Do I believe that one has the right to do whatever one wants to one’s body and mind? Yeah, “an it harm none.” (Credit: Aleister Crowley.) Kind of a bleak belief, though. Maybe more later, maybe not. Your Google search terms for the day are “pro ana” and soulbonding.

Not only do I dig typography, I dig the minute distinctions between various type families. Thus, I adore this discussion of twenty serif body text typefaces.

There’s a popular belief that the media is liberal. Interestingly, the media is apparently more likely to label a liberal politician as liberal than they are to label a conservative politician as conservative. Geoffery Nunberg did a study on this. It’s not clear to me that this proves anything; you could say that the qualifying adjective (in this case, liberal) only needs to be used when the subject noun is not mainstream. That’s kind of what Nunberg is saying. I don’t know if I believe it, though; you could also say that the liberal media is calling attention to the fact that politicians with admirable policies are liberal. ...

If sex is a bother to you, you might not want to read “…inexplicably fancy trash.” If good writing is a joy to you, you probably do want to read it. If both of these suppositions are true, you have a dilemma. Lucky you! It’s a Weblog, and more or less work-safe, but it’s the Weblog of an erotic writer… pornographer… guy who writes sexual stories. Uh. All the words are so charged, so connotative! There is a man (I think) who took on a pseudonym in order that he might safely write erotica. This is not the Weblog of the man, it is the Weblog of the pseudonym. There’s a lot of sex in it, thus. Also some politics. ...

Andrew Sullivan has a couple of entries in the last few days discussing a NYT piece on Colin Powell. Doesn’t seem like rocket science to me. Does Powell disagree with Bush a lot? Yes, obviously. Is Powell well-liked? Yes. Is the article slanted? Oh, sure. But really. When I read “a Republican administration supposedly eager to demonstrate its commitment to compassionate conservatism,” it is fairly obvious to me that the author, Todd Purdum, is implying that the administration is not actually eager to commit to compassionate conservatism — they just want to look like they are. Powell (Purdum thinks) symbolizes compassionate conservatism, and thus his presence in the administration indicates a committment which isn’t actually there. ...

Today is Blogathon 2002. Short form: participants update every half an hour for 24 hours straight. People sponsor them. Charities get money. Noble! I happened on the highlight list, which took me to the point of this entry, Diary of a Mad Monk. The guy is planning on 24 biographies of Roman Catholic Saints. The first few entries rock.

This is possibly my favorite blog ever: Pru’s Psychic Spy Training Facility (original). There’s something tremendously charming about a remote viewing class taught via weblog.

For some odd reason I’m not really comfortable posting long ranty things to my LiveJournal. There’s something weird going on in my head there. I think it’s because I have this constant awareness that I’m dropping an acrid pissed off political rant in the middle of a couple of dozen nice peaceful friends pages, between a perfectly harmless quiz answer and a thoughtful introspective discussion of someone’s day. “If I were a Sluggy Freelance character, I would be — holy shit, what the hell got up his ass?” That sort of thing. Also I keep finding myself self-conscious about profanity, cause I know some of my readers aren’t fond of the stuff. ...

Aimee Mann has announced her new album, Lost in Space, which excites and pleases me beyond all measure. Except not quite all measure, because the discovery that she has put the entire thing up on her Website (Flash, Windows Media, and RealAudio streams only) excited and pleased me even more. So I have at least one point from which to measure my joy. I blame the tone of that on glenn mcdonald, whose online record review column The War Against Silence is near and dear to my heart. I’d just been reading him to see if he had reviewed Ms. Mann’s latest output. No such luck, although he was as distressed by the new Bob Mould as I am. I’ll have to give Modulate another listen with his comments in mind. In the meantime, if you’re an old school Mould fan who was thinking about his new records, you might want to stick to LiveDog98, as the other two are rather… full of synths and drum loops. They might grow on me. Haven’t yet. ...

The day of typographical entries may never end, but I really like this site on writing systems. It includes both Klingon and Romulan. Good stuff.