A Random Assortment

~ Jeremy Waldron, in his inaugural lecture as Chichele Professor of Social & Political Theory at Oxford, refers to The Wire, in order to explain John Stuart Mill:

"Those of you who know the HBO TV series The Wire, may remember the
episode at the beginning of Series 3, where the drug lord Stringer Bell introduces
parliamentary procedure, Robert’s Rules of Order, to try to make meetings of his
lieutenants and his drug dealers more orderly and more productive—yielding a
wonderful array of quotes like “Motherfucka’s got the floor” and “Chair ain’t
recognize yo’ ass.” It’s not exactly John Stuart Mill; it is exactly what I’m talking
about."

~ I'm dying to hear Elliot Carter's Three Explorations, which sets lines from TSE's Four Quartets to music (it premiered the day after Carter's 103rd birthday!). Speaking of setting TSE to music, Hopkins sent me this piece on T.S. Eliot and pop music.

~ Hopkins also turned me on to Moby's Los Angeles architecture blog. I don't really know who Moby is, aside from famous, but his blog is great! At first I was really turned off by his writing, since he doesn't capitalize and is very informal. But this is such a gem that I think I'm sold on his writing:

"‘fire escape’ is such a literal term.
what if spoons were called ‘food diggers’.
and windows were ‘house holes’.
‘fire escape’ was probably named by the person who named the orange and the fly."

~ PAL on political theorist Roger Boesche, who taught Obama.