- Blog
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On Depleting My Precious Glucose Resources
Some studies are suggesting that introverts don’t know what’s good for them, and that by acting like extroverts, they will be happier. From the Wall Street Journal: “Introverts kind of underestimate how much fun it will be to act extroverted,” said Dr. [John] Zelenski. “You don’t think you want to go to a party and…
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Paul’s Nine Stages of Giving a Conference Presentation
Anger: What do you mean I have to give a presentation?! I don’t have time to put this together at such short notice! I have too much other stuff on my plate! Weaseling: I did one last year. Other people are covering what I’d cover anyway. This would be pointless. Redundant. Acceptance: Fuck it. I’ll…
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Delicious Disunion, Ctd.
I’m still hung up on this fantasy notion of the United States being a little less united, as I find speculations on a divvied-up sectioning of the country by region to be fascinating. Obviously, we have a cultural identity problem and a governing crisis with the values of one region of the country have folks…
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This Cake is Serious
Photo taken by Kathy Santamore.
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He Just Wasn’t Made for These Times
The Nate Silver saga: Silver leaves the New York Times for ESPN, and the Times’ public editor says, essentially, we didn’t want him anyway: I don’t think Nate Silver ever really fit into the Times culture and I think he was aware of that….His entire probability-based way of looking at politics ran against the kind…
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Bookstores as Literary Outposts in the Digital Age
Virginia Postrel at Bloomberg has an idea for saving bookstores like Barnes and Noble in the digital era: Separate the discovery and atmospheric value of bookstores from the book-warehousing function. Make them smaller, with the inventory limited to curated examination copies — one copy per title. (Publishers should be willing to supply such copies free,…
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Toad Pays its Dues
Toad the Wet Sprocket is back together, much to my delight, and about to release a new record, which last happened during the first year of Clinton’s second term. I’ve been following frontman Glen Phillips’ career since then, watching as he’s had to reestablish himself as a viable performer and recording artist with little name…
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An Atheist’s Prayer, an Actor’s Vulnerability, a Patient’s Trauma
There’s something a little bit eerie to me about Jerry DeWitt’s article in Huffington Post in which he exhorts his fellow nonbelievers to engage in a nonreligious version of prayer. And it’s not eerie because I have some problem with atheists engaging in what sounds at first blush like a form of meditation just because…
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On the Occasion of My Little Girl Turning One
“I’m the nicest guy I know, and I’m an asshole!” This is my standard line to describe my anxiety about being the father of a baby girl. Here’s another way to put it: A friend of mine related this line to me, but I don’t know the original source. “When you have a boy, you…
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A Song I Wrote Was Gonna Be in a Movie But Now It’s Not So You Can Hear It Now I Guess
Earlier this year, I was asked if one of my original songs, “Selfless,” could be used in a film being produced that a friend of mine is involved in. I was delighted, and I recorded a fresh version that I thought sounded a little stronger than the 2004 original. Then a few weeks ago I…
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Gerson Shows a Heart
Michael Gerson, though I have accused him of having a lizard brain and doing the Douthat Twist, shows a heart with ambition, calling for a great national project to lift up African American young men: If the reelection of President Obama is to mark a new era of liberal governance, let’s at least have some…
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They’re On Their Way to Get Loki
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For Winter, Respect. For Summer, Contempt.
It is summer, which is a bad thing, I await the change of seasons, but things are not as simple as they once were. There was a time when winter didn’t bother me in the least. Not only am I an introvert, and therefore already inclined to spend my time indoors, and therefore unhampered by…
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Threats, Trade-offs, and a Tinderbox
Pratap Bhanu Mehta at the Financial Times compares American perceptions of threat and the liberty-security balance, which leads me to contemplate an unpleasant state of affairs coming our way. Mehta says: How do societies draw the line on what constitutes an acceptable trade-off? The American debate is peculiar because the standards seem perversely different in…
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The Enemies of All Mankind
I am no libertarian. I find them, frankly, scary in their bizarre faith in markets and contracts to keep civilization from eating itself alive. And very often, libertarianism is used as a thin veil to disguise things like institutionalized racism. Which is why this post from Jason Kuznicki at the Libertarian Party’s blog was so…
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