I consider myself to be a moderate, politically. True-believers on both the left and the right tend to annoy me, mostly because of their tendency to dismiss contrary opinions rather than defend their own. The reason for my annoyance today is the unwillingness of someone on my FL to discuss a position he's taken on his blog. Rather than respond, he' ( Read more... )

I like to think of myself as a capable (if somewhat out-of-practice) writer. My biggest writing challenge since LearnedThumb was born has been finding the time to put the ideas in my head onto paper (figuratively, natch ( Read more... )

I finally finished watching Season 4 of Doctor Who earlier this week. It's been so long since the show actually aired, though, that I can't find the fics I skipped over to avoid spoilers. If any of my erstwhile f-list could suggest a fine S4 fic or two, I'd appreciate it ( Read more... )

Times like these, I wish I was a betting man.

'Cause that 5-game World Series win by the Phightin' Phills? I totally called it.

Now if I could just manage to predict how to best to make some money to pay the mortgage, I'd be all set.

Well, the TB Rays have proven that they can beat a team with an obviously injured DH, an obviously injured #1 starter and without their #5 hitter and starting 3B. Barely ( Read more... )

Paul Newman passed on Friday. I'm not usually big into the whole personality cult thing, so I usually don't feel much when a celebrity passes away. But, in this case, I felt a little sad. Mr. Newman did some amazing things for charity, and he always came across as very down-to-earth. Plus, I almost met him once, in a situation that confirmed to me ( Read more... )

This past Sunday, Mrs. LH overheard me talking with a few other Dads as we were waiting for Sunday School to start. They were talking about how they play basketball at the local high school on Tuesdays and Thursdays. At 6 AM. At the time, I said I couldn't imagine leaving the house at 5:30 in the morning to go do the best thing ever, never mind ( Read more... )

I finally got around to watching Stargate: Continuum last night. Time travel is one of my favorite science fiction sub-genres, probably due to my Doctor Who obsession when I was a kid, so I figured I'd like the movie. And I did enjoy it in parts, but the internal inconsistencies with how they dealt with time travel and alternate timelines bugged me ( Read more... )

I understand that the political and financial elite are different from the rest of us, but even then, sometimes I just don't understand how their minds work. For example, here is a story about Lynn Forester de Rothschild, a big Clinton fundraiser and a member of the DNC's Platform Committee, who apparently has decided to support McCain because she ( Read more... )

Well, it appears that the lack of regulation in the financial sector is finally coming back to bite everyone on the backside. It's unfortunate that everyone in the country is going to have to pay the price, not just the folks who made the bad decisions, and the folks who changed the laws that allowed the bad decisions to be made ( Read more... )