I see a lot of argument online about budgets and government priorities and so on. A lot of it confuses me because people are using things that look like math – but are actually just bad argument and yelling. I’m going to try to summarize…
That big chewy hairball of rage that I wanted to hawk up the other night – but was too jetlagged to choke out? Jim Wright nailed it. There’s plenty of profanity in there, as there should be. It’s appropriate to cuss. We’re dealing with a…
I want to work up a really pithy post on the ludicrous insanity going on on capitol hill. I really do. However, I am savagely jet lagged and waiting to get on a red-eye flight back to Boston. Under these conditions, I can’t trust myself…
After writing that last post about Libya, I find that my heart has hardened somewhat. A piece of it comes from further reading on the specifics of the situation in Libya, including Friedman’s excellent piece on the two sorts of nations we meet in that…
I think that the US and the rest of the world are probably doing about as well as can be expected with Libya. There is no unconditionally correct answer here. No matter what we do, people will die violently and chaos will win the day…
I was an early adopter for 23 and me, got my first set of genome data back in April of 2008. Now, I’m nowhere near the real leaders in the field, but I was there when it started to get cool. Got the T-shirt, but…
I got to spend some time last week in the urban catastrophe that is Detroit. While I was there, I felt the usual sadness – seeing the skinny bones of a once rich and proud city. I find that words are inadequate to convey the…
This weekend, I attended PAX East (AKA “bitch PAX”, in contrast to PAX Prime, which occurs in Seattle and is marginally older). PAX is short for the Penny Arcade Expo. It was created by the authors of Penny Arcade, a consistently funny and incisive comic…
I had the opportunity (ha!) to spend a few days at my grandfather’s house in Detroit this week. He’s been dead for years, and the care of the property has fallen to me. The house is a two family brick structure with independent street numbers.…
Anyone who is paying any attention at all realizes that there are a few different systems of justice in the United States. In case you’re not paying attention, or you don’t have the time and inclination: Let me break it down. There are four major…