One hundred twelve. That’s the number of times so far this NFL season that, collectively, the Buffalo Bills medical staff has uttered the words, “Oh, shit.”

Anyway, onto the links:

:: I swear, I’ve eaten half my family’s dinner like this. And I had to force myself to stop before eating it all.

:: Village rule number one: You can’t employ a play on words that any Republican might be able to use as an excuse to run to the fainting couch and have a good old-fashioned cry. Democrats must be as bland and technocratic as humanly possible in their political rhetoric. If they can put their audience to sleep within the first five minutes, so much the better. But that doesn’t mean Republicans and the media can’t have loads of nasty “pun” at the expense of Democrats.

:: We don’t need to think in terms of mending our holes. We can simply go on (or stay firm in our place on the earth?) with the holes. And maybe they can even help us through troubled waters.

:: This is, once again, Rudy the wind-up doll. He’s got a small supply of stock phrases (9/11, lower taxes, crime fighter) and he just hauls out whichever one seems handiest for the moment. Actual knowledge of anything necessary to be president? None.

:: I’m on record here on this blog as saying that I’m okay, at least in principle, with updated versions of Flash Gordon, Buck Rogers, and Logan’s Run. I love the original versions of these, but revisiting them doesn’t bother me. However, the thought of a new Day the Earth Stood Still turns my stomach. So how do I reconcile these opposing viewpoints?

:: Save the vowels!

:: That’s the recipe for building an environment that fosters moral behavior. It doesn’t involve gods or even belief in gods. It is completely independent of Jesus, Mohammed, Buddha, or atheism. It works — religion is irrelevant to morality. The surest way to create moral individuals is to build a stable society where desirable behaviors are rewarded, and the hoop-jumping frivolities of religion are not a requirement to accomplish that.

:: What I’ve depicted isn’t really what northern Manitoba looks like, really…but I didn’t want that, anyway. What I wanted was what Canadians see when they close their eyes and think of Canada. (Interesting interview with a comics creator I’d been previously unaware of.)

:: Driving around in recent weeks, it’s been common to see people standing with their backs to the side of the road, poised in odd positions. Stretched. Squatting. Contorted in some game of imaginary Twister… all in pursuit of the most amazing blackberries imaginable.

:: When I started the Silk Road Project, I began to understand the geographical and musical connections between all these incredible cultures — all these ‘other’ classical musics, the Persian classical music and Indian classical music and mugam in Afghanistan and so on. I got a sense that at one time these connections were much closer and over time that certain things got split off and developed independently, in the way that the French spoken in Louisiana and Quebec broke off from the original. (Alex Ross interviews Yo Yo Ma on his blog. This is required reading, folks. Yo Yo Ma is so much more than the best cellist going today.)

All for this week. We’ll be back next week, as always!

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