Attempting an ordinary game night
Over at Mindless Diversions, we’re thinking about getting together, virtually, and playing some games. If this is something you hadn’t realized you’d always wanted, stop over and talk about it.
Monthly Archive: April 2013
Atlantic provinces can no longer rely on the rest of Canada
Atlantic Premiers are all riled up about changes to Employment Insurance, again. Seasonal, resource-based jobs cannot survive without EI supporting workers through the off-season. These industries, the Premiers contend, are vital to Canada, and, thus, it...
Questioning Faith
Asking questions is dangerous business. I have friends and acquaintances who, after completing an inquisition into their own religious beliefs, forsook their religion, kicked the dust from their feet, and hit the road for...
Everything Amitai Etzioni Gets Wrong about Liberals, Libertarians, and Drones
There I was, enjoying some left-over pasta and a diet Canadian Dry on my lunch break. “Time to read something,” I thought. So I browsed my favorites tab in search of something meaty to...
Something, something… petard.
(updated) Comments on this entry are now closed (/updated) A tale of the modern development quandary: “What happens when pirates play a game development simulator and then go bankrupt because of piracy?” From the...
Tuesday Morning Jukebox: Japanese Postcard
It’s amazing how dreams can make you re-feel emotions that have long-since passed. I had one of those dreams last night. Woke up, remembered how long-since passed the experience was. How I got my...
The Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure Are A Conspiracy; So Is the Constitution
Ken White at Popehat exposes the biggest conspiracy of all in the Tsarnaev case. Maybe I was wrong last week, after all.
A Terrible Starting Point
From today’s Boston Herald (via memeorandum): The Tsarnaev family, including the suspected terrorists and their parents, benefited from more than $100,000 in taxpayer-funded assistance — a bonanza ranging from cash and food stamps to Section...
The Curious Martyrdom of Tim Tebow
A few hours ago, the entire world of sports journalism came to a momentary stop as the New York Jets formally announced their release of backup quarterback Tim Tebow. In many ways, this parting...
Collins Comes Out
NBA center Jason Collins has become the first major American male team athlete to come out as gay while still competing. He had this to say on the decision: “I didn’t set out to...
There Is No Politics of Austerity
I don’t mean to turn this blog into Shit My Krugman Says, but this, on the underlying politics of austerity, is just too on-the-mark to ignore: [T]he anti-Keynesian position is, in essence, political. It’s driven by...
“You don’t ‘seize’ the center, you create the center”
When I learned it, I thought the motion for this month’s Intelligence Squared U.S. debate – “The GOP Must Seize the Center or Die” – was simply dreadful. How could the opposing case possibly be made without fighting a losing battle with the proposition itself? Of course the GOP needs to win more votes from the center; of course they’ve been successfully characterized as out-of-touch with centrists. And indeed, the pre-debate poll showed a staggering 65% in favor of the […]
Judging FIRST
by Mad Rocket Scientist During the last weekend in March, I was able to once again participate as Judge in the Seattle Regional FIRST Robotics Competition. This was my second year doing so, and...
In The First Circle Bookclub!
(Our kickoff post is here, and our discussion posts are here, here, and here.) Last week, we decided that we needed to take a week off to let everyone catch up to Chapter 48...
Taking Sides
A recent petition to stop using the terms “illegals” and “illegal immigrants” generated the following response from the New York Times (emphasis mine): On Tuesday, The New York Times updated its policies on how it...
Class War at the New York Times!
So Paul Krugman got a little pink in his latest column: The austerity agenda looks a lot like a simple expression of upper-class preferences, wrapped in a facade of academic rigor. What the top 1...
The Possum’s Friday Afternoon Jukebox
George “No-Show” Jones, the Cadillac of country music, stopped loving her today. He was 81. Tonight I’m gonna find myself a Jim Beam decanter that looks like Elvis, pull up a great big piece...
Should I Desire That You All Follow My Religion?
I would hope not to court much controversy by saying that all of us should live in accordance with the truth. Call it a notion of natural law that I can get behind. That...
