Comments on: What’s Wrong With Canada; a Wonderful, Awful Idea; More Haeckel; the Best Song of 2007

By: jholbo

jholbo — Fri, 19 Dec 2008 10:06:09 +0000

There’s a Queen of Canada?

By: nick s

nick s — Fri, 19 Dec 2008 07:39:27 +0000

The Levy-Wilkinson exchange is “interesting” in the sense that it’s really not that accurate on Levy’s side. Perhaps it’s hard to explain the concept of the Queen of Canada; perhaps it’s hard to explain that in the Westminster system, the head of state or her representative chooses a prime minister to form a government. That doesn’t mean it can’t be done. (And he skipped Harper’s decision to target public-sector workers, which was at least as significant as party funding in the crisis.)

By: Michael

Michael — Fri, 19 Dec 2008 00:23:49 +0000

Jivas are also the tiny soul essences of all living beings in Jainism, and it is the thoughtless killing of them that besmirches our own jivas, requiring painful austerities to purify ourselves, etc.. Jivas are everywhere: they are the myriad tiny animalcules inhabiting, um, er, many places, including, ah, female genitalia, which makes sexual activity a pretty iffy proposition for a Jain.

Meanwhile back to Haeckel. His reference to ‘matter and energy’ sounds very like that wonderfully titled and very 19th century German materialist tract, Kraft und Stoff, whose message is: that’s all it all is. I would so like to write a book with that title. But, alas, it’s already taken.

By: jim in austin

jim in austin — Wed, 17 Dec 2008 05:07:05 +0000

Let me be the first to wish you A Very Haeckel Christmas!

By: John Holbo

John Holbo — Wed, 17 Dec 2008 01:54:22 +0000

Fixed. Thanks.

By: Picador

Picador — Tue, 16 Dec 2008 19:30:28 +0000

FYI, both links are to Yglesias. The NY Times link.