- Blog
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Crime Has Not Fallen in the United States, It’s Been Shifted
My mind (and sense of conscience) was blown by an article in n + 1 on the horror that is the American prison system. I won’t go into the horrifying detail, but suffice it to say that the wrongs done to small-time crooks and mere drug addicts, all with the knowledge of — and collusion with — prison authorities,…
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Reading is Self-Mastery
D.G. Myers positions reading not as an escape but as a challenge to ourselves: To read an author is to read someone different from ourselves. Reading is not a means of self-affirmation, but of self-denial. Any book that is any good challenges its readers: This is so, isn’t it? Did you know this? Have you considered that? [ ……
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Mitt Romney is Not One of Skeletor’s Henchmen
This should give you an idea about where my brain is at any given time. In today’s New York Times, a pieceabout Mitt Romney and his faith is accompanied by this image: Which is, of course, in reference to the word Mormon, which is, of course, Mitt Romney’s religion. But I immediately thought it was a reference to Merman,…
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My Treatise on Atheists in Politics is Now a Kindle Book
I know what you want. You want a heavily footnoted, yet deliciously readable academic tract on the plight of American atheists in the contemporary political environment. But you don’t want it to be too long — 50 pages or so will be fine, thank you — and you don’t want it to be so tied to…
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Mitt Romney’s Tax Returns Explanation, as Performed by Kermit the Frog
It’s obviously very important to Mitt Romney that people understand with absolute clarity what his position is on the release of his tax returns. To help him out, I’ve enlisted Kermit the Frog to reiterate Mr. Romney’s explanation from last night’s debate.
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In Defense of E-ink and Plain Old Words
At The Loop, Matt Alexander predicts the coming demise of e-ink-based readers. His contention, which may be right, is that the rapid evolution and decreasing prices of tablets will render “electronic paper” to sub-niche status. I can believe that if what we now know of as tablets become so crisp and readable for long durations, then yes,…
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Ron Paul, Stopped Clock
If you’re in the spheres of my online social networks, you may have noticed that I’ve had a certain fixation on the more insane or upsetting aspects of the Ron Paul candidacy. Call it schadenfreude if you like, or malicious cherry-picking, but I’ve felt compelled to highlight things about Paul that show his more hard-right…
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Then Vonnegut Asked Caro, “Are We in the Same Trade?”
I’ve not yet read any of Robert Caro’s enormous Lyndon Johnson biographical series, even as he readies to release the latest volume that takes the subject up to his ascension to the presidency. I intend to read them, and the political world has a minor buzz to it because of this imminent release. In another…
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Constructive versus Destructive Atheist Activism
Chris Stedman gives voice to a concern I’ve had of late (and unfortunately does so in the Huffington Post, but we’ll let that go): I maintain significant disagreement with many religious beliefs, but I do not wish to be associated with narrow-minded, dehumanizing generalizations about religious people. I am disappointed that such positions represent atheist…
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Unnecessary Nostalgia for the Idiot Box
Almost a year ago, the New Yorker published a piece by Adam Gropnik digesting various tomes about what the Internet was doing to us as a culture, ranging from the folks who saw it as the coming of paradise to the coming of the end times. One recurring theme with those who saw the Internet as a net negative,…
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Serenaded for My 34th
For my 34th birthday (December 1), my lovely wife commissioned a song about me from our friend Joe Langham. Just…just…don’t even ask me to express how many emotions this song evokes. It’s a beautiful thing. Even the blog got a shout-out. Wondrous. Thanks, Joe. (And you too, honey.)
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On Violence: Accepting What I Could (and Couldn’t) Have Done
As the tens of readers of this blog are no doubt sick of being reminded, I was the victim of a violent assault about a year ago in Washington, DC. It’s impossible for me to give you any meaningful explanation of the psychological aftermath of such an event in any brief form. But one particular…
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You’re So Smart! No I’m Not!
I tell my almost-two-year-old son Toby how smart he is all the time. It was said to me over and over when I was a kid. Decades later, I know in hindsight that I believed my “smartness” to be innate and unrelated to effort or discipline. I therefore, in turn, also believed that when I…
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My Atheism Will Not Save the World, Ctd.
Friend-of-the-blog Marty Pribble picks up on my lamentations about the state of atheist/skeptic activism, and explains my point about there being a deeper core of crisis than religion alone better than I did: I feel we are lacking focus. The problems of the world are not caused by religion alone, rather abuse of religious privilege,…
pav dot quest 