Conduct

The Tiresome Subject of One’s Own Affairs

I just find that sitting down by a tree or a rock and contemplating the natural scene, any natural scene, in an appreciative, quietly passive way can distract one for a while from the tiresome subject of one's own affairs. Not that this is something I do all that often. My interest in the natural world has always tended to be too involved, too protective and meddlesome, to allow much time for just sitting around looking at things. But whenever I have managed it, I've come back to myself afterwards feeling more calm and clear-headed, more capable of dealing with the way of the world than when I left.

-- Don Schueler, A Handmade Wilderness (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1996), 171-72.

Alberto Gonzalez Resigns

Alberto Gonzalez and Dick Cheney

"Alberto Gonzales is the first Attorney General who thought the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth were three different things. The President should nominate a new Attorney General whose loyalty to the Constitution is greater than his loyalty to the Republican Party." -- Rahm Emanuel

Hello Kitty Armbands for Thai Police

Hello Kitty armband for Thai police

No matter how many ribbons for valor a Thai officer may wear, if he parks in the wrong place, or shows up late for work, or is seen dropping a bit of litter on the sidewalk, he can be ordered to wear the insignia.

"Simple warnings no longer work," said Pongpat Chayaphan, acting chief of the Crime Suppression Division in Bangkok, who instituted the new humiliation this week.