- Kevin of CTA Tattler rode north from Chicago and State on the red line: “There were 21 people in the 34 square feet of space (4.5 feet x 7.5 feet) area between the doors. That is not an exaggeration or hyperbole. I counted the people and then paced off the area after the crowd thinned. One woman just screamed out in frustration: ‘Oh good lord! If I’m touching you where I shouldn’t be I apologize in advance.'”
- Archpundit thinks Eric Zorn needs an editor to remind him where he’s from–and that the Green Party needs to stand for something besides causing Republicans to be elected. (OK, that last clause was me, not Arch. But good grief, first Nader campaigns in swing states and hands it to Bush in 2000, and this year the Greenie in Pennsylvania takes gobs of Santorum money. Thanks for nothing, y’all.)
- David Nirenberg of the University of Chicago, writing at the New Republic online adds needed context to Pope Benedict’s September 12 speech that provoked a number of Muslims to violence. (Don’t get all technical on me about whether it’s a blog; it’s online and it has comments, though not enough links.) The Pope’s key idea, writes Nirenberg, is that only Catholicism unites faith and reason; Islam, Judaism, and at least some strains of Protestantism overdo the faith part and worship a deity unconstrained by reason. Nirenberg concludes that the Pope was inviting Muslims not to dialogue, but to conversion. (Several commenters disagree vigorously but intelligently–how can you have a dialogue with someone who has no regard for reason at all?)