Coming Soon to a Corner Near You
Wednesday, May 29th, 2002 Posted in From Blogger | Comments OffI suppose it had to happen eventually, given the aggressive trend to stamp a corporate logo on everything mobile or inert. Forget spending millions to name a sports arena after your company. An advertising firm in Denver has discovered a ...
Vegetable Sex
Tuesday, May 28th, 2002 Posted in From Blogger, Irritations | Comments OffIt's not what you think. I'm using the word "sex" here in the way it was used before Women's Studies hysterics began insisting that we replace it with the word "gender," in order to signal that the side of the ...
Don’t Make Us Come Back Over There
Thursday, May 23rd, 2002 Posted in From Blogger, Judo Chops | Comments OffIt appears that getting bitch-slapped in two world wars has not taught the Germans any manners. During a visit by President Bush to the German legislature, Bundestag President Wolfgang Thierse ambushed him in introductory remarks that chastised Bush both for ...
A Very Special Sand in the Gears
Wednesday, May 22nd, 2002 Posted in From Blogger, Snapshots of Life | Comments OffI have several semi-connected things to tell you about today. The title of this post is dedicated to the end of another season of television, and my attention-deficit mood is inspired by the same venue: From the Proud To Be an ...
Let the Children Come (Provided Their Parents are Suitable)
Tuesday, May 21st, 2002 Posted in Faith and Life, From Blogger | Comments OffCNN hosted this interview with a woman whose part-time career as a stripper has led her 5 year-old daughter's private Christian school to threaten expulsion. This is one of those stories where everyone involved needs a good kick in the ...
Goodbye, Balls
Monday, May 20th, 2002 Posted in From Blogger, Irritations | Comments OffFor those of you keeping a calendar to chronicle the fall of western civilization, be sure to enter May 14th, 2002. This is the day the NCAA announced that it would begin using synthetic basketballs in its tournament games, in ...
Journalists on Themselves
Saturday, May 18th, 2002 Posted in From Blogger, Greatest Hits | Comments OffI recently attended a panel discussion of environmental journalism, featuring two well-known environmental reporters and one editor. They evidenced a frightful ignorance of both the substance and theory of their work, overlaid with a patina of experienced wisdom that was ...
News Flash: Socialism Causes Starvation
Friday, May 10th, 2002 Posted in From Blogger, Policy and Politics | Comments OffThe seizure of private farm lands in Zimbabwe is a primary contributor to widespread starvation in Africa, according to this Washington Post article. It takes him ten paragraphs to figure it out, of course, but the reporter notes that food ...
Faith
Wednesday, May 8th, 2002 Posted in Faith and Life, From Blogger | 1 Comment »I have an apartment over my garage. The illegitimate and ill-behaved children of the girl we gave a home to for several months had pushed out the screen on the door, so last night I went up to fix it. ...
God Bless America
Wednesday, May 8th, 2002 Posted in From Blogger | Comments OffSomething else you won't see in a communist dictatorship.
Scenes From a Restaurant
Saturday, May 4th, 2002 Posted in From Blogger, Snapshots of Life | Comments OffWife: "Have you noticed that there are a lot of fat people here tonight?" Me: "We're at a buffet. In Kansas. And it's steak night." (Later) Me: (as I come back to the table) "Some really big fat guy just cut in front ...
The Meetings Fix
Friday, May 3rd, 2002 Posted in From Blogger, Policy and Politics | Comments OffFrom today's Washington Post: "The Bush administration has begun planning for an international peace conference on the Middle East early this summer to accelerate negotiations over a final political settlement between the Israelis and Palestinians..." International peace conference. Who would we invite? ...
Be Careful Where You Look
Thursday, May 2nd, 2002 Posted in From Blogger, Pure Comedy | Comments OffAnanova reports that the U.S. National Research Council, acting on a fear of extraterrestrial contamination, is urging NASA not to search for life when it eventually sends men to Mars. I can imagine the discussion inside the future Mars landing ...
Emily for Princess
Wednesday, May 1st, 2002 Posted in From Blogger | Comments OffEmily Jones notes that Londoners have been warned not to appear too capitalistic on May Day, lest they fall prey to roving bands of "frothing-at-the-mouth protesters with nothing better to do than irritate the responsible population by attending the annual ...
Computer Vandals: The Case for Execution
Wednesday, May 1st, 2002 Posted in From Blogger | Comments OffI'm learning more than I want to know about how to resurrect a computer after it's been assaulted by a virus. There are patches to be downloaded, reboot disks to be prayed over and gingerly inserted, triage decisions to be ...
Rebuked
Tuesday, April 30th, 2002 Posted in From Blogger | Comments OffThe delightful Alice gently takes me to task for dissing the local weather man. You should check out what she says, but here's a taste: "Yep, it's annoying, until you're the one whose house is getting pounded. Then you'll want your ...
Word of the Day
Monday, April 29th, 2002 Posted in From Blogger, Policy and Politics | Comments Offkakistocracy \kak-uh-STAH-kruh-see\ Originated from combining the Greek word "kakistos," which is the superlative of "kakos," which means "bad," with the suffix "cracy," which means "form of government." Kakistocracy: government by the worst people. You can see how this word would appeal ...
Weather Obsession
Monday, April 29th, 2002 Posted in From Blogger, Greatest Hits | Comments OffReading Ken Goldstein's comments on the central place still played in our lives by weather reminds me of something I want to get off my chest. I live in Kansas, so perhaps this is a local phenomenon, but it seems ...
Viruses: The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly
Monday, April 29th, 2002 Posted in From Blogger | Comments OffGiven the company I keep, I probably shouldn't be surprised that three bloggers independently sent me a virus this weekend. There's always a danger of that, I suppose, when one is playing in the blogosphere, which is full of sharp ...
Semantics
Friday, April 26th, 2002 Posted in From Blogger | Comments OffSo now there is, rightly, talk of removing priests who sexually molest youngsters. So can we please choose a term for this other than "defrock"?
The Ticket is Punched
Friday, April 26th, 2002 Posted in From Blogger, Greatest Hits | Comments OffToday I have officially received my Ph.D. from the University of Michigan. What follows are some snippets from my graduate school experience: Week Negative Thirty-Three Respected professor after class: "Tony, what are you going to do next year?" Me: "I'm trying to decide ...
That Pesky Bill of “Rights”
Thursday, April 25th, 2002 Posted in From Blogger, Irritations | Comments OffYesterday's Washington Post reported on the Supreme Court's recent decision making it easier for local governments to forbid building on private property without compensating owners for the loss in value. Check out some of Post reporter's language. He wrote that ...
On Forgiving
Wednesday, April 24th, 2002 Posted in Faith and Life, From Blogger | Comments OffI've been thinking a lot about forgiveness, about what it means for someone who has wronged another to have the audacity to ask that person to put down his rightful claim of vengeance. It's not in our nature to forgive, ...
Ooh, Now We’re Really Scared
Tuesday, April 23rd, 2002 Posted in From Blogger | Comments OffThe Palestinian security chief has announced that it will no longer be one of his priorities to prevent suicide bombings in Israel. In related headlines, Atlantic City announced that it was ending its anti-gambling campaign, and the head of the ...
Entrepreneurs vs. Mechanics
Tuesday, April 23rd, 2002 Posted in From Blogger | Comments OffThe New York Times reports on this innovative idea for alleviating the city's parking problem, which the budding entrepreneur in the story rightly conceptualizes as a trading opportunity. His idea in a nutshell is to link people who are leaving ...
Why Can’t Women Be More Like Reader’s Digest?
Monday, April 22nd, 2002 Posted in From Blogger, Snapshots of Life | Comments OffI've observed that many women have an approach to storytelling akin to Kevin Costner's philosophy in Wyatt Earp, which is to take as long to relate the story as it took for the story to actually happen. Many men, on ...
Breaking News
Friday, April 19th, 2002 Posted in From Blogger, Pure Comedy | Comments OffApparently talks have broken down between the Arthur Anderson accounting firm and the Federal government. Prosecutors observe that Anderson's May 6th trial date leaves only sixteen days to negotiate a settlement, but spokesmen for Anderson insist that by their reckoning, ...
The Intrepid Traveler Returns
Friday, April 19th, 2002 Posted in From Blogger, Greatest Hits | Comments OffI've made several recent trips through the upper class cultural ghetto that is the modern airport, with its Waldenbooks stores extruding the latest Ken Blanchard schlock, its bars replete with chattering salesmen in unnecessarily bright shoes, its throngs of sorority ...
Reason #1,037 why I will never be a professor
Friday, April 19th, 2002 Posted in From Blogger | Comments OffFrom the latest edition of the academic journal Organization: "Abstract Ethics, Embodied Ethics: The Strange Marriage of Foucault and Positivism in Labour Process Theory"
Pray
Wednesday, April 17th, 2002 Posted in From Blogger, Pure Comedy | Comments OffExcerpt from the pre-takeoff cell phone conversation of a really large woman sitting next to me on the plane: "Girl, I got so sick on my last flight. Mmm-hmm, bad motion sickness." (She checks the seat pocket for the sick bag). ...
on 
