things you ought to read that I'm too tired to add to (and really, don't need to)

[sisyphusshrugged]

on physics and poetry

Quantum mechanics is important and mind-bending, to be sure. But it does not repudiate what classical physics knew about how the universe operates: it explains why the world operates the way classical physics describes it. Quantum physics underlies our boring, prosaic, conventionally linear lives. It is the reason water boils at 100 degrees Celsius at sea level, the reason a sharp knife cuts a tomato better than a dull one, the reason dry-fucking is no fun.

Here’s a handy guide: if a person tries to explain away an unusual claim in terms of quantum mechanics, he or she is almost certainly bullshitting you unless the subject being discussed is a) colder than anything you will ever encounter, b) faster than anything you will ever ride, or c) too small to be resolved using a light microscope. Otherwise, quantum mechanics explains the world as it is.

But that’s not what bothered me about the passage...

Gwen Ifill on the Lieberman/Lamont race

The candidate was trying to defeat the once-popular incumbent in a race for a U.S. Senate seat from Connecticut.

"You can choose between a senator who has been there 18 years and seems to have lost touch with our common concerns," the challenger told a Rotary luncheon in Bridgeport. "Or you can vote for a senator who will be there when you and your family need him."

Was this 2006 Democratic candidate Ned Lamont on the attack? How timely. How in-your-face. How ... dated.Joe Lieberman

It turns out the candidate being quoted was Joseph Lieberman -- 18 years ago -- when he was running to defeat Republican Lowell Weicker.

I happen to know he said this because I was there, covering the campaign for The Washington Post. Looking back at the articles I filed on the Weicker-Lieberman race in 1988, my jaw drops at the similarities.

Lieberman, then a popular two-term attorney general, was the underdog for much of that race -- much as Ned Lamont, the millionaire cable executive, was until this summer.

Now, with a fresh statewide poll in hand showing him ahead Lieberman by 13 points, Lamont heads into the Aug. 8 primary with all of the advantages the younger Lieberman once had.

This time, Lamont is the fresh face. Lieberman is the Washington insider. Lamont is the nimble challenger. Lieberman is the comfortable incumbent who awoke only slowly to the potent political force on his doorstep.

The driving issue, of course, has been Lieberman's support for the war in Iraq. Furious Connecticut Democrats expressed such unhappiness with their senator that Lieberman announced last month that if he does not win the primary, he will run as an independent in the fall.

But as much as the Iraq war debate has dominated this campaign, Lieberman's apparent willingness to leave his party to hang onto his Senate seat has some Democrats especially upset.

And because there seems to be nothing new under the sun in politics, it has stirred other comparisons to the 1988 Senate race.

"Lowell Weicker is not a real Republican," Lieberman said then. "He's not a real Democrat. He does what he wants when he wants to do it."

Ned Lamont Lamont is saying roughly the same thing now. When we caught up with him at an Irish Festival in Trumbull one weekend in June, he told me: "Senator Lieberman's got some decisions to make. He's going to have to decide if he's a Democrat."

Mr. Olbermann has some thoughts on Mr. Rivera

An Enron lobbyist explains why he supports Mr. Lieberman

Rabbi Lapin has unusual moral standards. We knew that, though. After all, he put Mr. Medved on his board. He also did a few favors (like these, this one, this one and this one). There is some question as to exactly what Rabbi Lapin is faithful to. As he's already sold the Talmud out, the Republican party is beginning to look like a frontrunner.

Comments

[wanderingaengus.livejournal.com]

One of the hardest books I've ever enjoyed reading was Richard Feynman's QED. It's an explanation of quantum electrodynamics for hoi polloi. He explains why oil slicks are so colorful, and at the end of the explanation, when you're thoroughly bewildered, he reminds you that physics just explains how these things happen. It can't say why in any way that's meaningful to our ordinary experience. It's frustrating, but once you accept that there's so much beauty in what we've come to learn about the world.

[eukarya.livejournal.com]

Thank you for mentioning this, I'll try to get a copy of that when I can head over to Powell's next month.

[temima.livejournal.com]

*reads R. Lapin links*

OMG, I was only joking when I said that anti-Semitism is OKIYAR*, but this guy seems serious.

*Or Republican-identified.

[jmhm.livejournal.com]

Well, you know, this is the guy who introduced Abramoff to Tom DeLay, and the guy whose brother Abramoff and DeLay tried to force on the Mariannas.