"The difference between the almost right word and the right word is really a large matter." —Mark Twain
In the news
Blog neglect again? By way of lame excuses, I’ve been busy with historical articles for my hashing blog and working on recipes for my cooking blog. Fat lot of good that does you, dear Paul’s Thing reader, right? I’ll try to make up for it with some random Friday observations. ——————– I may not drink […]
Who wouldn’t be outraged to hear that an Arkansas high school principal decided not to name a black girl valedictorian even though she’d earned the highest grade point average in her graduating class? I was, but then I read this article, where a small detail popped out right at the end: the student was also […]
Did I call this one or not? Here’s a post I put on Facebook a couple of days after the big dust storm in Phoenix: And here’s a screenshot from today’s Wonkette (click on the image to read the full article): ——————– As I opened my email inbox this morning I thought, “Gee, it’s been […]
Two heavy overnight rains in a row, almost like a real monsoon. Sometimes I sleep through the storms, but I know they’ve hit when, glancing out the kitchen window while getting my first cup of coffee in the morning, I see topsoil and fertilizer from Donna’s flower garden spread over the patio and the bottom […]
Very sore this morning. Yesterday the dermatologist removed a sebaceous cyst from the top of my scalp. There must be a lot of stitches … I can’t count them yet because the bandage doesn’t come off for another hour … but however many there are, they’re tight, tight, tight. A poor man’s facelift! I’m sporting […]
The scandal du jour is how the gathering of tabloid gossip has escalated from eavesdropping on insider chitchat to outright espionage. In Britain, reporters from Rupert Murdoch’s News of the World are accused of trying to get the dirt on royals, politicians, and sports stars by bribing bodyguards and household staff, hacking phone lines, and […]
A friend wrote the other day and asked me if I’d ever read anything by Stuart Archer Cohen. I fear for my friend’s mind, because just two years ago … on her recommendation … I read Cohen’s The Army of the Republic and sent her a copy of my brief review, which I’ll repost here: […]
We were with friends at a party last night and talk turned to the Casey Anthony trial (which I haven’t followed and have no intention of discussing). My daughter said something about bread and circuses and suggested we should be more concerned about the 23,000 laid-off state workers in Minnesota. It quickly emerged that some […]