http://horse-you-rode-in-on.com Random rants and curious explanation. Sat, 06 Mar 2010 02:46:15 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en In this fractious world, it would be nice if Muslim countries were to send vigorous teams to the Olympics, as did the Russians, East Germans, and Chinese during the cold war, which was settled peacefully. At Vancouver, we noticed one Turkish figure skater. To be fair, outside of Dubai’s Snowdome, it’s ... http://horse-you-rode-in-on.com/2010/02/28/arabs-persians-and-olympians/ This won’t mean much to our thin sprinkling of readers marooned in the backward South and Southwest who seldom see icicles, but it’s potentially lifesaving scrimshaw for the billions of Northeasterners who check this space ten or eleven times a day. As for the snowbound denizens of Washington, DC, they haven’t ... http://horse-you-rode-in-on.com/2010/02/15/iciclectomies/ Our Chicago connection, Dick Dell, is a longtime editor for World Book and, before that, Doubleday and Encyclopedia Britannica. His work has often taken him to China, most recently to Beijing for the launch of a Chinese edition of World Book, which he had helped to bring about. In a ... http://horse-you-rode-in-on.com/2010/02/13/dick-dell-china-firsthand/ Breaking News! (in the Fox News sense of, “It’s all lies, but we’re going to pretend it’s true because that’s what Rupert and Roger pay us to do.”): * Dateline Washington, DC. President Obama has appointed John Clees, the former Minister of Silly Walks, to serve as Secretary of Ignoring ... http://horse-you-rode-in-on.com/2010/02/09/monty-python-joins-the-cabinet/ Kindle Schmindle. The big breakthrough in reading was authored in the fourth century by St. Ambrose, bishop of Milan, a thousand years before Gutenberg and 1600+ years before the iPad. Until then, reading meant reading aloud. It was a culture of action, oratory, and the spoken word. Most ... http://horse-you-rode-in-on.com/2010/02/01/thinking-aloud-about-reading-quietly/ This isn’t new, but it’s timely again. Latest emergence is from New Zealand by way of London to Dick Dell in Chicago – and thence to The Horse. Update on Security Levels: The English are feeling the pinch in relation to recent terrorist threats and have raised their security level from ... http://horse-you-rode-in-on.com/2010/01/28/%e2%80%98yikes%e2%80%99-in-any-language/ A recent column in the Montreal Gazette quivers with moral outrage over Tiger Woods and dismisses any conceivable basis for ever regarding him as special – and the same goes for Barry Bonds, Lebron James, Michael Jordan, and Lance Armstrong. Sure they can all hit a ball or dunk ... http://horse-you-rode-in-on.com/2010/01/24/on-whom-their-favours-fall/ A few days ago, Steve Alber asked in an e-mail why we hadn’t posted our revulsion over Pat Robertson’s and Rush Limbaugh’s characteristically creepy opposition to helping Haitians after their earthquake. We asked if he would take on that task himself, and lo and behold, he’s done just that ... http://horse-you-rode-in-on.com/2010/01/19/the-evil-twins/ We’ve scrubbed this up a bit, but it’s one of those perpetually-forwarded circulating e-mails whose authorship is lost in the mists. * It's a slow day in a little East Texas town. The sun is oppressive, the streets are deserted, times are tough, everybody’s in debt and living on credit. On this particular ... http://horse-you-rode-in-on.com/2010/01/13/das-kapital/ What do you do if you’re sued or arrested in Kenya? People who live in Nairobi have a saying, “Why hire a lawyer when you can buy a judge?” -- reported by Hillary Clinton after a visit in August * A reassuring note for fans of Adam Smith: “The invisible hand is a metaphor, ... http://horse-you-rode-in-on.com/2010/01/11/tres-bon-mots-see-how-they-run/