Wednesday, March 16, 2005

No deep thinking allowed...

I forgot how much I like Lileks. Tuesday he had a big riff about an old movie, complete with info about the trailers and the short intro films. But before that he talks about Lebanon. Greg quotes it here with a the actual AP photo beside it:
The demonstrations in Lebanon are fascinating and heartening for all sorts of reasons, not the least of which is the hubbaliciousness of some of the protestors. But that picture is interesting for a third reason: The words on the placard are from “Braveheart.” That’s what William Wallace shouted to rouse the troops. I’m not quite sure what it means – it’s one of those sentiments that falls apart when you interrogate it too closely, but on the other hand it makes sense, somehow. Except that you would be dead, but free. But Free! But dead. On the other hand, if you quibble about such things, you live in a society where Quibbling is the main intellectual activity, because the real struggles of life took place before you came along, and you’ve inherited peace and stability and freedom, and define “tyranny” as the actions of a town council that votes to ban body-piercing parlors within 1000 feet of an elementary school.

That is exactly the kind of logical progression that makes me smile :)
I think that kind of thing should be on the photo caption itself!