I finally found someone who expressed perfectly the ambiguous perspective that troubles me so much whenever I get more involved in various forms of social activism. Even though my politics are in alignment with the people I try to work with, eventually some sort of frisson occurs due to my discomfort with the social dynamics that happen in such ( Read more... )

As a writing exercise, I once wrote my own obituary, which despite its rather lofty goals (Olympic medalist AND Nobel laureate?!?) I must confess a certain lack of originality when held up against this example ( Read more... )

This overwhelming urge to stick wonky labels on the axes these psuedo-graphs and a big old title "Republican Economic Recovery Plan" on top of them washes over me ( Read more... )

When I heard of Gov. Sanford's "hike on the Appalachian trail" (which will now enter my gallery of non sequitur euphemisms), my first unworthy thought was:

"But in these hard economic times, couldn't he have found a qualified American for that job?"

Lots of stuff out there about *why* there's even a debate about the use of torture in wartime (contravenes Geneva convention, we don't do that in America, etc.) I'm not going into that ( Read more... )

YES.

Not like it will ever happen.

Nate Silver plots it out for us.

It's like that Harris cartoon of two scientists looking at a blackboard thicket of equations with a little space in the middle that says, "and here a miracle occurs".

Maybe it's finally time to paperbackswap.com the book _The Living Together Kit: A Legal Guide for Unmarried couples_.

After all, it's only been, er, 2.5 years since the wedding.

So my co-worker was wryly commenting on how good her life was, that this was her idea of conflict ( Read more... )

Creativity is only one mangled metaphor away ( Read more... )