without openness to life, marriage can be anything

David Levy, author of Love and Sex With Robots: The Evolution of Human-Robot Relations (HarperCollins, 2007), predicts we'll eventually pick partners who require real rather than metaphorical battery recharges. Some in the animal-rights movement doubtless expect discerning humans before long to get hitched to Fido or Jezebel.

- Carlin Romano, "For Marriage, the Honeymoon's Over" @ The Chronicle Review

Aerobic Pole-Dancing

Jiang Li, 23, [an aerobic] pole dancing student, studied both philosophies [Confucianism and Taoism] in school, she said she could subscribe to neither.

“A lot of people expect Chinese women to be subdued and faithful, that we should marry and take care of kids at an early age,” she said. “But I don’t think that way — I want to be independent. I’ve been studying traditional Chinese dance for many years, but this is totally different. I feel in control when I do this. If I learn this well, I feel I can be a superstar. I want to be a superstar.”

from Aerobic Trend in China in today's NYT

working in the interstices of mind-wandering

To [William] James, steady attention was thus the default condition of a mature mind, an ordinary state undone only by perturbation. To readers a century later, that placid portrayal may seem alien--as though depicting a bygone world. Instead, today's multitasking adult may find something more familiar in James's description of the youthful mind: an "extreme mobility of the attention" that "makes the child seem to belong less to himself than to every object which happens to catch his notice." For some people, James noted, this challenge is never overcome; such people only get their work done "in the interstices of their mind-wandering."

- Christine Rosen on the Myth of Multitasking

questions addressed to reason but not to science

"The atheists beg the question in their own favour, by assuming that science has all the answers. But science can have all the answers only if it has all the questions; and that assumption is false. There are questions addressed to reason which are not addressed to science, since they are not asking for a causal explanation."
- Roger Scruton in The Return of Religion

this paints girls with broad strokes, but still...

from The Pornification of Girlhood by Melinda Tankard Reist:

Extracts from two journals illustrate the significant shifts in the way girls see themselves and what they consider important. In 1882 a girl wrote:

"Resolved, not to talk about myself or feelings. To think before speaking. To work seriously. To be self restrained in conversation and actions. Not to let my thoughts wander. To be dignified. Interest myself more in others."

A century later, another girl writes in her diary:

"I will try to make myself better in any way I possibly can with the help of my budget and baby-sitting money. I will lose weight, get new lenses, already got new hair cut, good makeup, new clothes and accessories."

suffer love

from Much Ado About Nothing:

Benedick:

"... I pray thee now, tell me for
which of my bad parts didst thou first fall in love with me?"

Beatrice:

"For them all together; which maintained so politic
a state of evil that they will not admit any good
part to intermingle with them. But for which of my
good parts did you first suffer love for me?"

Benedick:

"Suffer love! a good epithet! I do suffer love
indeed, for I love thee against my will."

ludus est necessarius

"Ludus est necessarius as conservationem vitae humanae."
- St Thomas Aquinas in the Summa Theologica

di-version

from Firefly episode "The Shindig"
River: "Sad little king of a sad little hill. Call me if anyone interesting shows up."

Jayne: (That right there is just the kind of di-version we could have used.)

Look, television!

"It's incredible how long science has succeeded in keeping men's minds off their fundamental unhappiness and its own very limited power to remedy their fundamental unhappiness. One marvel follows another — electric light, phonograph, motor car, telephone, radio, airplane, television. It's a curious list, and very pathetic. The soul of man is crying for hope of purpose or meaning; and the scientist says, "Here is a telephone" or "Look, television!" — exactly as one tries to distract a baby crying for its mother by offering it sugar-sticks and making funny faces." - Frank Sheed