On May 11, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld a California law—supported by 62 percent of California voters back in 2018—that bans the sale, in California, of pork from mother pigs so tightly caged or penned in that they cannot stretch, lie down, or turn around. The new law gives them an extra ten square feet. Not much, but if you are pregnant, any breathing room helps.
As a child of the ’60s, I am finding phrases of that era useful again. One of them—“Everybody’s off on their own trip”—did not necessarily mean drugs even then; it meant we walk our own paths. Sometimes these are mysterious to ourselves and others, even when they intersect.
Ted Engelmann thinks a lot about memory—the traumatic sort, but also the historic, cultural, and sociopolitical memories that should never be erased.
During the First Indochina War, reporters filed stories using cable, and each word cost money, so it made sense to condense Viet Nam, Ha Noi, Sai Gon, and other names. But those days are long gone. Using the correct spelling is more than courtesy; it lets us see the place fresh, as a country with a rich history and culture, not a war we lost.
There is tremendous loneliness in free will and its consequences, in deciding to play a certain game and then defining what it means to win or lose.
Like feisty academics or a team of investigative reporters, philosophers work together to solve problems, but as they do, they challenge and oppose each other, oppose the orthodoxy, in order to reach a new synthesis.
All the driver says is “I’m on my way,” and I grin, not caring how long it takes. Cocky now, I open both windows all the way. Nobody should have to be scared. Yet humans have always had to be scared.
My father was there, the photograph says to me directly. But he was also not there. Not only not visible in the photograph—which, taken from the wing, shows no hunched shoulder or flying cap to indicate the person pressing the firing button—but not there at all. Concentrating, yes; in fear for his life, yes. Supremely there, of course, while the shipboard German gunners sprayed flak at him and he dropped his powerful twin-engine airplane into a dive. But also absent, in a reverie.
Orgasm is a little more specific than laughter, which is definitely contagious. But both topple the boundaries, letting us inside the mind and body of another human being. As we listen, we, too, lose a little of our habitual control.
Luxury matched its dictionary definition: “the state of great comfort and extravagant living.”Now, guided by social media, ads, fashion magazines, and influencers, we grab at the tiniest extravagance.