This is interesting sociologically: why do we love serial killers so much?

I would argue it’s because they give us control over death.  We like death better of there are patterns to it–because even if death is regular and understandable (car accidents, cancer, heart problems) ,our own deaths are random and incommiserate with the rest of our lives, in which we are alive.  Death may be part of life, but it is only part of our individual lives for a brief moment and, as such, it is always violent, painful, unexpected, somehow wrong.  How we deal with death then is through, some would say, the creation of religion, and also the fascination with those who can control death.  We love stories about immortal people, those who can save lives, and those who can take others lives, giving order to an event that seems orderless, giving some element of fairness (a killer has rules, after all, even if we disagree with them) to something that, at the end, is always unfair.

I love the New Yorker.

“I don’t know what the latest record was, but the last record I saw was, like, two hundred and seventy-something pounds,” the former President explained, as reporters thrust recorders into his face. “So that’s like a quarter of the size of the winner here, a little more than a quarter. But that’s a huge watermelon.” Returning to the message of the day—that Hillary knows when to “stand her ground” and when to “find common ground”—he went on to offer a startling comparison between fruit competitions and serving in the White House: “When you grow a big pumpkin or you’re in a watermelon contest, if you give it too much water and the skin breaks, you’re eliminated. And if you give it too little somebody else beats you, because they got a bigger melon or a bigger pumpkin. So it’s like, at the end, and in very tense circumstances, there are these constant judgment calls. You know, it’s kind of like being President—you want to make it as big as you can without breaking the skin.” With that, Bill Clinton may have aptly described his role in his wife’s campaign.

A new book about the Supreme Court, reviewed in Salon.

“The Nine” generates its story arc by overemphasizing the liberal detour after 2000 to set up a coming violent swing to the right. It covers much of the same ground as “Supreme Conflict” by ABC News correspondent Jan Crawford Greenberg. Greenberg got deeper inside the court’s bubble, with background interviews with nine justices and extensive on-the-record comment from Justice O’Connor. Toobin is a tireless reporter, but his beat at the New Yorker is much wider than the Supreme Court, and he is at his best covering volatile stories like the O.J. Simpson case or the Florida recount. He has a less sure feel than Greenberg for the constitutional issues that dominate the Supreme Court’s agenda.

Within these limits, though, “The Nine” is entertaining and illuminating. Toobin draws a vivid and irreverent picture of the justices; it’s best summarized in his estimation of seven justices’ performance in Bush v. Gore. In his account, Chief Justice Rehnquist is slapdash and result-oriented; O’Connor, image-conscious; Kennedy, bloviated and incoherent; Antonin Scalia a self-righteous bully; Clarence Thomas, withdrawn and rigid. The two Clinton appointees, Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Stephen Breyer, are portrayed as timid and flabby. Only Justice John Paul Stevens emerges as an admirable jurist, though any personal picture of Stevens is largely absent from “The Nine.” By contrast, Toobin draws a moving portrait of David Souter, whose faith in moderate-conservative judging was nearly shattered by the haste and fatuousness of the court’s interference in the election. “There were times when David Souter thought of Bush v. Gore and wept,” he writes.

From Salon.

As a short story writer, Junot Díaz found the magic alchemy of subject and style fast — maybe too fast. “Drown,” his debut collection, was published in 1996 to explosive acclaim. This was back in the Clinton era, halcyon days for political correctness and diversity initiatives, when globalism was not yet tethered to terror in the American mind. “Drown” issued a yawp from the Jersey barrio, a shout-out from a homeboy who hadn’t escaped and wasn’t sure he wanted to — and it soared past the gatekeepers into the pages of the New Yorker.

Eleven long years later, “Drown” has become that oxymoron, the contemporary classic, and its author a darling of MFA programs nationwide. By assaying the Dominican-American diaspora in lapel-grabbing prose, Díaz himself became something of an oxymoron: a Guggenheim Award winner who is de facto spokesperson for an entire immigrant community.

“I think this is the most complicated thing that humans have ever built,” Limon says, proudly.

Physics and big things!!  And they’re not weapons either!

I know, I know.  Government intrusion.  People should be informed consumers on their own.  Etc. etc.   It’s not business’s role to take care of people and Big Brother needs to get out of the way.

New York City was recently foiled in its attempt to force fast food restaurants to display calorie counts.  That’s a shame, and here’s why: in inner-city neighborhoods, in places where diabetes is overwhelmingly rampant (and expensive to the state), fast food is what many people eat many times a day for a variety of reasons: it’s all that’s in the neighborhood, people are working multiple jobs, there are cultural affinities for certain types of food.  Whatever reason you like: if you’ve ever lived or worked in the inner-city, you know there are not a lot of chances for fresh salad and an Atkins wrap.

So this whole insistence on free choice assumes a middle class privilege of movement and economic freedom that simply does not exist.  And that’s why we need these laws.

Learn more here and here.

Here’s the trick.  The BBC asks when you’re really dead.  If your heart stops, after a certain time–say, a few minutes, you’re dead.  You can try to do CPR and all that stuff, but once that doesn’t work: dead.  But if you’re brain-dead, are you still dead?  Your heart’s beating.  Your body’s working, provided it’s attached to “extra-ordinary means.”  So, scientifically, what are you?  Dead or alive.

The Catholic Church already teaches that we’re not obligated to keep people alive with “extra-ordinary” means, which often is a great help to the family–it’s exhausting and painful to keep someone alive who is brain-dead and will never recover.  (There’s obviously a lot of gray here–witness the young man who came out of a near-comatose state to semi-consciousness.  Yet there are also clear examples of complete brain atrophy and only basic, stem-level operations.)

So, if we wonder what is death, then a thornier question becomes what is a human life, and when is a human no longer alive?  The Church teaches we should err on the side of caution, and I’m inclined to agree, particularly in terms of the unborn.  And, honestly, I think the lines of brain death and “extraordinary means” are solid enough for now.  But as science gains further insights, such lines may fade.

Controversy about Jehovah’s Witnesses.

The Polish Bishops agree. You don’t need them!

(Well, you don’t need them when you’re dead.  I suppose you do need them now.)