Quotes From Around Yon Blogosphere

There's a scene in the Quentin Tarantino movie Pulp Fiction where Mia (Uma Thurman) asks Vincent Vega, played by John Travolta, whether he's an Elvis or a Beatles person.

"Now Beatles people can like Elvis," she says, "and Elvis people can like the Beatles. But nobody likes them both equally. Somewhere you have to make a choice. And that choice tells me who you are."

This might sound simplistic but it's actually how we define ourselves - by choosing what we like and don't like: it's how we delineate everything from our moral code to our wardrobe.

Heraclitus, an Ionian philosopher, said famously that "a man's character is his fate".

Translation? Every day you choose to get out of bed or you don't, you eat sausages or muesli, you drive or catch a bus, you smile at strangers or not, you let someone pass you in traffic or you cut them off, you prefer AFL over rugby league, you cheat on your girlfriend or remain faithful, you keep promises or don't turn up when you say you will ...

This is who you are. These small choices accumulate and before you know it, you're left with Lulu, a girl who loves clean-sheet day, skaters and photography but who can't keep secrets and drinks a little too much vodka.

All the good intentions in our lives add up to little because, in the end, we are what we do or, as the Hindus say, "thou art that".

-- SAM de BRITO

I completely agree with Obama that families should be off limits, and I have been more than a little dismayed by what I called the panty sniffing that occurred over the week-end. I see no difference between what happened this week-end with Palin, culminating with the news of her daughter, and the Obama birth certificate crap or the Edwards affair crusade spear-headed by alleged goat lover Mickey Kaus. I am glad Obama has said noto this crap, and I really hope people listen.

Having said that, I am not going to sit by and let jackasses like Hugh Hewitt and company sit around and publish their deep thoughts and reader emails asserting the moral superiority of… out of wedlock teen pregnancies. Not only is it an absurd position (pregnant daughters as the new family value is a touch rich, guys), but off limits is off limits, you partisan hacks.

-- JOHN COLE

Liars blink less frequently than normal during the lie, and then speed up to around eight times faster than usual afterwards.

The findings, reported in the Journal of Non-verbal Behaviour, means that blink rates could soon be used by professionals, such as the police and security forces, to tell when someone is being duplicitous.

Dr Sharon Leal, co-author of the study at Portsmouth University, said: "It is striking what different patterns in eye blinks emerged for liars and truth tellers.

"Such striking differences in behaviour between liars and truth tellers are rarely seen in deception research."

-- LUCY COCKCROFT

So – who trusts Republicans to make sure that poor people harmed by an act of God are going to get a fair shake? That's a tough one for them. They'll spin it that way, and many cable hosts will play along. But cable hosts have less power over the process that goes on in people's minds than these historical identifiers. So unless they come up with some blindingly brilliant manipulation that's beyond my imagining, I can't see the GOP winning the Gustav spin war.

-- MICHAEL TOMASKY

I had occasion to use a very busy public restroom a few weeks ago, something I really hate to do, and finally understood something guys have been asking for years. Why do women use so much toilet paper? All around me you could hear the rolls spin. Wheee! I'm no Sheryl Crow, but unless I have to do more than blot, I only use two sheets. They don't always use the best paper in these places and I don't like my fingers wet, but there is absolutely no reason to wrap your hand like it needs a bandage. Just saying.

-- DEB

I can't remember the last introduction to the national scene this rocky, and it gets worse every hour -- and even before the investigative reporters have settled in to Anchorage.

Just got off the flight to St. Paul to find, in my inbox: a second source confirming her past membership in a secession-minded fringe group, her lawyering up in an inquiry the AP slugged "Troopergate," and -- insult to injury -- another woman claiming she was actually Miss Congeniality in the Miss Wasilla '84 contest.

The name on the tongues of gleeful Dems, meanwhile: Eagleton.

-- BEN SMITH