The Black Saint is so hilarious, I can barely stand up.#

Tim Robbins (accepting Best Supporting Actor Oscar for Mystic River): In this movie I play a victim of abuse and violence and if you are a person who has had that tragedy befall you, there is no shame and no weakness in seeking help and counselling.

Whitney: See? See what the man on TV said? There ain't no shame in burning your Pop-Tarts. I'm leaving you. I'm going to get help. And I'm going to build a new and better life for myself and my child.

"Jonathan Ichikawa" explains why you can't be certain he is who you think he is, based on his blog now being anonymous.#

Fortunately for me, names need not pick out unique individuals, and there's no reason to believe that mine does. With this in mind, the following possibilities should make it clear that, as my blog stands now, you don't know who I am, and that I'm therefore in an important sense anonymous:

• You think that I am Jonathan Ichikawa. Possibly, I'm not -- I'm someone else whose name is 'Jonathan Ichikawa'.
• I might, as far as you know, be lying -- it may not be the case that my name is 'Jonathan Ichikawa'. Furthermore, Jonathan Ichikawa might be in on the trick, such that he pretends to be the author when you talk to him in the non-internet world.
• You assume, based on the fact that my language appears similar to English, that I am writing in English. This may not be the case -- I may be writing in Shmenglish, which is almost identical to English, except with respect to the way that speakers or writers identify themselves (also, some things look like typos in English but are correctly-spelled in Shmenglish). So in fatc, I may not have even alleged to have been Jonathan Ichikawa.
• Nobody knows the real me.

Unless you can definitively rule out these scenarios, it is not the case that you know my identity.

Julie Leung writes about marriage proposals.#

On the one hand I think I would have said Yes to Ted no matter how he had asked me, over an intercom system, on a billboard or TV commercial (or a blog?). Any way would have thrilled me. But I also feel that if I had been asked in the way that these two examples portray, I might have said no, simply because of the way it was done. Neither man seems to be treating his beloved with respect or dignity, at least how I see it. I wouldn't want to marry a mascot, or a man who compared me to all his exes before he asked me. To me saying yes is a private and intimate moment, not one I'd want to share with an entire stadium or a winery train of strangers.

If marriage was up to men alone to determine, I imagine proposals might be a bit different in general. Maybe for some men. Maybe more like an invitation to join a harem. A business card or paper flyer to distribute. That would be a lot less risky. A lot less romantic too.

Bob Murphy explains Christianity.#

The son was to give wise instruction, to point out the error of your ways, but above all he was to lead by example. He was to show you and your family that there was another way to live, that you could be just as "rich" as the hated neighboring clan if you would only abandon your thievery and killing.

Naturally, you and your family mocked, tortured, and murdered the master's son — just as he knew you would. But through this episode, a few of the members of your clan had a change of heart. Where threats of punishment would not move them, seeing the logical conclusion of your way of life — i.e., that it required the murder of the wisest, gentlest man to ever walk in your midst — caused many of your clansmen to renounce their allegiance and cross over into the lush gardens of your rich neighbors.

Tibor Machan writes about inheritance and capitalism.#

Few things invigorate critics of free market capitalism as much as inherited wealth. Quite a few defenders of this system tend to stress its supposed reward of hard work, ingenuity, industriousness, thrift and diligence — all virtues one can hardly argue with and which, if one practices them, seem to justify holding on to the often resulting wealth. So, critics focus on inheritance, a species of good luck, which those who benefit from it cannot easily be said to deserve.

And it is true enough — notoriously many beneficiaries of inherited wealth seem to be quite undeserving. They often waste their inheritance away rather rapidly; if not, they do nothing much creative or productive with it; often they spend it on projects that actually turn out to be out and out hostile to the very system that made making the wealth possible in the first place (just take notice of the many rich kids of industrialists who decided to fund collectivist think tanks, magazines, and activism). So, if this result can be associated with free market capitalism, how could any right-minded person defend the system?