The difference between observing our lives and living them.

Hilary puts it beautifully in this essay. Read it all.

I have the same problem, taking pictures of my kids' activities instead of merely watching them. Sure, they're great keepsakes. But was I fully there? A good question.

This is probably why we are so irritated with tourists who take pictures of everything in sight. We instinctively know there is something wrong with it. I stopped taking pictures several times in Florence because I realised I was trying harder to save Florence for later than I was trying to actually be there at the time.

It is only in the here and now that life can actually be lived. When you are thinking about doing an act of charity or committing a sin, you aren't actually doing it. The act itself is the meritorious or culpable thing, not the contemplation of it. Humans in the West have been retreating from The Real for a long time. The reason Twitting is so popular is that it offers us a new way of doing what we have been doing for decades, pulling back and becoming observers rather than participants.

P.J. O'Rourke mulls his mortality.

A funny and touching piece at the L.A. Times about his reaction to a cancer diagnosis.

God knows this stuff. He's God. He's all-knowing. What am I telling him, really? "Gosh, you sure are a good God. Good -- you own it. Plus you're infinitely wise, infinitely merciful, but ... look, everybody makes mistakes. A little cancer of the behind, it's not a big mistake. Not something that's going on your personal record. There's no reason it can't be, well ... reversed, is there?"

No doubt death is one of those mysterious ways in which God famously works. Except, on consideration, death isn't mysterious. Do we really want everyone to be around forever? I'm thinking about my own family, specifically a certain stepfather I had as a kid. Sayonara, you s.o.b.

Napoleon was doubtless a great man in his time -- at least the French think so. But do we want even Napoleon extant in perpetuity? Do we want him always escaping from island exiles, raising fanatically loyal troops of soldiers, invading Russia and burning Moscow?

Well, at the moment, considering Putin et al, maybe we do want that. But, century after century, it would get old. And what with Genghis Khan coming from the other direction all the time and Alexander the Great clashing with a Persia that is developing nuclear weapons and Roman legions destabilizing already precarious Israeli-Palestinian relations -- things would be a mess.

Has he become one of the tribe? He was raised Protestant and explained why that happened in one of his books, but he seems to be giving off beadsqueezer vibes in this one. Starting with the beadsqueezing reference.

I don't know...

The Hitchhiker's Guide is coming back.

I loved them back in middle and high school. I remember reading the first installment in my 8th grade English class, red-faced and somehow stifling the laughter enough to leave Mrs. Wegner suspicious, as opposed to certain, that I was up to non-studying. I have the entire set hardbound, in leather, no less.

Yes, the final book was downbeat (though still funny), and Adams regretted that. Moreover, he'd started work on another book, and had a chapter more or less worked out, featuring Ford Prefect, IIRC.

Butbutbut...

There was only one Douglas Adams. I'm content to know that Arthur, Ford, Zaphod and the rest of the mad gang were still out and about, even if Adams never quite worked out how, precisely.

Really--when has this new author concept ever worked out? Artistically, I mean.

Where does the time go?

Louis was 15 lbs, 10 oz on April 19, when he turned four months. He's more than doubled his weight.

And yesterday he started rolling over.

Blink and he'll be crawling. Look away at the computer screen and he'll be walking. Go out to the deck and he'll be talking.

Too fast. Far too fast.