Literary Corner: Holy Fool

The holy fool Private Kozma Prutkov, creation of the 19th-century novelist and satirist Aleksei Tolstoy, in a drawing by M. Dormer (Nature, June 2000). Asked which was more important, the sun or the moon, he replied, "The moon, of course! It shines at night, when we need the light, while the sun only shines in the daytime!" (Probably stolen by the Russians from the Muslim folk hero Mullah Nasreddin.)

 

The Moon's Orbit Is Apparently Changing Some

by Louis Buller Gohmert, Jr.

Yeah, well, we can't
do anything substantive
about the climate change
right now,

when the moon's orbit
is apparently changing some,
the earth's orbit is changing some,
according to NASA.

But we can do something
about people that will continue
to die getting across
our border.

Cheap shots and asparagus shoots

Correction:

Correction: May 13, 2013

An earlier version of this column contained an erroneous byline. The column was written by Bill Keller, not the Editorial Board.

Moapa people in Las Vegas as it was. Wikipedia.

Via Juan Cole:

“Southern Nevada’s Moapa Band of Paiutes are calling for the closure of the Reid Gardner coal plant and a transition to clean renewable energy future for [jump]

Cheap shots and copycat things

Dylan Byers contemplating the Boston Marathon in Politico has a rare moment of self-knowledge (via TenGrain):

We’re standing on the verge of a very important national conversation about something, and we have no idea what it is.

It's that recurrent nightmare where you're about to go on Stephanopoulos and an assistant comes into the green room to tell you McCain can't make it and you look in the mirror and your hair is like totally weird...

Politico staff ID.

[jump]