- Blog
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Not That Big a Deal
This comment is my final word on why this blog is here and not at Freethought Blogs. Long and the short: please chill out.
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Me, Bill Richardson, and Crippling Doubt
A couple of years ago, I resolved to write at length about my four years living and working in Washington, DC. If I did it well, if I was diligent, it might even turn into a book: the story of a professional actor who leaves it all behind to study and practice politics in the…
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OSIRIS-REx Will Use TAGSAM to Get a NEO
Gesundheit. But seriously, folks. In 2016 NASA’s going to launch a probe, OSIRIS-REx, to make contact with, and then bring back a sample of — you guessed it — a near-earth object. The object in question is the asteroid Bennu, and the whole operation is described in this NASA video which, I must say, seems…
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Everybody Knows What’s Good for Me
A billion years ago, I wrote a song intended for a production of The Merry Wives of Windsor I was in at the time (I played Slender, la!). We never wound up using the song, other than a bit of the main riff for scene transitions, but it is on my old 2004 album Paul…
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The Cheese Stands Alone
What’s this now? This blog seems familiar, yet somehow alienating. I no longer hear the hum and din of other bloggers tapping and opining around me. Where am I? This is the new home of Near-Earth Object. The design may or may not be final, so we’ll just have to see. It’s just like always,…
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The Universe is a Slacker
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…
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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…
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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…
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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…
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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,…
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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…
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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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I’m on HuffPost Live, Talkin’ Nazis!
I think their usual lineup of guests must have all simultaneously perished, because HuffPost Live invited me to join a panel this evening, literally minutes before air time. I was happy to oblige, of course. (The host, Josh Zepps, has my boss on a lot.) We’re discussing he recent moves by Hungary to ban Nazi…
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If I Can’t Change Your Mind Then No One Will
Because after over 20 years, Bob Mould’s song needed to have a mandolin, Rubbermaid bin, and egg whisk applied to it. Here’s my own twangy take on a song originally recorded by Mould’s band Sugar in 1992.
pav dot quest 