January 2010
listening to "Yes! We Have No Bananas [1930]... →
You know folks, there’s something funny about bananas …
listening to "101ers Surf City" →
I knew there was no hope at all for a fool like me
December 2009
Barack Obama, Phil Ochs, C. Wright Mills, and Me →
Dissenting Justice — a great blog by Darren Hutchinson, a law professor at American University — has had some of the best commentary I’ve seen on the emerging crackpot realist narrative about…
Putzing around the Christmas tree →
Anyone who has ever spent time in the vicinity of Bethlehem, Pennsylvania in December will surely have been perplexed by signs pointing the way to the “Putz”. This old New York Times article…
Don we now our tacky apparel →
Of all the peculiar customs associated with Christmas, the wearing of hideous sweaters is surely the most bizarre–more disturbing even than carrying around a ribbon-festooned horse’s…
Health Care Refauxrm: Good for insurance... →
The stock market appears to be drawing the appropriate conclusions from the misbegotten health care finance bill:
Insurance corporation share prices are up this week. Prospects for…
Rollin’ on Chrome →
Despite my recent experience with images not displaying correctly in Chrome, and notwithstanding Google CEO Eric Schmidt’s disturbing views about privacy, I have recently made the switch…
Following-up on my earlier post, I am delighted to report that the World Varsities Trout Fly Fishing Competition is indeed on the up-and-up. The event will take place August 28-29, 2010 on Lough Corrib in County Mayo, Ireland, which appears perfectly idyllic. It is organized by Dr. David Sutton and Dr. Michael O’Keefe, both lecturers in environmental sciences at the Limerick Institute of...
Acting on a tip from The Fiberglass Manifesto, I recently ordered a few “Furl Girl” leaders from Joni, the Utah FlyGoddess. I haven’t had a chance to test them on the water. But so far, I’m very pleased. The floating versions are nicely limp and supple–perfect for delicately presenting flies to wary fish. The sinking version is made with kevlar thread, which should hold up very nicely dragging...
I retrieved today, from my university email’s spam filter, what is either a genuine invitation to an exciting event or a bizarre variation on the familiar email scam. The message appears to be from a lecturer at a university in Ireland, and it solicits participation in the “World Varsities Trout Fly Fishing Competition”, to be held in Ireland in August 2010.
I took a careful look at the email...
As a parent trying to raise a non-sexist non-gender-typed child, I am endlessly frustrated by those who insist that differences between boys’ and girls’ cognitive and play styles are “hard-wired” — a myth unsupported by scientific evidence. So I was very happy to discover the book Pink Brain, Blue Brain by neuroscientist Lise Eliot (who talks about her work here). Reviewing the existing...
Murdered by the Chicago Police Department, December 4, 1969
(From David Ruccio’s Occasional Notes & Commentary)
The John Locke Foundation (which proclaims itself a “think tank” but is really more of a septic tank of warmed-over reactionary nostrums) will celebrate its 20th anniversary in January with a dinner featuring Newt Gingrich as keynote speaker. Gingrich–a serial liar and adulterer who notoriously pressed his cancer-stricken wife to sign divorce papers as she lay in her hospital bed–seems an ironic...
This morning, I saw a car with two bumper stickers. One was a McCain 2008 campaign sticker. The other had a picture of President Obama and the message, “Pray for Obama Psalm 109:8″. I thought it was very nice that a McCain supporter would be urging prayer on behalf of Obama.
Then, out of curiosity (not being especially versed in biblical verses), I looked up Psalm 109:8. According to the King...
This evening, while eating dinner at a local restaurant, I overheard a discussion among three men at the next table. The men appeared perfectly normal, and their conversation (about their respective past vacations in Las Vegas) was at first hardly noteworthy.
Then, all of a sudden, the topic shifted. One of the men said that he’d received an email saying that, in January, “they” would be “going...
November 2009
Among the great many things that I find endlessly baffling is why so many otherwise intelligent people have such admiration for the Dalai Lama. His vaunted “wisdom” is mostly vapid nonsense at best. Sometimes, as with this little tidbit–posted on Twitter by HisHoliness and retweeted by several of his fans–it is far worse:
One’s pain is one’s own creation. One should treat such things as if they...
