I’m reading Bertrand Russell’s The ABC of Relativity (well, listening to it, in an audiobook read by Derek Jacoby FTW), and for one, it’s helping me understand relativity a tiny, tiny bit, which is huge. Relatively. But I also just heard Jacoby pronounce this tidbit, which delighted me: If people were to learn to conceive …
Category Archive: Uncategorized
May 12 2013
It’s Okay to Put Down the Book
Tim Parks, blogging at NYRB, writes a thought-provoking piece positing that there may be something to the idea that a reader may opt not to finish a novel when they are, in essence, quite full and satisfied — and that authors should accept and embrace this. It’s a fascinating idea considering how rarely endings of …
May 11 2013
Where Obama Has and Hasn’t Blown It
Norm Ornstein looks to dispel the notion that Obama’s agenda is stifled because the president lacks some certain, special, nameless something that forces enemies in Congress to do his bidding. For example, on the myth that arm-twisting is some kind of chief executive panacea: On the gun-control vote in the Senate, the press has focused …
May 11 2013
Women in Tech Put Up with a Lot of Crap Too
I thought this might be of interest to my readers and to a lot of folks in the skepto-atheosphere: Dan Benjamin’s panel-discussion podcast The Crossover in recent months has done a couple of episodes that focused on the unique challenges faced by women in the tech and inter-webs industries. They’re both very insightful and illuminating …
May 11 2013
Thank You For Enduring the Bullshit, Star Wars Kid
I loved Star Wars Kid. When his video was cruelly put online for all to mock, I only saw myself. I mean, I'm human, I laughed and cringed. But I also saw both the wish to be something greater, something from fantasy, as well as the desire to actually make something, to use my enthusiasm …
May 04 2013
Big Bucks to be Made When Middle School Becomes an Urban Warfare Training Academy
From Liz Halloran at NPR, we get a story of the Rocori school district in Minnesota which is spending $25,000 on, wait for it, bulletproof white boards. “The timing was right,” Rocori school board Chairwoman Nadine Schnettler tells us. “The company is making these in response to the Newtown shooting, and has been making similar …
May 03 2013
Delicious Disunion
In Kansas, they’ve declared that they won’t abide by any federal law having to do with guns. In North Carolina, some folks tried to pass a law that would allow them to establish a state religion, and it enjoyed a great deal of popular support. Louisiana not only wants to teach creationism to its kids, …
May 01 2013
The Problem Wasn’t the Internet
When Paul Miller of The Verge began his year-long hiatus from the Internet, I rolled my eyes. I looked to me to be a kind of attention-getting gimmick, intended to raise his profile and lend him an air of sophistication. My assumption, however, was pure prejudice, having known nothing about him as a writer or …
Apr 30 2013
Bowser the Fascist, Mario the Warchief
I’ve just finished Barbara Tuchman’s The Guns of August, and I’m generally trying to get myself better acquainted with the societal and political conditions that surrounded the World Wars. But who needs real history? For a serious lesson in statecraft and warcraft, check out Domhnall O’Huigin’s explanation of the political context of the universe of …
Apr 28 2013
Repent, or Get a Pizza for $5!
This kind of thing actually still happens, even in Maine. The really interesting thing is that usually in that same spot is a Little Caesar’s guy holding a big sign advertising the $5 hot-n-readies. Man, would I love to see those guys do a side-of-the-road advertise-off.
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