Really liked this Ted Sturgeon quote

from his essay "Science Fiction, Morals, and Religion":

...recognition of what I have come to call the "infrarational" - that source of belief, faith, and motive which exists beside and above reason. So conditioned have we been by Aristotle, Kant, and Freud that we tend to believe that any force, object or problem will yield to rational processes; when they don't, we blame the process and call up yet more logic. The infrarational, however, is a very large component in us, and while reason calls it ignorance or stupidity (viz, trying to talk someone out of a fear of the dark or of snakes), it is neither. It is the infrarational, source of many of our motivations and the tint reservoir of much of our thinking. We will never succeed in reaching our optimum as a species until we learn the nature of the infrarational. We may fail as a species unless we do. The urge to worship - as ubiquitous and commanding as sex - has its origins there.

politics

I find it hard to disagree with much of anything in commissar's "Why I Am Voting Democratic in 2006" post, though I'm more in the a-pox-on-both-your-houses camp. That's a big reason why I haven't been making many posts on politics or Iraq in the past half-year or so.

I don't think the republic is doomed, as elf and mdlbear believe. The nation is more resilient and powerful than that. But can anyone persuasively argue that we're heading in the right direction...or, for that matter, that either party looks like they have a clue what that "right direction" might be?