Iron Man 3: One Big Joke
Tony Stark suffers from PTSD, Pepper Pots is mad because he bought her a giant stuffed rabbit for Christmas, and an enigmatic terrorist called the Mandarin is taking responsibility for supposed suicide bombings in...
Monthly Archive: May 2013
Why Bloggers (and Reporters!) Should be Statistically Literate.
I’m going to leave the political dimensions regarding the prognosticating about the Medicaid study to my co-blogger Elias, and instead think about the importance of statistical literacy among bloggers. Over the past 18 months...
Medicaid in Oregon: Does it Really Matter?
God help me, I just don’t understand conservatives sometimes. I disagree with them most of the time, but I usually understand where they’re coming from. But sometimes my best acts of imagination pale in...
In The First Circle Bookclub!
“When I say peacetime, I mean before Soviet power.” (Our kickoff post is here, and our discussion posts are here, here, here, and here.) One thing that gets mentioned a handful of times is...
a brief note on why you’re all about to be soooo sick of me very soon (assuming you weren’t already)
Like Erik, I’ve been practically invisible around here for the past month or two. (I missed two Bar Fights in a row!) Unlike Erik, I don’t have a mega-cool and talent-revealing singer-songwriter vid to...
Value, Utility, and Justification
by Stillwater In a recent post which is now unfortunately closed (“Something, Something … Petard”), James Hanley and I (and Shazbot!) engaged in a friendly dispute ostensibly about the meaning of the word “value”...
Being in the world
by zic This a story for Kyle. It’s a true story, meaning it really happened. But it is also story, for it’s my honest recall of what happened; and I know more than most,...
Ukip, the British Tea Party that’s Reshaping British Politics
by Brian John Spencer For Americans to understand British politics as it is practiced today, they need to understand Ukip. Why? Because the Eurosceptic, catch-all protest party is driving the agenda and forcing British...
There is More to the Gun Debate than Gun Culture and Stats
Our own Mike Dwyer lays out an interesting argument about the appropriateness of children being trained to use guns. The comment section there has an interesting conversation about this and other issues. But there...
The Two Extremes of the Gun Debate
An opinion piece from David Horsey at the Los Angeles Times discusses a recent gun death where a 5-year-old Kentucky boy was playing with a rifle he had gotten as a gift and shot...
Go Support Your Local Comic Book Shop–It’s Free Comic Book Day!
The first Saturday of every May comic book publishers prepare several special issues to be given away at stores all over the country for free. You walk into the store (you can locate yours...
Parenting: The Game (Introduction)
(Welcome to Parenting: The Game! This will be an off-again, on-again series that allows those of us traversing the world of parenting to explore, discuss, vent, and otherwise share our experiences. This series is open...
Friday Jukebox – This is not about Tu Quoque
When you think of Tom Green, you may think of the star of “Freddy Got Fingered” or Mr. Barrymore or That Dude With One Testicle. But to many of us, he will – first,...
Arguments Against People Are Not Always Tu Quoque
This will be a short post, but I wanted to quickly respond to Jason’s excellent but just slightly off post on the inherent dangers of arguing tu quoque. Everything he says about the fallacies of tu quoque are spot...
This Is Why We Don’t Argue Tu Quoque
I’ve tried to explain what’s wrong with tu quoque in comments here and here. Sam quoted me in his recent post on tu quoque, but he didn’t quote what I think is the most...
Copping To The Tu Quoque
A few weeks ago, I wrote a post headlined, “Secret Children for Me, No Gay Marriage For Thee!” because I lack the subtlety gene that most human beings are born with.* The post concerned...
Obamacare’s Bad Politics
With the implementation of Obamacare soon to really begin in-earnest, some conservatives have begun preemptively crowing over what they’re convinced will be a disastrous transition period. Considering they’ve spent the past three years gumming...
Standing For Silence
Today marks the annual Congressionally-mandated ritual of disrespecting the Constitution in the name of pleasing the pious. [Continued at NaPP, with music video…]
DC Comics Gets Political with “The Movement”
“Yer goin’ all soft on me, Luis, I swear,” growls one cop to his partner. He then proposes the following to a couple just busted for drug possession, “You go. We keep the evidence....
