Industries that are literally destroying the planet and human livelihood have recently found a new pitch to make themselves palatable to the average American. No one really wants to get fracked or drilled or whatever new word they’ve come up…
Category: Politics (n.): a strife of interests masquerading
Object Lesson
I have learned a lot about myself in the past week. This is good. Learning is fun! One of the things I have learned, or relearned perhaps, is how little I am surprised by things. Most people like surprises. I…
The Economy’s Stupid
The way we talk about the economy is delusional. Pick up a paper or turn on the news or talk to a friend and chances are that they will discuss the economy (perhaps I should put it as The Economy)…
The Impending Class War
I’ve spent a reasonably large chunk of the last week shuttling myself to New York City to see one of my favorite bands, the Weakerthans, play all four of their studio albums on four successive nights. This may not mean…
Occupation
As most of you know, I used to counsel “emotionally disturbed” kids in a group home. That was my occupation. We used this system generally known as “behavior modification” whereby we rewarded good behavior and punished (to a degree) bad…
Obligatory 9/11 Reflection
Yesterday I went to Philadelphia to play cards and see Ariel and be social on a day when I expected to be overwhelmed and over-tired after reconnecting with the debate circuit (see here for how that went) for another season.…
The Randomness of Money
A couple weeks back, before the storm blew in and failed to knock out the power and the storm of novices came in to reignite the debate season, I came home and found a note under my door saying that…
Why I’m Cancelling Netflix
It has nothing to do with the price, although the increase doesn’t hurt for putting things in perspective. I’ve talked about this phenomenon to a few people, but it seems like the kind of thing that’s worth documenting at this…
Time in the Seat’s Not Neat
People ask all the time why kids love video games but generally seem to hate going to school. Why people will spend a lot of time diligently devoting themselves to baseball statistics or the arcane rules of a particular game…
Insurance = Fraud
I actually bought furniture the other day. New furniture. New furniture other than an office chair. I’ve basically never done this in my life. Emily and I bought a new bed when we lived in Berkeley, mostly at her insistence.…