- Blog
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Facing Irrelevance
How many readers does it take to make a blog worthwhile? What constitutes a sufficient number of pageviews for a given post? The most obvious answer is that there is no line of demarcation; the act of writing is an end in itself. If I were to have a meaningful conversation with a single person,…
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Topping Off at the Ebook Station
Booksquare’s Kassia Krozser is on to something. In a larger post on the necessity of physical booksellers, she adds in a parenthetical: . . . I would not mind the ability to purchase Kindle-compatible ebooks from my indie booksellers. . . . it would be lovely if all the Kindle owners out there — the ones…
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The Food of Art
On last week’s Thinking Unenslaved podcast, we considered raising for discussion the topic of religion in the arts, and what might become of the arts if religion were not the force it is in our society and culture. We wound up not getting around to it, though I expect we probably will. Regardless, I had written up…
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Yesterday
Yesterday was kind of an important day for me. As many of you know, I was brutally attacked by two thugs on the street outside my Metro stop in DC a few months ago. I was transitioning to a new part-time retail gig in order to reclaim some sanity in my life, and to be able to care…
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The Unforgivable Mitt Romney
Mitt Romney is waving his proverbial arms about this week, getting as much attention for himself on TV, readying himself to run for president again. Most of the chatter around his probable candidacy revolves around the similarity between “Obamacare” and his own health care reform law from when he was governor of Massachusetts. Liberals are…
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I Don’t Know Who to Boycott Anymore
The wife and I are struggling with chicken. We’ve always known Chik-fil-a to be a “Christian business,” whatever that means, if only because they’re closed on Sunday, a fact which often chaps our asses. But — not surprisingly, I might add — Chik-fil-a has been in the news for tipping its hand as being against gay equality…
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Cultivating a Good Depression
I like to cultivate a good depression. Well, I suppose “like” is a poor choice of words when discussing uncontrolled despondency. Perhaps it’s better to say that apparently I tend to cultivate a depression — or perhaps my depression is something that induces me to cultivate it. In any case, when depression comes on — and the difference between…
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‘A Better Pencil’: A Good Point That Needs a Better Book
Apart from some interesting bits about the challenges presented by, and the romanticism associated with, various writing tools and implements, Dennis Baron’s A Better Pencil: Readers, Writers, and the Digital Revolution is a very repetitive book with little to say. Essentially, Baron gives laborious, truly unnecessary explanations of some of the most common and basic writing means…
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On Fulfillment: The Noble Pursuit of 10 Percent
The wife and I are in something of an existential pickle. Here we are, resettling ourselves (ever-so-slowly and awkwardly) in small town southern Maine, trying to make a good long-term home for our family. At the same time, Jess and I are artists, we’re performers, and recent years have proven to be lean ones in…
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DADT and the Religious Right’s Clout
Jonathan Chait dissects the breach in Republican resistance to gay rights in the wake of the coming repeal of Don’t Ask Don’t Tell, and reaches an astounding side conclusion, emphasis mine: The progress of gay rights in the United States over the last generation has been intoxicatingly rapid. It’s happening so fast that opponents, rather than fomenting…
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Kay Hagan Spits on Another Maligned Minority
I was inspired to begin blogging on atheism in American politics when Kay Hagan, running for Senate against Elizabeth Dole in 2008, enabled the infamous “godless” attacks leveled against her by the Dole campaign by essentially conceding the foundational argument of Dole’s attack: that anyone who even associates with atheists is not qualified for public office.…
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Lest We Forget: Thoughts on “Rise and Fall of the Third Reich”
The edition that I own of William Shirer’s The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich advertises that the book is one that “shocked the conscience of the world.” I saw this mainly as an indication of what the book must have meant to a public that might not have been as familiar with the crimes of…
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The Attack
On the evening of October 26, I was returning home from my second day of training at my new part-time job. I was in the midst of a transition; in my last week at my desk job as a communications manager at a nonprofit and moving to working weekends and some nights so I could…
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