Thomas Paine on the Cost of Liberty
Powerful words from Thomas Paine, spoken September 11, 1777:
“Those who expect to reap the blessings of freedom, must, like men, undergo the fatigues of supporting it.”
Powerful words from Thomas Paine, spoken September 11, 1777:
“Those who expect to reap the blessings of freedom, must, like men, undergo the fatigues of supporting it.”
First a quick apology – this post is a bit outside of my normal range of topics. But I thought I would share it with you anyway. This is a picture from the University of Chicago Magazine, showing spending on federal contracts by week of the year. That tall bar on the very right –…
I thought I would pass along this hilarious cartoon, suggesting a new way to “nudge” patients to use fewer antibiotics. Of course that nudge requires your doctor to be Batman, and Batman to be a pretty assertive type of physician: (Click here to view comments)
Here’s the opening paragraph from a New York Times magazine article published in May of this year, about monk seals. What a great way to open the piece: The Hawaiian monk seal has wiry whiskers and the deep, round eyes of an apologetic child. The animals will eat a variety of fish and selfish, or…

The best thing about bad art is that it makes fodder for great reviews. Take the opening line of Mina Strohminger’s review of Colin McGee’s “The Meaning of Disgust”: “In disgust research,” she writes in The Journal of Aesthetics and Critical Art, “there is shit, and then there is bullshit.”
Guess which category she thinks McGee’s book falls under?
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It is an awful irony that Ludwig van Beethoven, who I consider the greatest composer in the history of the world, experienced deafness from an early age, a disability that did not seem to interfere with his musical productivity one whit. But it certainly cost him a great deal of suffering, as is quite apparent…
Here is a news story on a new study I collaborated on with Dylan Smith, which shows that even when people realize how terribly awful it can be to suffer from depression, they don’t want to spend much money on treatments that would rid them of depression. A strange and disturbing finding!
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