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Patrick Snajder

Biography


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About Me

  • Favorite Gear Live Site
  • Interest

    I enjoy manipulating words to capture the sounds bouncing between my ears.  I scored 25 points in a 48-min basketball game recently, although I have never dunked.  I love to try!

  • Music

    Jimi.  Liz.  Zep.  Jane’s.  Beasties.  Portishead.  The Breeders.  CSS.  The Arcade Fire.  The Beatles.  Floyd.  New Order.  Shadow.  The Pixies.  The Strokes.  OutKast.  KRS-One.  Nirvana.  &c.

  • Movies

    Lebowski.  Cool Hand Luke.  Airplane!  Airplane 2!  Big Trouble in Little China.  Goonies.  Monty Python’s Holy Grail.  Ferris.  Idiocracy.  & the rest that made me sniffle.

  • Television

    BSG.  Mad Men.

  • Latest Comments
  • More succinctly put: "Complaints about the corruption, dilution or fundamental impiety of Christmas have been made for centuries. The Puritans so mistrusted the holiday that its celebration was outlawed in 17th-century Boston. Around the same time, the German theologian Paul Ernst Jablonski asserted that Christmas amounted to a paganization of the authentic faith because the date, Dec. 25, had been appropriated from a festival for a Roman solar god." http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/18/opinion/18miller.html?em

    Who knew Abortion and Christmas fit together so nicely?
    Posted on: December 18, 2008 at 11:37 pm on Filibuster Soup - 16 comments total

  • Very good point, Steven. Moreso than suggesting what particular action should be taken, I think I am simply saying that doing nothing is not an option. I think that, ultimately, we leave the decisions of who is to be bailed out to our elected leaders and the leaders that they appoint. After all -- Lehman Bros. was allowed to fail, but similar investment banks with similar lines of bad credit were given other options. Was Lehman Bros. more irresponsible with their credit than other similar, failing banks? I don't believe this was the case. I think that at the point of these multiple crises, Paulson et al. had to make a snap judgments in hopes that they would reflect prudence and ration and result in a positive for the economy at large. Ultimately, it is the job of the politicians/leaders that are creating policy to install preventative measures that prevent companies from wasting the credit. Why should companies that use their credit irresponsibly be rewarded with more credit? I don't know why they should, but I do know that, in some cases, they will be rewarded. What we hope for as taxpayers is that our leaders have performed due diligence in judging which companies to save. The peons can make any argument they want, but ultimately the decisions to be made will be made by those in charge. I'm not a lifeguard, I just showed up on the beach on the wrong afternoon.

    Werd: Bailout - Part Three
    Posted on: December 17, 2008 at 2:19 pm on Filibuster Soup - 3 comments total

  • Excellent list, Kellsee. Your Ryan Adams love knows no bounds.

    The Best Music of 2008
    Posted on: December 14, 2008 at 7:59 pm on Albumista - 1 comments total

  • Thanks for wishing me a safe and Merry Christmas. I wish you a Merry Christmas as well! A few thoughts on your piece here. You wrote, "I know this might seem like a radical thought and a bit passé, but wish them a “Merry Christmas.” Being from New York and saying Merry Christmas is like having HIV of the face. You get glares, threats and disgust." First: I don't think saying Merry Christmas to others is either radical nor is it passe. I think it's something people do quite a lot during this part of the year -- just watch an hour of television and you can't miss it! And if you wait until December 25, I have found that, even in NYC, many people will wish you a Merry Christmas. I have even wished others a Merry Christmas on December 25, which is the day on which Christmas is typically celebrated. Second: I think you may feel like you have "HIV of the face" because you are starting your Merry Christmas greetings way too early. If you tell a New Yorker "Merry Christmas" today, December 10, then they will probably wonder why you are saying it now. One of my friends was born on December 26, which is cool because it is Boxing Day, but if I told him Happy Birthday today, I think he would give me a funny look or say, "It's not my birthday, yet." I would suggest telling New Yorkers "Merry Christmas" on December 25; perhaps they won't be so angry and confused! Third: What is it "like having HIV of the face"? I am unfamiliar with this particular type of HIV (infection?), so I can't engage with the simile. Please be descriptive! Fourth: Sure, a person can "get" glares and threats, but can one really "get" disgust? One can express disgust towards someone else, or someone can be disgusted with you, but I think "get" might not be the best verb here. Then, I had a question about a fact you cited -- Soros' five year attack on Christmas. What did Soros do exactly to start these attacks? A reference would be great! Also, you mention Christmasians. Is this a sect of Christianity or just Asian Christians or neither? Again, a reference to the intended meaning would clarify. You noted the NYC School District ban on nativity scenes, but again, a reference would be helpful. With minimal work, I found the following article detailing the Supreme Court's decision to not rule on Skoros v. City of New York: http://www.csmonitor.com/2007/0222/p04s01-ussc.html Pretty interesting article, huh? Ironically, while you note that Christmas is, indeed, a federal holiday, it was the Federal US Supreme Court that made the final ruling (or non-ruling, as it was). I know you probably want to see New Yorkers as the cause for this miscarriage of justice, but our Federal judges surely share some of the blame! I wonder how they would react if you wished them a Merry Christmas? I guess they would look at you like you had HIV of the face. Speaking of miscarriages (!), even the Fox News version of your piece provided a full array of facts about the services of Planned Parenthood, here: http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,462127,00.html You are entitled to your opinion, of course, but perhaps you could provide your readers with a more complete understanding of the issue you are discussing. It's pretty simple to say you are against abortion (who isn't!?), but are you also against sexual education, pregnancy tests, birth control, and annual checkups? I know I, for one, would be interested to know! Otherwise, bang up job. -Pat.

    Who knew Abortion and Christmas fit together so nicely?
    Posted on: December 10, 2008 at 2:56 am on Filibuster Soup - 16 comments total

  • Charles - excellent post and a great job with your measured defense in the comments above. Having just read Walter Isaacson's biography on Einstein, I am reminded of Einstein's measured response to the problems of the early fifties. First, there was the denial of Constitutional/civil rights to blacks, which Einstein empathized with: knowing personally how Jews were once similarly denied rights in his native Germany during the Nazi period. Second, the McCarthy red scare days affected a number of his scientific colleagues. Despite being on the record opposed to any Communist efforts, the FBI had their file and certainly suspected even Einstein of having socialist sympathies. Einstein's peers were investigated by the government in large numbers, surely denying them any number of civil rights in the process. (e.g., Oppenheimer, once the leader of America's Manhattan Project, had his security clearance revoked [on the day before it would have expired anyways] for tenuous connections he had to Russia.) After surviving these periods during which America violated its own Constitutional ethics, Einstein was buoyed by the way the government was built to make any losses of civil rights only temporary. At the end of his life, Einstein loved America most because of its ability to self-correct. For whatever reason, call it Bush, call it 9/11, call it a sick mixture of the two, we have hit our national crisis. We can only hope that the constitution of our nation is enough to ensure that we can move towards a more successful path and that makes mistakes only after carefully considering every option.

    The Bush Legacy
    Posted on: November 26, 2008 at 12:37 am on Filibuster Soup - 6 comments total

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