Challenge: Define Mitt’s Appeal

September 26, 2012

It’s a remarkably negative and polarizing election season. So let’s try an experiment. In positive terms, explain why you back either horse. I’m baffled why anyone would vote for either of these jokers. For you liberal/democrat/progressive types, why would you vote for a president who limits free speech, extends the NDAA, Patriot Act, drone attacks, [...]

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“You’re a libertarian, but I bet you still use the Interstate.”

September 24, 2012

That’s a direct accusation a grad school prof made against me. The implicit assumption is that you should live your everyday life in rigid accordance with your principles. This is stupid. There are ideals, and there are reasonable compromises. Driving on a pre-existing road doesn’t mean I support future expenditures. At best, you can draw [...]

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Being Happy Being Sad

September 12, 2012

Freethink Media’s Dan Hayes tweeted about a great NPR article about a lasting ambivalence inherent in modern music: Six years ago, Glenn Schellenberg decided to do an experiment. … “Happy-sounding songs typically tend to be in a major key, and they tend to be fast, [with] more beats per minute,” he says. “Conversely, sad-sounding songs [...]

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David Foster Wallace on Self-Confidence

June 28, 2012

A majority of the camera and sound and make-up crew are female, but a lot of these, too, have a similar look: 30ish, makeupless, insouciantly pretty, wearing faded jeans and old running shoes and black T-shirts, and with lush well-conditioned hair tied carelessly out the way so that strands tend to escape and trail and [...]

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Neil Gaiman On Self-Determination

June 21, 2012

  And it came to him then, as clearly and as certainly as if he had been watching it on the big screen at the Odean, Leicester Square: the rest of his life. He would go home tonight with the girl from Computer Services, and they would make gentle love, and tomorrow, it being Saturday, they would [...]

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Terry Prachett On Beginnings

June 20, 2012

When does it start? There are very few starts. Oh, some things seem  to be beginnings. The curtain goes up, the first pawn moves, the first shot is fired* – but that’s not the start. The play, the game, the war is just a little window on a ribbon of events that may extend back thousands of years. [...]

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Charles Bradley’s Got Old Tyme Soul

June 19, 2012

Charles Bradley looks like James Brown would have looked if he were hooked on lattes, and not angel dust. He’s got the ‘fro, the style, and the rhythm of another era, and it’s glorious. His life story is quite something. So is his album, No Time For Dreaming. It’s a sultry, raw reminder of what [...]

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Sort Of Defending Nickleback, Without Really Meaning To

April 24, 2012

I come not to praise Nickleback, but to bury Klosterman, because he wrote this sad lead-in to his Grantland column, “A Night With the World’s Most Hated Bands“: The moment you tell people you’re seeing Creed and Nickelback in concert — on the same night, at roughly the same time, in two different venues — [...]

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Yes, Virginia, There Is Due Process

April 19, 2012

Back in December, Nobel Laureate Barack Obama signed the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2012. The bill contained two controversial provisions which, according to the ACLU, let’s the government seize and hold Americans without charge, trial, or due process. “President Obama’s action today is a blight on his legacy because he will forever [...]

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Hemingway On The Perception Of Courage

April 17, 2012

Now the brave actions of a coward are very valuable in psychological novels and are always extremely valuable to the man who performs them, but they are not valuable to the public who, season in and season out, pay to see a bullfighter. All they do is give that bullfighter a seeming value which he does not [...]

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