"The difference between the almost right word and the right word is really a large matter." —Mark Twain
In the news
It was enormously disappointing to watch Jon Stewart fluffing Mau Mau Mike Huckabee on Wednesday’s Daily Show. Oh, Stewart gently nibbled at him about his support for right-wing fundamentalist David Barton, but he didn’t challenge any of his evasive answers. He didn’t mention Huckabee’s advocacy of religious indoctrination at gunpoint, nor did he bring up […]
No, not bicycles or motorcycles . . . I’m thinking of a different kind of cycle this time, as in: noun: a complete alteration in which a phenomenon attains a maximum and minimum value, returning to a final value equal to the original one (source: dictionary.com) When I entered the F-15 training program in the […]
My motorcycle trip threw me off my blogging schedule. Hey, I’m looking for something to blame … something other than myself, that is … and the motorcycle trip is handy. Speaking of motorcycle trips, I amused myself by going on a short (less than 100 miles) ride this morning, heading down to the Triple T […]
… but I am, these days, a little more down than up. Particularly over the union-busting going on in so many states, and peoples’ refusal to see what lies behind it. Republican governors and Republican-dominated state legislatures aren’t trying to save money by busting public employee unions and cutting back on education and services funding. […]
Headline to an article about the third reactor explosion in Japan: “Spewing radiation prompts warning.” C’mon, journalists, does radiation always have to spew? Can’t it emanate, spread, propagate, or otherwise pour into the atmosphere? Why must it spew? When Nevil Shute wrote On the Beach, did he make his radiation spew? No, he didn’t, and […]
Nancy Nall on today’s earthquake in Japan: “I’m touched by the grocery-store employees whose first impulse is to try to protect the stock from falling off the shelves. We give our lives to our jobs and we take pride in even the smallest ones. We deserve a few benefits in the bargain, Gov. Walker, you […]
I’ve never liked entrapment. Not when the police do it, not when civilians do it. Not when the right does it, not when the left does it. I particularly don’t like it when people are tricked into voicing their personal, non-job-related opinions on things, then lose their jobs as a result. But you know what […]
My sisters and I grew up in a non-Mardi Gras home: Mom, like all Southern Baptists, observed Lent the whole year round; Dad, an agnostic, pretty much did whatever he wanted to do regardless of the time of year. I married a Catholic girl, but Mardi Gras wasn’t part of her family’s tradition either. Oh, […]