There's a "Tiny Social Transactions" Joke Here,
But It's the Weekend & I'm Too Lazy

Like many NYT readers, one of my first stops on Sunday is Randy Cohen's Ethicist column in the magazine. So my curiosity was piqued when he talked to Gothamist yesterday (well, I assume he talked to them before yesterday, but you see what I mean) and learned how location shapes philosophy:

Because most New Yorkers don't depend on a car, were privileged to social transactions that happen a million times a day and bring into focus how we act as members of a community. Ethics is really just the sum total of all these tiny social transactions we have on a daily basis. And New Yorkers have more than most, I'd say because we simply see so many people.

Meanwhile, the Significant Other, remembering my previous thoughts on Toni Bentley and her sodomemoir, alerted me to the inevitable Salon interview. No real surprises here for anybody who's been following the topic, unless you count the Anglo-Saxon vocabulary Salon lets her use to describe the hygenic concerns, which you certainly weren't going to find in the Times.