeled according to their purity? All right, neither did anyone else except Miss Manners for a century and a half. Dear Queen Victoria launched the white wedding dress fad at ther marriage in 1840. White had been a usual color for young girls before they were allowed to overstimulate themselves and others by wearing exciting colors and jewels and putting up their hair. When the color of the wedding dress came to be considered as a declaration that its contents were new or used, Miss Manners cannot say. She only knows how relieved she is that this has ceased or so she thought, until you spoke up. Goodness knows there is plenty to criticize in that prolonged display of expensive egoism and blatant greed that is the modern wedding without resorting to such vulgarity. | Topic: |
in the Star Tribune October 17, 2012 | The idea was to show one thing at a time, although Miss Manners knows that there should be a better way to put that. Let her just say that cleavage should not be displayed when the dress is down-to-here in the back, or up-to-there anywhere in the skirt. | |
text checked (see note) Jul, Dec 2007; Feb 2008; Oct 2012 |
from an obituary of Thomas Matthews by Ben Cohen, quoting Lee Egerstrom | ||
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Thomas Matthews, a newsmans journalist
Star Tribune, September 21, 2007 |
He could make readers smile even in weighty stories. He wrote that the roster [employment rolls at the treatment plant] was filled with lots of political habitués and lots of sons of habitués, recalled Egerstrom. | Topic: |
text checked (see note) Sep 2007 |
Mike Meyers | ||
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Regulation (and more of it, not less)
Star Tribune February 12, 2012 |
America suffers not from too much regulation, but from too little. Lax or sabotaged regulation leads to far more casualties than vigorous enforcement of laws governing commerce. When public watchdogs do not even bark when they should bite, expect widespread harm. The U.S. economy still reels from the worst recession in 75 years and not because financial regulators were overzealous. [...] Alert regulators could have averted the crisis, but they were party to the magical thinking that market players always know best. | |
Technically feasible sometimes gets confused with technology that can be bought at zero cost. To be sure, regulators never should publish 2,000-page rule books when 20 pages, or even 200, would do. Indeed, unnecessarily complex regulation can provide cover for corporate lawyers to challenge or evade rules and laws for decades. But trusting the businesses to do right by society on their own ignores their prime reason to exist to make as much money as they can in as short a time as possible. Markets have a term for a good-hearted capitalist who sacrifices profits for clean air, pure water, protected workers and safe products when rivals are not required, by law, to do the same. The term is bankrupt. | ||
text checked (see note) Jul 2012 |
Minneapolis Tribune | ||
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Despite indiginities, the eagle still soars
| Much our national prowess lies in our heterogeneous origin in the mixing of iron and silver in our blood but as we pass through the crucible of Independence Day, we should become more and more allied in patriotic feeling, more and more homogeneous in desire and purpose. Subjected to this annual test, foreigners will learn to adopt the faith that is at the basis of our national life that the people are wiser than their rulers, that everybody knows more than anybody, and that the greatest statesman is he who governs himself. | Topic: |
text checked (see note) Jul 2009 |
Peter Moore | ||
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So this middle-aged white guy tells a joke ... How to be funny without being offensive.
published in the Star Tribune, May 2, 2007 |
So as a member in good standing of both the majority and the minority, and as such possessing the ability to oppress myself, I feel Im qualified to clear up the questions people have been raising about humor, double standards and political incorrectness that have been the hot topic of late. So here are My Rules For Jokes Involving People Who Arent Like Me. RULE 1 RULE 2 RULE 3 RULE 4 I hope these simple rules will be a useful guide as you make your comedy-styling choices. But if youre still confused, just remember: RULE 5 | Topic: |
text checked (see note) May 2007 |
Bill Moyers | ||
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Punished for the truth
published in the Star Tribune |
A free press is one where its OK to state the conclusion youre led to by the evidence. One reason Im in hot water is that my colleagues and I at NOW didnt play by the conventional rules of Beltway journalism. Those rules divide the world into Democrats and Republicans, liberals and conservatives, and allow journalists to pretend they have done their job if, instead of reporting the truth behind the news, they merely give each side an opportunity to spin the news. | Topic: |
These rules of the game permit Washington officials to set the agenda for journalism, leaving the press all too often simply to recount what officials say instead of subjecting their words and deeds to critical scrutiny. | ||
An unconscious people is less inclined to put up a fight, to ask questions and be skeptical. That kind of orthodoxy can kill a democracy or worse. | ||
text checked (see note) May 2005 |
Mike Musgrove | ||
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Porn industry, new technology go hand in hand
from the Washington Post; published in the Star Tribune January 22, 2006 |
Online pornography [...] pioneered such now-commonplace practices as streaming video, trading files and making online purchases. [...] Its an old joke that every new technology is driven by porn. A big attraction for digital cameras, some hold, was the ability to take bedroom photos without having to take film to the snickering teenagers at the corner photo shop. And a force behind the rapid spread of VCR and, later, DVD sales was the ability to watch blue movies without being seen at a theater. More recently, when Apple announced an iPod with video playback capabilities, there was a stampede among sex-oriented entertainment companies to announce that they were making video programming available in the players format. | Topics: |
text checked (see note) Jan 2006 |
W. Scott Olsen | ||
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BOOKMARK
Star Tribune |
The ability to scan a text quickly is wonderful, if your goal is utilitarian. But thats not what reading is. Reading is internal, a process of spirit and psychology more than aesthetics, and perhaps because of this, reading allows one type of communion that no other art form allows. It allows a pause, in process, for contemplation and sustained emotion. | |
We look up and away from the book. Perhaps we gaze at the ceiling; perhaps we gaze out the window. Our gaze has no object. We are looking inward, exploring emotion or intellect or the sweet combination of the two. In this moment, reading has not stopped. Unlike music, where the symphony continues, and unlike film or dance or theater, where the narrative proceeds independently of our perception of it, reading gives us the space to think and feel in a sustained moment of otherness. We hold that moment in the mind as long as we can. Reading is intimate. Perhaps it is the most intimate art form in that every bit of it exists internally. Other than an elegantly designed font or page or binding, there is no external object to literature. Because reading is internal, what we are really doing is exploring our own ability for empathy. | Topics: | |
text checked (see note) August 2022 |
Background graphic copyright © 2003 by Hal Keen