"The difference between the almost right word and the right word is really a large matter." —Mark Twain
In the news
Last night a neighbor came over with some work shirts he wanted Donna to embroider. We asked him how things were going with his heating & air conditioning business. He told us business was great. With all the new green energy tax credits available to consumers, he’d been selling a lot of solar-powered water heaters. […]
From Wikipedia: The “Powell Doctrine” is a journalist-created term, named after General Colin Powell in the run-up to the 1990-1991 Gulf War . . . The Powell Doctrine states that a list of questions all have to be answered affirmatively before military action is taken by the United States: Is a vital national security interest […]
In its last years, West Berliners covered the Wall (which came down 20 years ago today) with paint, political statements, street art, and graffiti. Many Americans, when they picture the Berlin Wall, see it in color. That’s not what I remember. Both times I saw the Wall, it was forbiddingly gray. In 1966, Donna and […]
From Newsweek (Oct 21, 2009): How the Media Treat Murder: Why isn’t the story of several missing women in North Carolina getting attention? It’s an old problem . . . missing or dead white women get breathless, coast-to-coast coverage; missing or dead black or Hispanic women get 12 seconds on local TV. If they’re prostitutes […]
Steve Benen comments on the Washington Monthly blog: Long-time regulars may know I have quite a few “conversation enders.” These are comments that lead you to know, the moment you hear them, that the writer/speaker is either clueless or intellectually dishonest, and there’s really no reason to engage the person in a serious dialog. He […]
I rode my bicycle down to the corner coffee shop this morning, my favorite mode of exercise (it’d be good exercise too, if it weren’t for those damn scones). A leisurely cup of coffee at an outdoor table, reading the book and movie reviews in the latest Tucson Weekly, makes for a great morning. But […]
Since everyone has so much to say about President Obama winning the Nobel Peace Prize, I may as well have my say too. From Wikipedia: “The Norwegian Nobel Committee (Norwegian: Den norske Nobelkomité) awards the Nobel Peace Prize each year. Its five members are appointed by the Norwegian Parliament and roughly represent the political makeup […]
“There I was” is the traditional start to a war story. It seems like an appropriate way to start this entry, written on the morning of the 8th anniversary of an act of war, the September 11, 2001 terror attacks on New York City’s World Trade Center towers and the Pentagon in Washington, D.C. People […]