Noted Here and There ...

At Chapati Mystery, Sepoy has a translation of "We Shall Witness" by Faiz Ahmed Faiz, which is extraordinarily beautiful. We are fortunate that its translator is a Cliopatriarch. Also, check out Ahmed's recommendations of historical board games.

At Tapped, NickConfessore points to two gems: a) The Onion's story, "Reagan Pyramid Nears Completion"; and b) this astonishing observation by former North Carolina Senator Jesse Helms:

I would not have voted for [President Bush's] tax cut, based on what I know... There is no doubt that the people at the top who need a tax break the least will get the most benefit... Too often presidents do things that don't end up helping the people they should be helping, and their staffs won't tell them their actions stink on ice.

Astonishing, not for its cogency, but for its source. Jesse, why were you not a decent man when you held office?

If you either read Christopher Hitchens' take-down of Michael Moore's"Fahrenheit 9/11" or you are under the illusion that journalism is a respectable profession, read Matt Taibbi's"Shoveling Coal for Satan" in the New York Press. Thanks to Atrios for the tip.

Either Arts and Letters Daily is particularly taken with cosmetic surgery or there simply is a lot of interesting work being done on the subject these days. I suspect the latter. Here's Christine Rosen's"The Democratization of Beauty" in The New Atlantis. She's obviously benefitted from the work of David and Sheila Rothman and, in turn, has just published her own, Preaching Eugenics: American Religious Leaders and the American Eugenics Movement (Oxford University Press). I shudder to think what she's turned up on my fellow preachers.