Good for you. I'm glad you do worthy work. I'm also glad you hug your wife. But as a rather well-known spiritual guru once said, it's easy to dispense love and kindness to those who already love you. It's a bit more challenging to give it away to anyone and everyone, regardless of who they might be.

But this isn't anything that needs defending. I'm just as aware as any other recipient of Amma's gift that it might sound trivial and silly. It may be a surprise to you, but you're not the only person who's ever said such a thing to me. I'll just do what I've done in every other instance - shrug and say, "You had to be there."

It's hardly surprising to hear ad hominem attacks coming from that source. But basing it on a username - talk about the pot calling the kettle black!

Unfortunately, the urge to spoil other people's fun is not confined to the Harry Potter phenomenon. I remember an usher at my local theater giving away the clincher of Star Trek: Generations to a whole line of moviegoers just before they went in to see the movie. Let me tell you, those people were PISSED. I wouldn't be surprised if the manager got multiple demands for that guy's head that night.

There was also the time when I was working at a sci-fi bookstore in the 80's, when this guy came in from having seen Back to the Future (this was just at its release), all hot to spoil it for somebody. He kept asking people if they'd seen the movie and then trying to tell them stuff about it. I finally had to ask him to leave because people were getting mad at him.

Farhad, you may not understand the desire to experience a story for oneself, without having it spoiled by some asshat who doesn't care about others' pleasure, but maybe I can spell it out for you. Most readers enjoy not just the facts in the books they read, but the actual experience of reading it on their own, with their own eyes, in their own good time, without any help, especially unasked for. Stories are structured the way they are for a reason - because that's the way the teller intends them to be experienced. You can go on all you like about how the internet makes that "impossible", but you know, the internet doesn't do things on its own. People leak stories, post spoilers, and piss on other people's enjoyment. If there weren't posters out there deliberately foisting unwanted knowledge on others, spoilers wouldn't exist in the first place. So don't go blaming "the internet" for the phenomenon, as if it were hard-wired into every processor.

Sing it, bro. It's yet another case of people getting all het up about the minor and ignoring the major, mostly because so many don't want to change the major. People think taking fewer flights will make a big difference, so then they won't have to give up their gas-guzzling SUVs, or stop careening around at ungodly speeds just because they'd rather not have to leave the house earlier.

I save a good chunk on my gasoline consumption by 1) driving a small, four-cylinder car, 2) never driving over 55 mph on the highway and 3) using my cruise control on said highway. The second one is especially effective; I've noted down my gas mileage driving the same routes at both 55 and 75, and the mileage goes WAY up at the less insane speed. (This in the 65 mph limit zones in Southern California. I've often wondered if people realize that the speed limit is an maximum limit; they seem to drive as if it were the minimum.) Yet whenever I tell people that a great help would be a simple reduction in the speed of their driving, they roll their eyes as if I were asking something utterly ridiculous.

That's the real issue. People want the climate crisis solved, but most of them don't want to give up anything even slightly significant to do it. Not even something as minor as leaving the house ten minutes earlier in order to save on gasoline. (Not to mention more leisurely driving is both safer and more pleasant.) Sacrifice of anything, even something minor, is viewed as somehow gauche or offensive.

Not that I disagree with you, Digby, because I don't. It really is outrageous that the Pentagon should suddenly start showing this kind of attitude towards a senator doing a senator's job. Talk about getting too big for their britches!

But just what is it about the Pentagon's statements that makes you think there's a particular gender bias involved? I don't see anything in that wording that indicates they're making any kind of hash out of Clinton's being a woman. Could it be that they're just lashing out because she's pressing a point they don't want to hear, and not out of any "settle down, little lady" condescenscion?

I know it's tempting to draw that kind of conclusion, but unless there's some backup there, it just weakens your point and makes you look like you're putting words in their mouths. Best to leave that to those who don't actually have a serious point to make, and thus have to stoop to ill-conceived innuendo.

Cary, you should have stopped at the end of the second sentence. Nice and simple, and it would certainly have been refreshing.

But no...