(Seeing) Violence is Shocking

By now most of you have heard about Ray Rice, formerly of Rutgers, most recently of the Baltimore Ravens, being fired by the Ravens for punching his now wife, then fiancee, in an elevator. Or, more aptly, he was fired…

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Obliviate

“Had four brothers once upon a time He said they toured the country far away from the Rio Grande But the road just wore them down So they bought a house beside a lake Outside of New Orleans And stared…

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For the Love of the Game

I like competing. I like games. I like situations that produce winners and losers with high regularity. I like this stuff a lot. But why? After I posted about my first-ever tournament win of a large poker tournament on Facebook…

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Let Me Be Clear

After they read yesterday’s post, my parents called me repeatedly to suggest that I edit the post because they were afraid that the NSA was going to haul me off to an undisclosed location for my comment about Malia Obama.…

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The Consequences of “Intervention”

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,…

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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…

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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…

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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…

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