Idle thought

It continues to amaze me that so many people assume that the price of their house will go back to its 2005-2006 value sometime soon.

That value was a bubble! An anomaly. An aberration.

Today’s prices are likely to be it for a while — if they don’t drop further what with all the foreclosures yet to come.

Ed-Farrah-Michael

Why do celebrity deaths matter? Why the outpouring of grief for a person we’ve never truly known?

Anthropologists tell us that so-called primitive societies — wherever in the world — had a few near constants. One of these was the identification of self — of their particular tribe or clan — as “the people.” Everyone else was “the other.”

This human trait continues to the present. We may belong to multiple clans now — family, friends, school, work, church, community, nation, sports teams, whatever. But we still belong — and to some extent everyone who doesn’t belong to our clan is still “the other.”

Celebrities, however, transcend clan. They are the others that we welcome into our lives because they touch it in unique and exciting ways — their humor, their style, their music.

Much too simple I know, but that’s what I think both makes them celebrities, and causes us to grieve for them when they go.

Idle thought

The first people to come to America bearing my surname arrived 299 years ago next month from the Rhineland.

Am I still a German-American? If so, when do I become just an American? Is there a statute of limitations?

[For that matter, the first people to come to America bearing my mother’s surname arrived in Quebec about 350 years ago. Am I also a Franco-American? Or a Franco-Canadian-American? Or a Franco-Canadian-German-American?]

Idle thought

There have been a lot of downright wrong things posted on this blog, nearly all of them by me.

But this is the single most ignorant sentence we’ve had here: “I, as a conservative, would just as soon have a computer programmed to decide based on strict interpretation of the ACTUAL constitution rather than whether the judge agrees with me or Ken.”

Idle thought

I sure wish the left-bloggers would quit writing about all the moronic things the right-wing bloggers, radio talk show hosts, TV commentators and politicians are saying. I avoid that stuff for a reason and if I want to read whacko shit, I’ll go to the source. Repeating it, even to ridicule, just keeps the nonsense in circulation.

With one exception. Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Asylum). Everything she says is priceless.

Idle thought

Why not just abandon the pretense and appoint senators for their lifetime — also the lifetimes of their current spouse and any children.

(Arlen Spector is 79-years-old.)

Update: As Atrios says that Harry Reid said: “Arlen Specter’s with us except when we need him.”