Friday Four

Friday, November 04, 2011

1. In response to my mention of not wanting to wake my daughter in last week's Friday Four, a reader told me he was reminded of the following song, in which Ben Folds sings about his daughter.


I finally got around to listening to it just this morning. Thanks!

2. The beat from a live performance of the song below lent a festive air to a wait on a subway platform last week:


3. There's a good post about immigration over at Individual Rights and Government Wrongs.
Certainly, those who immigrate illegally are breaking the law. But, it was a crime to make or drink alcohol during Prohibition; it was a crime to harbor fugitive slaves prior to the Civil War. Millions of otherwise law-abiding citizens drank alcohol during Prohibition. And any decent person would have gladly broken the law to help fugitive slaves. We recognize these laws as immoral, and we judge those who broke them accordingly.
And be sure to look around there some more, when you've finished reading the whole thing.

4. What a difference facing outward in my Baby Bjorn, rather than inward, made for my daughter, yesterday! She barely tolerated the thing (at best) before, but just loved being able to see everything. A trip to the grocer was my trial run. Noticing that she enjoyed the sightseeing so much, and since it was a gorgeous day, I took her out for a walk in the park later on. The only downside: Since I am not used to thinking about sunscreen, it slipped my mind to treat her face before I left, so she has rosy cheeks, now. We were out only about twenty-five minutes.

-- CAV

4 comments:

Inspector said...

"Certainly, those who immigrate illegally are breaking the law. But, it was a crime to make or drink alcohol during Prohibition"

It's not *precisely* the same thing, though. It's not immoral for immigration law to screen for, say, communicable diseases or membership in/support of an enemy of America. So it's not as simple as that.

Gus Van Horn said...

I think that it is clear in th post that Brian Phillips isn't talking about such proper restrictions.

Inspector said...

I think clarifications like that too often go unspoken, is all. And it's not entirely accurate to compare illegal immigrants to truly victimless crimes, since they are in fact infringing on our actual right to screen for some things. Not that I'm saying they can be entirely blamed for it, given the no-win setup by our government. Just that the issue is a bit more morally complex than the ones he compares it to.

Gus Van Horn said...

OK, but in terms of the need to delimit the context for his post, I don't think leaving that out was necessarily bad.