A snowy night last night was completely wasted. There’s nothing like snowfall to dampen the sounds of the outside world — everything is quiet and peaceful, in a way that rainfall never is. We get so little rain, and even… Continue Reading
Good just plain isn’t good enough anymore. This irritates me. On more than one rating scale I’ve seen — in things like employee performance evaluations, customer satisfaction surveys, and the like — the rating scale goes something like this: 5… Continue Reading
OH BOY ANOTHER DOG MY FAVORITE! Easily-excited neutered GerShep mix gets very excited to meet new dogs, come over for play and friendship! Enjoys speaking, sitting pretty, rolling over, and playing dead for treats, chasing sticks, humping other dogs, eating… Continue Reading
If Steve Jobs dies any time soon, will the board of directors at Apple prop him up and carry his corpse around like Weekend at Bernie’s? At this point, I think they’d have to, in order to preserve shareholder value.… Continue Reading
I’ve been reasonably good about controlling portions and trying to do at least moderate physical exercise pretty much every day. Social events being what they are I’ve not done so well at reducing alcohol intake, but that hardly seems like… Continue Reading
The day is coming when there will be no need for the IRS. There will be less ability for terrorists and criminals to generate money through illicit transactions and then to launder their money. Actually, that day could be today,… Continue Reading
Laying a hardwood floor is a much more complicated task than I had anticipated. Now it seems that we need to cure the concrete subfloor before applying the mastic to lay the bamboo flooring. That’s going to take two-thirds of… Continue Reading
Today’s charts on fivethirtyeight.com look like this. That’s Obama winning somewhere close to 9 in 10 of the random simulations, and functionally all of the realistic ones. It’s hard to not be disheartened when numbers like this are out there.… Continue Reading
In a brief but provocative essay, George Mason University historian Rick Shenkman plugs his new book How Stupid Are We?: Facing The Truth About The American Voter with an exceedingly cynical and, in my opinion, piercingly accurate observation: Americans refer… Continue Reading
The French celebrate the anniversary of the storming of the Bastille as their equivalent of our Independence Day, the day that their history of free self-government began. Unlike America, however, France’s history of free self-government has not run uninterrupted since… Continue Reading