BLAZE

Coming back online...

Hello, hello. A long time since I've posted. Sorry. Somehow in the laundry of my brain, I got trapped in a spin cycle. Oh dear, quite wrinkled now. Ahem.

Here are some recent magpie wanderings. I'll try to post something more coherent soon.

Barry Schwartz, author of The Paradox of Choice, observes that "not all choice enhances freedom. In particular, increased choice among goods and services may contribute little or nothing to the kind of freedom that counts. Indeed, it may impair freedom by taking time and energy we'd be better off devoting to other matters." This quotation explains the conundrum of grocery shopping.

In A Mind of Its Own,David M. Friedman notes that "Over time the penis has been deified, demonized, secularized, racialized, psychoanalyzed, politicized, and, finally, medicalized...." Great book, by the way!

An anonymous journalism student recently told me, "Among my many duties and responsibilities, I have many unpleasant and strange encounters with customers, employees, and of course, ex-boyfriends." Ah, retail.

And finally, Francesco Petrarch commented, "Five great enemies to peace inhabit with us: avarice, ambition, envy, anger, and pride. If those enemies were to be banished, we should infallibly enjoy perpetual peace."

Somewhere among these ideas is a kind of sense I can currently understand. And you?

L