"The difference between the almost right word and the right word is really a large matter." —Mark Twain
In the news
I’ve been thinking about political correctness lately. The legend on the bag says “Political correctness killed soldiers at Ft Hood.” Really? We all know what happened at Fort Hood in 2009: a single gunman, an Army major serving as a psychiatrist, killed 13 of his fellow troops and injured 30. He was Arab-American and Muslim; […]
Now that NRA and other Second Amendment fetishists are openly carrying or wearing concealed weapons in states where it is allowed, public intimidation of people and groups they disagree with is becoming more common. Last week, men with assault rifles showed up at a mothers’ gun safety rally in Indianapolis, clearly intending to silence and […]
Last night, Rachel Maddow played an audio tape from yesterday’s Supreme Court hearings on the Defense of Marriage Act. On the tape, Chief Justice Roberts and an attorney advocating for marriage equality argued over the reason behind the “sea change” in the American public’s attitude toward same-sex marriage. Roberts thought the increasing social acceptance of same-sex […]
For a change, this installment’s bag photo is as literal as it gets: it’s me wearing my bag o’ Cefazolin (click on the image to see it full-size on Flickr). My bug-eyed stare indicates my continuing state of shock. Before anyone else asks, I don’t yet know the specific bacterial organism I’m fighting off. Should […]
Looking back at some of my older stuff, I found a gloomy post from September 2007 predicting we’d never leave Iraq, that it’d turn out to be another Korea with American troops on the ground forever and ever. I really believed this at the time. Actually I believed it right up until last week. A […]
What am I being a big old pussy about today? Trapping. A young nephew in Missouri is a hunter. He also traps coyotes and bobcats and posts photos on Facebook. Photos of living animals in pain. I unfriended him yesterday in order to block those photos. That sounds pathetic and weak, but I don’t know […]
After the Newton school shooting I posted a couple of tweets using the hashtag #FuckTheNRA. When I originally set up my Twitter account I foolishly checked the box that allowed other users to contact me by email. I’ve now fixed that, but not before the gun nuts found me. The pro-mass murder emails I’ve been […]
No need to explain, I think: