Sundry Change Agents

Série Lucky Family Yang Zhenzhong, 1995. Photo © Yang Zhenzhong - Courtesy Shanghart Gallery, Shanghaï. In the exhibit Bêtes et Hommes at La Villette in Paris. Via We Make Money Not Art.

In case you missed it on Sunday, take a peek at Steven Pinker's NY Times Mag essay on moral intuition and the human brain. Lots of good stuff to mull here.

See also Jim Johnson's nice little post on democratic competition. He takes to task one of my colleagues, Benjamin Barber (who I never see), and argues a point I also subscribe to about the irreducibility of competition (or as I would put it, conflict) in pluralistic societies. I'm a Whitmanite on this one.

When you're done there, head on over to this Guardian article on Rudy Giuliani. "Change" is so last week, but Rudy seems to have caught on this week. He is, in his words, a "change agent."

"I was a mayor who was a change agent. Whether you agree with my changes or not, I think you'd have to say I was probably the mayor of New York City who, at least in modern times, brought about the most change," he said on his second day of a campaign swing across Florida. "Other mayors have done other things, I'm not taking anything away from them, but I had to make major changes."

Giuliani did not elaborate on what he had done.

Will someone please take that campaign out of its misery.

Though I know at least one Austrian of whom I'm quite fond, the country by tradition does not lack its outrageous bigots: Austrian Politician Calls Prophet Muhammad a 'Child Molester'.

Here comes Elsie squared.

Latin America is getting along quite well without the US. I see a growing economic and military power. One little sign among many others.

Yeah, yeah. But what is a "Christian office supply"?

And did you see the puhala below?