The Lexicographer's Rules

;They overreacted to the boom, so why shouldn’t they overreact to the bust? (Source Link)

;When, years later, Manuel Roxas said in a speech, “I learned my ABCs at the knees of an American soldier,” he was speaking with gratitude and absolute sincerity. Thus might a Filipino of three centuries before have spoken of the missionary who had baptized him and his tribe. For if Spain had cemented its rule with the bonds of faith, now America cemented its rule with the one thing that Spain had been loath to provide en masse—education. If Filipinos could be ruled by the faith that made them subservient to the friars of the past, they could now be ruled by a glittering new faith—in the schoolteachers of the present. (Source Link)

;American civil administration in Iraq is having a shortage of Bright ideas. I keep wondering what happened to the months of “preparation” for a “post-Saddam” Iraq. What happened to all these 100-page reports, where is that Dick Cheney report? Why is every single issue treated like they have never thought it would come up? What’s with the juggling of people and ideas about how to form that “interim government”? Why does it feel like they are using the [lets-try-this-lets-try-that] strategy? Trial and error on a whole country? (Source Link)

;The one thing that sticks in my head is how tiny this world felt. You lived in this subculture of a subculture of a subculture. The idea of going to an arcade in Midtown was a really big deal. (Source Link)

;It happens when you step off that plane in some—let’s say—"differently evolved” part of the country and don’t see a single ethnic person for four days and can’t get a decent organic basil-and-goat-cheese omelet to save your life and all the theaters are playing Adam Sandler and the concept of fresh sushi means “less freezer burn than the corn dogs.” Elitist? Whatever. Sexism. Racism. Guns. Jingoism. Jesus fetishism. Psychopatriotism. Rampant pseudo-religious family-values faux-ethical circle jerking masquerading as Christian humility. Wal-Marts like giant florescent-lit viruses. Strip malls like a stucco plague. Ho hum, ain’t that America. It so is.  (Source Link)