“Eight or nine wise words about letter writing”

Charles Dodgson, perhaps in his Lewis Carroll persona, wrote an essay with the above title, and that essay is included in the Modern Library Giant edition of the works of Lewis Carroll, where I read and heeded it. I even kept (for quite a while) the correspondence log he describes, and to this day I continue to follow the habits I developed under his tutelage: such as: Before starting the letter, I address and stamp the envelope, which always bears a return address. Or: At a minimum, the heading will (always) include my complete return address and the date.

Terrific little essay.

Corporations begin to take off the gloves

It’s becoming increasingly evident that de facto governance of the United States is rapidly passing into the hands of corporations. The recent Citizens United decision by the Supreme Court both indicates and facilitates the process, and as lagniappe we have the wonderful footnote that Citizens United had explicitly purchased Justice Clarence Thomas from the get-go (a bird in the hand is worth two, etc.).

Still, as corporations become more accustomed to their grip on the levers of power, we can expect to see more frequent overt signs of their control and willingness to exercise it. For example, I just received this in an email:

PayPal just froze the account of the Bradley Manning Support Network, a group raising funds for the legal defense of alleged Wikileaks source Pfc. Bradley Manning. The group can no longer accept donations through PayPal, or access the money in its account.

The Bradley Manning Support Network didn’t do anything illegal. PayPal even admits there’s no legal reason to shut down the group’s account; it’s an “internal policy decision.”

We need to stand with other Bradley Manning supporters. Can you sign your name to our letter to PayPal demanding the company restore service to the Bradley Manning Support Network?

Tell PayPal to drop its unreasonable demands of the Bradley Manning Support Network and restore access to the group’s PayPal account. Click here to sign our letter.

PayPal’s decision to purposefully block funds to help Bradley Manning is no accident. Two months ago, PayPal also arbitrarily blocked donations to Wikileaks.

Just days after PayPal blocked service to Wikileaks, PayPal executives apparently began a campaign to find excuses to block funds for the Bradley Manning Support Network. The group says its leaders:

“…fielded lengthy calls from executives at PayPal regarding website content, the intended use of the funds being solicited in support of Bradley Manning, and accountings of the recent purchases (primarily envelopes, paper, and postage stamps) made with PayPal funds.”

Even this wasn’t good enough for PayPal, which decided that the only way to allow the Bradley Manning Support Network to use PayPal would be to give the company direct access to its checking account – an extraordinary and unreasonable demand.

Obama and Holder: Men of principle, I’m sure, but exactly what principle?

Read this post by Ed Brayton and see whether you can reasonably believe that Obama and Holder are what was once described as men of principle, which was taken as a sign of character and integrity.

UPDATE: Also some excellent (and, to my mind, indisputable) points made here.

Hoping for the best

I used my new class-day lunch approach today: breakfast as usual, apple as snack just before class at 11:15, then back home to heat up oven and pop in the ready GOPM… and then, of course, wait 45 minutes.

I think it will work well—the other approach had me actually gaining some weight (well, that plus I bought some feta and fell to including that in snacks)—but it does mean I am a mite peckish as 3:00 comes on and me still not having eaten.

My range has a very nice digital timer that I now use almost exclusively. It displays minutes remaining, of course, and one nice feature is that when it hits 1 minute, it emits a short beep and the display switches to a seconds countdown.

So when I rounded the corner into the kitchen and saw the “23” on the timer, I waited a beat, quite consciously, but it remained at “23”. Darn.

We’re close now, though: I can smell it.

This is another sardine version. And once again three sardines, cleaned and filleted, came in just at nine ounces: 9.2. Just right for two meals.

Extremely smooth & pleasant shave

Class days pretty much wipe out discretionary activities in the morning—plus today when I finally got parked and looked for my briefcase in the car, I suddenly put together my memory and realized I had placed the briefcase atop the car briefly while I did something, and that therefore I must have driven off with the briefcase still there. Luckily, I recalled, I had zipped out rather quickly, so the briefcase probably fell off in the driveway itself or just in front of it.The MacBook is in the briefcase, but it’s a Briggs & Riley and specifically made for traveling with notebook computers, so I knew that the computer was fine.

Got home, and there it was. Someone had put it up on the sidewalk. But that ate up more time…

Terrific shave today, thanks to a reader stimulating me to get more use from the slant bar. As a daily shaver, it’s wonderful. Some say that using it daily eventually becomes hard on their skin, but (after one shave in a row), so far, so good. Great lather from Tabac, as always, and then an enjoyable splash of Tabac to finish.

And now I’m back and a sardine & rice GOPM is in the oven.