Irritations

Some web sites now feature banner ads with a line below them reading "Make this ad go away." The line is a link which, of course, takes you to a web page with a bigger ad for the same thing. Clever. Once. Who thinks this crap up? And more importantly, why do they still have jobs?

Lucky Rodents

The acorn crop here is just huge this year. Walking along the street under an oak today, I had to kick dozens of them out of my way- (they are very hard and it is easy to slip on them when they are on pavement.) The squirrels are going to be quite fat.

Quote

Democracy proceeds on the assumption that nobody knows enough, that nothing is final, that the old order (whether of men or institutions) will be carried offstage every twenty years. If democracy can be understood as a field of temporary coalitions among people of different intersts, skill,and generations, then everybody has need of everybody else. To the extent that a democratic government gives its citizens a chance to chase their own dreams, it gives itself the chance not only of discovering its multiple glories and triumphs but also of surviving its multiple follies and crimes.

-Lewis Lapham, in the Fall, 2001 issue of Harper's magazine.