S Beck

I divide my time as follows: half the time I sleep, the other half I dream.

--Kierkegaard, Either/Or

Am I really back on track with her? Even though she cancelled two dates last week?

Will she really go to the cinema with me on Tuesday, as though everything was as she thought from the beginning?

But for right now, I get the same feeling that I get from having a lottery ticket for tomorrow's drawing in my pocket.

For, although I no longer thought, now, of anything save not to let a
single day pass without seeing Gilberte (so much so that once, when my
grandmother had not come home by dinner-time, I could not resist the
instinctive reflection that, if she had been run over in the street and
killed, I should not for some time be allowed to play in the
Champs-Elysees; when one is in love one has no love left for anyone...

-- Proust, Swann's Way

Some pleasant feeling is associated with most of our appetites we are enjoying, either the memory of a past pleasure or the expectation of a future one, just as persons down with fever, during their attacks of thirst, enjoy remembering the drinks they have had and looking forward to having more. So also a lover enjoys talking or writing about his loved one, or doing any little thing connected with him; all these things recall him to memory and make him actually present to the eye of imagination.

Indeed, it is always the first sign of love, that besides enjoying some one's presence, we remember him when he is gone, and feel pain as well as pleasure, because he is there no longer. Similarly there is an element of pleasure even in mourning and lamentation for the departed. There is grief, indeed, at his loss, but pleasure in remembering him and as it were seeing him before us in his deeds and in his life.

We can well believe the poet when he says:

"He spake, and in each man's heart he awakened the love of lament. "

--Aristotle, Art of Rhetoric

The article is an attorney's brief, and is about as fair an balanced as one would expect.

The Afghan government, and its allies, are at war with the Taliban. They are therefore justified under the laws of war in detaining until the end of hostilities any Taliban fighter or official, senior or juinor, conscript or volunteer, adult or adolescent, terrorist or soldier, whether or not such a fighter or official has committed "hostile acts." Though the authors do their best to confuse the issue, it appears from their data that apart from the actual Al-Qaeda members, essentially all the detainees are Taliban fighters.

Under the laws of war who captured these people, and whether or not they were paid bounties, is not relevant.

{reprinted from the comments to this post on ProfessorBainbridge.com . Professor Bainbridge needs to bone up, methinks, on his international public law.}

... Everyone begins as a child. Which, incidentally, the revolutionaries don't notice: take Marx, Babeuf, or whomever you want: There all people are already adults and act. How they get to that point it doesn't say. They're already there, and that's that. Shot out of a pistol, they stand there and revolutionize.

--Jacob Taubes, The Political Theology of Paul

A woman worshiper, Kaname looked for the same divine attributes in women, but he had never come upon what he was looking for either in art or in women. He harbored a vague dream, and its very refusal to become a reality made his longing the keener. He found in foreign novels, music, movies, something that satisfied it a little, probably because of the Occidental view of women. The tradition of woman-worship in the West is a long one, and the Occidental sees in the woman he loves the figure of a Greek goddess, the image of the Virgin Mother. This attitude so pervades the sustoms and traditions of the West that it automatically find expression in art and literature. Kaname had an intense feeling of loneliness and deprivation when he thought of the emotional life of the Japanese, so lacking in this particular feeling of worshipfulness.
--- Junichiro Taznizaki, Some Prefer Nettles