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  • I Hate Mitt Romney. Mitt Romney for President!

    I don’t think those of us in the reality-based community are sufficiently panicked about the prospect of a Rick Perry presidency. First, it’s foolish to think that Barack Obama has this election in the bag no matter who the GOP nominates. Second, Rick Perry is running away with this primary right now, besting Romney by double digits…

  • This Isn’t the William Shirer You’re Looking For: Thoughts on Steve Wick’s “The Long Night”

    Readers of this blog may already be aware of my deep affection for the thousand-plus-page tome The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, journalist William Shirer’s invaluable 1960 history of Hitler and his Germany. It was with great delight, then, that I was made aware of a history of that history, Steve Wick’s The…

  • Listening to 9/11: My Experience of the Attacks from Brooklyn

    In September of 2001, I had just decided not to go back to school. I had been agonizing over whether to return to the Actors Studio Drama School (then at the New School University) for my second year of training toward a master’s degree in acting. I had just moved from Edgewater, NJ to Brighton Beach in Brooklyn…

  • What Obama’s Bad National Numbers Definitely Don’t Tell Us

     A “Blue Wall.” A new poll today has some grim numbers for the president. Though it shows him besting Perry and Romney in head-to-head match-ups, it’s well within the margin of error, and his numbers for job approval, whether the country is on the right track, and in a head-to-head against a generic Republican are rather discouraging.…

  • Save Science by Not Talking about Science, Ctd.

    Side note: My dad actually bought me this shirt. I love it, and my wife hates it when I wear it. She just thinks it makes me look stupid. I don’t think she cares about the rabbit. John Timmer at Ars Technica places a plague o’ both your houses when it comes to the convenient…

  • Save Science By Not Talking about Science

     ”At last! I have discovered the formula for making the uneducated feel even MORE inadequate!” I almost wasn’t going to read the recent Paul Krugman column on the proud anti-science stance of mainstream Republican thought. You know, “this also just in: Fire is hot.” But it got so much attention in my social media circles, that I…

  • In (Reluctant) Defense of Mitt Romney

      EXCLUSIVE: Human beings enjoying the company of Mitt Romney I have no love for Willard “Mitt” Romney. He has consistently proven that he is an unprincipled opportunist who bends with every minor political breeze. There is no shortage of statements he’s made and positions he’s held that deserve criticism and ridicule. So my feeling is, let’s…

  • Cory Booker: Maker of Twitter Lemonade

     The mayor has indicated that, should your schedule permit, he would like to put a little love in your heart. If you have at all dipped your social media teacup into the political Twitter river, you will no doubt have happened upon several servings of Newark mayor Cory Booker’s near-obsessive interactions. I say “interactions” because…

  • Obama in the Fog

    I know, it’s easy to continue to beat the I’m-disappointed-in-Obama drum from the comfort of my MacBook. But there’s a couple of new news items that are adding fuel to my sickly fire. Let’s begin with the older item, one reiterated by Maureen Dowd a few days ago. In Cannon Falls, Minn., the president compared negotiating with House Republicans to negotiating with his…

  • So Long, and Thanks for All the Text

     The text stops here. My webby little heart is broken, as I have just read that author and scholar Alan Jacobs is retiring his blog Text Patterns. It’s hard for me to overstate Text Patterns’ influence on me and this blog. Jacobs opened up a whole new world of topics to cover in my own blog writing, helping me discover…

  • What’s a Book Review For?

    Miranda Celeste Hale (my Bespectacled Blog Twin™) writes thoughtfully and passionately in favor of the continued existence of the book review, a counter argument to a piece from n+1 by Elizabeth Gumport. On the whole, I agree with Miranda’s take. Here’s the meat of her argument: Although Gumport would deny it, there’s a reason why many of us still read publications…

  • Trojan Asteroid Follows Earth, Reinforces My Insecurities

    It turns out that our fair planet has been tailed by a shy asteroid for perhaps thousands of years. This “Trojan asteroid” is caught between the gravitational tugs of Earth and the Sun, and is doomed to follow us around in our orbit, and there may be others like it. Per the LA Times: “This is…

  • The WTC Cross: Like it or Not, It’s a Piece of History

    Among the many government-funded museums of New York, Washington, and other cities across the country, there are historical artifacts and pieces of art that are significant to their creators and to their later admirers for their religious meaning. From ancient Egyptian idols and glyphs, to Renaissance paintings of Christ, from the religious trinkets of concentration camp victims in the Holocaust Museum, to Bibles owned by…

  • These People Haven’t Read This Consent Form

    My friend Jed, newly-graduated with a fancy advanced degree in something science-y, is having a rough time of finding employment — like many, many other people. Jed has a certain way with storytelling, and he recently recounted on Facebook one of his adventures in job hunting — which involves the frying of his molecules — which I…

  • Bloggy Relevance: Thoughts on What This Blog Is and Ought to Be

    As long-time readers of this blog probably already know, I have at various times struggled over the identity of this blog, and my identity as a blogger or, really, as an “Internet personality.” I first began blogging in 2004 just to try and promote my first (and so far only) CD, Paul is Making Me Nervous.…