Monthly Archive: January 2012

(Previously, Parts 1,  2,  3 , 4,  5, and 6) My younger daughter asked for a guitar for Christmas, so we put it on her list, and sure enough, on Christmas day, at our family gathering at Grandma’s house, there...

Surge was a citrus-flavored soda pop launched in the US by the Coca Cola Company in 1996 as an American variant of the Norwegian Urge. It had an advantage over 7-Up and Mountain Dew...

Well, it is the NYT, so I can’t vouch for it: But G.D.P. per capita (an insufficient indicator, but one most economists use) in the U.S. is nearly 50 percent higher than it is...

I live in Singapore and all citizens are required to have an Identity Card. (IC) The IC is very useful. It doubles as a library card, it serves as identification when I apply for overseas...

(This will take more than a paragraph.) Ron Graff was noticeably shorter than me, which puts him on the short side for a man. When I was in his drawing classes, he had a...

Before I was an art major, I was a music major, and before I was a music major I was a math major. In addition to going through three majors on a way to...

A pretty good piece in the New York Times today about social mobility in America or, more accurately, the lack thereof. While the article cites the same studies and charts about European vs. American...

In his 1877 preface to, and defence of, his novel L’Assommoir, Émile Zola writes: “I wanted to depict the inexorable downfall of a working class family in the poisonous atmosphere of our industrial suburbs. Intoxication...

The Islands of the Blessed are sort of like Hawaii, but more. And a whole lot less crowded. The uplands resemble the south of France. Which is to say that they’re really quite nice,...

Hosni Mubarak faces death by hanging. Though today’s newspapers are full of breathless reporting via al-Ahram, the state owned newspaper, Mubarak’s foreordained destination was always the gallows, known at least since April of last...

Jakadrian Turner was 14 years old in November of 2010 when, despondent over her parents’ divorce and the recent death of her grandfather, she ran away from her home in Dallas, Texas. Somehow, she made...

I had previously described building this boat as having two distinct steps; the second being the assembly of its parts, and the first being the fabrication of the parts. (Or as Dave put it...

There are two legal/constitutional objections: First, that the president can’t make a recess appointment for a post that requires Senate confirmation if the Senate’s not in recess. Technically, it hasn’t been. The second objection...

The third and fourth sections of Hobbes’ Leviathan treat religion at length, but religion is hardly absent from the rest of the work. Here’s a bit that’s particularly intrigued me: If Livy say that...

No, you’re wrong.

Law.com reports (registration required, but it’s free).  FTA: In Citizens United, the Court ruled that the First Amendment prohibited government from limiting the independent spending of corporations and unions on “electioneering,” or communicating about...

I chose to remain silent during the recent round of Ron Paul posts. It wasn’t because I had nothing to say but it was because I didn’t think he had much of a chance...