9/11 and Modern Memory
My kids are studying 9/11 in school. Yesterday my son was talking about it and described a video they watched featuring victims, family members of victims, and witnesses as “old people talking about 9/11.” He spoke of it in the same terms as we might’ve talked about History Channel shows featuring World War II veterans. […]
Read moreCurrent Mood: Jim Rockford
I’d occasionally see reruns of “The Rockford Files” when I was young. I didn’t think too much of it. To me it was like a dozen other 70s and early 80s cop and detective shows for all the good and the bad that entailed. Stuff my parents liked. Give me “The Dukes of Hazard” and “The A-Team” […]
Read moreMarking the 25th anniversary of the 1994-95 baseball strike
Today is the 25th anniversary of the start of the 1994-95 Major League Baseball players’ strike. Over at the baseball site I wrote about it. But note: this is not a “here’s what happened in 1994” post. Rather, it’s 4,231 words about why the 94-95 strike happened in the first place. A strike that is […]
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Just Say No to E + R = O
A trendy educational philosophy is not all that it seems
Read moreTweet names of campaign donors all you want. That’s the damn point.
“Requiring people to stand up in public for their political acts fosters civic courage, without which democracy is doomed.” — Antonin Scalia, Doe v. Reed, 561 U.S. 186 (2010) Yesterday Congressman Joaquin Castro — who is also chairman of his brother Julian Castro’s presidential campaign — tweeted out the names of several notable people and […]
Read morePick your side
We don’t debate whether anyone who says the things Trump says is a racist. It’s obvious. I mean, if your neighbor told a black person to “go back to Africa” or a any other non-white, native-born person “go back to where you came from,” the message would be loud and clear: a non-white person is […]
Read moreJim Bouton: The Patron Saint for Those Who Chafe
Baseball and literary legend Jim Bouton died today. He was 80. My full story about his life and work can be read over at the baseball site. Now, though, something personal. I have spent most of my life as something of a square peg in a round hole. I moved around a lot when I […]
Read moreBanana Republic
Last week the president dispatched his daughter, who is a professional fashion designer, to the G-20 summit and the DMZ. This morning tanks and fighter jets are rolling into Washington as the president turns our nation’s annual Fourth of July celebration into a show of military strength cum campaign rally. A leader sending his hilariously unqualified […]
Read moreThe Presidential Medal of Failure
The “Laffer Curve” is the intellectual basis of supply-side economics. It posits that tax cuts pay for themselves through faster economic growth. It is also demonstrably bogus. The Laffer Curve is the economic equivalent of phrenology or alchemy. It’s a perpetual motion machine with a cold fusion backup battery. It’s been debunked by anyone who […]
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33 and Me: Adventures in Genealogy
Fallen nobility, picking the losing side of wars, arbitraging the Black Plague and the other mistakes my family made.
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