take a crazy ride through time: May edition

What were they saying a year ago?


"I think I'm far too cynical to sit through graduation speeches without the desire to heckle. Despite the hyperbolic pretensions of the commencement speakers, who always seem to be prepping for a career giving motivational seminars to Pizza Hut employees, there is hardly a word spoken in them that applies to even 1/10th of the graduating class." Ed Brayton, Dispatches from the Culture Wars


"It is a difficult thing to face, the feeling that your life is wasting away. I can't imagine how hard the feeling will be when I'm forty, and am wondering why I haven't done more with my life. Four years of time wasted is hard enough--forty will be unbearable." Matt Anderson, Mere Orthodoxy


"I have been kicking paper balls made out of nasty newspaper articles around the house. I also painted my eyelids with a red lipstick to see how I would look like as a vampire. Pretty impressive. But the stuff doesn't come off very easily, and now I look like I have been crying for hours. Actually, it goes with being grumpy quite well." Echidne, Echidne of the Snakes


"I make no secret of the fact that I think Stephin Merritt of The Magnetic Fields is a song-writing genius, and this new album hasn’t altered that opinion at all. He has a lugubrious baritone voice that renders his wonderful lyrics as wistful or deadpan hilarious as appropriate." but she's a girl...


"You know, just the other day I was thinking that, merely by being born in America, I am endowed with a superlative sense of morality that sets me above the people from other countries. Fortunately, I now have Town Hall columnist Cliff May to disabuse me of that notion." Jason Rosenhouse, Evolutionblog


"When I talk to religious conservatives about the libertarian compromise, I usually frame the hypothetical question this way: If you were guaranteed the absolute right to practice your religion, speak your mind on any issue, say anything you want publicly about homosexuality and never fear prosecution, or any type of state enforced persecution—in other words, “to be (absolutely) left alone”—but in order to get this protection, these same rights must also be granted to hard core pornographers, would you take this deal? And I usually get a look or a response like I’m the Devil." Jon Rowe


"Like persuading my mother to plug in the shredder and begin thinking about the initial procedures for commencing to inaugurate the opening stages of how to plan to get rid of newsweeklies from the mid-1990s, and fixing my father-in-law’s lawn-sprinkler system so that it will not only run for 30 minutes every other day except during leap years in every other sunspot cycle, but it will also co-ordinate its CPU with that of his burglar alarm and call-blocking system, so that if an intruder breaks into their house and attempts to receive a call from a telemarketer, he will be promptly and embarrassingly drenched to the skin." Michael Bérubé


"It used to be that spending a long lazy morning with a cup of coffee and the Sunday paper was a relaxing exercise, rather than a stressful one. Now that I've purged a few vile humors here, I think I'm going to spend a soothing few hours in the lab with my fish. And then I'm going to take a peaceful, calm walk in the cemetery." PZ Myers, Pharyngula


"Am I celebrating America's failure or wishing that America would lose? No. I am lamenting America's failure, because in the war of ideas, we've already lost." Jason Kuznicki, Positive Liberty


"Teachers, one routinely hears, go the extra-extra mile, putting up with low pay, bratty kids, unsympathetic parents, lousy administrators, faulty air conditioners, broken desks, blah blah blah. Yes, we're heroes, walking high above the world in golden boots." yours truly



See also: April's crazy ride through time