A 9/11 Question
I know everyone’s probably burned out on 9/11, but I’m curious to know how ya’ll would answer this: TRUE or FALSE: Though the events of 9/11 would have been historic in any era, had...
Monthly Archive: September 2011
The Need for Speed and the Value of Human Life
Last week following the Republican debate, Erik and many others decried the way Perry’s supporters yeehaw-ed Texas executions. This lead to a discussion by people on both sides of the aisle as to who...
Beyond Capitalism
Umair Haque has an interesting post up at the Harvard Business Review asking whether Marx was in fact correct about capitalism – not about communism mind you, but about capitalism. Marx, after all, did...
For the families
In July of 2001, I was in New York working on decommissioning a regional office. Shutting down the phone switch, helping pack up the expensive network gear, bemoaning the fact that the UPS at...
A Work In Progress
The English word “republic” is taken from the Latin phrase “res publica,” a concept which embraced the government, the culture, the community, and the aggregate sum of public acts of citizens. After the meeting...
On the Changing of Narratives
My recollections of what I was doing on 9/11 are the recollections of someone in Colorado who was working evenings. Not terribly interesting. There were, however, two things that caught my interest at the time...
Terrorism and the Mind-Killer
I didn’t find out about 9/11 until many hours after it happened. The first plane struck just after midnight New Zealand Standard Time, so I didn’t find out until I woke up Wednesday morning. ...
Hi.
In the interest of brevity—and in an attempt to avoid undue solipsism—I’ll keep my introductory post short. I graduated from the University of Iowa in May and plan on enrolling in graduate school next...
A man there was in the Land of Uz
Jonathan Safran Foer’s second novel, Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close, closes with a flip-book sequence of one of the falling men from the World Trade Center. The order of the images are reversed, so...
TV Terror
I’m not entirely sure that there is anything too significant to be gleaned from this video presentation of a study on how terrorism is portrayed on primetime TV since 9/11- though I am sure...
California Governor Jerry Brown vetoes ski helmet mandate, language bill, and higher cell phone fines: “Not every human problem deserves a law”
In the comments to my recent piece on the new babysitter legislation on its way to becoming law in California, co-blogger Tom Van Dyke mentioned that Gov. Jerry Brown “has a righteous spark.” The...
10 Years Later
The funny thing, in retrospect, was that I had actually chosen to listen to news radio before I’d even gotten in the car that morning – something I never, ever do. I was just...
The Machinery of… whatever
I thought my country was going crazy before 9/11. Turns out I was still young, and “crazy” was one of those things I had to learn as I got older. I can work up...
Recollection
At the hospitals where I did my residency in New York City, the pediatrics department had its Grand Rounds every Tuesday morning. One of my favorite attending physicians was delivering a talk on hematopoietic...
Friday Night Jukebox: I’m Not All Disco
R.E.M., at their rough and jammin best: Where though are the lyrics to “Fireplace” in particular? Here: Crazy crazy world crazy crazy times Crazy crazy world crazy crazy times Hang up your chairs to...
A More Human Economy: The Jobless Future and the Medium Chill
I’m not sure if this is just serendipity at work, but just after I wrote my piece on the ‘human economy’ I stumbled on a couple other pieces that tie into what I’m trying...
Some People Just Want to Watch the World Burn
by E.C. Gach So by now, most of you know about Mike Lofgren’s piece in Truthout (if not you can find it here). E.D. Kain applauded it but Tod Kelly pushed back and then...
Unleashing the power of capitalism on talk radio
I have the unfortunate tendency to sometimes listen to rightwing radio while I drive. On morning news shows and during the afternoon bouts of Sean Hannity I subject myself to, I often hear the...
Friday Something Something and Open Thread
Music is like beer. Some people want Coors in the yellow can. Some people want JW Lees Harvest Ale aged in Calvados. Picking a beer somewhere in the middle is fraught with peril. There’s...
