We don’t like the word “war” anymore. It’s so violent! It sounds so 20th century, so Web 1.0, so old-school. “Intervention” sounds like what you do with your alcoholic brother who’s gone off the rails and just won’t listen anymore,…
Category: Politics (n.): a strife of interests masquerading
Might Makes Right: America 50 Years After Freedom Summer
“When police come out and take a stand and wear and have equipment that makes it feel like somehow the people who are protesting are assumed to be the bad guys, I don’t think it helps take the tension out…
My Reason for Reason
My friend Ariel isn’t on Facebook. Thus she was inevitably confused by my portrayal of a lot of the Robin Williams reactions in Wednesday’s post about suicide. To her mind, there weren’t a lot of people trying to stifle discussions…
Let’s Talk About Suicide
“And when the guy said, ‘Well, do you ever get depressed?’ I said, ‘Yeah, sometimes I get sad.’ I mean, you can’t watch news for more than three seconds and go, ‘Oh, this is depressing.’ And then immediately, all of…
Institutional Idealism
When I worked at Glide in San Francisco, I worked with an intern from Germany on a project about the nature of Glide as an institution. It was a special project for the then CEO, newly hired, who wanted to…
Fixing Football Follow-Up: 2014 Bracket
After watching Russia fall into a heart-breaking and eliminating draw against Algeria, I did at least acknowledge the quality of the story that would be coming up, which would be a rematch between Germany and Algeria, offering the latter team…
Fixing Football
I, like many sports fans, have been following the 2014 World Cup, though I share some misgivings about it as an institution (as do most conscious people). Clearly rotational hosting is both exciting and fun and showcases parts of the…
Violence is About Violence: Elliot Rodger and Memorial Day
Every time there’s a mass-shooting or -killing in America, which is roughly constantly these days, there is a groundswell of effort to claim the event as political leverage for or against some particular cause that those behind it attribute to…
The Limits of Surveillance
The videos taken of apparent/alleged/possible/probable chemical-weapons attacks in Syria got me thinking. No one, at least as of this morning (I haven’t heard updates later in the day) seemed to know what to think of them. Are they trumped up…
Facial Recognition
It’s not often that someone like me is told to smile less. Today, I got a new New Jersey Driver’s License, proving that I have officially spent too long in this state. I remember actually looking at the September 2013…