"The difference between the almost right word and the right word is really a large matter." —Mark Twain
Shape of Earth: Views Differ
When I grow up, I want to write police blotter reports for the local paper! From the Tucson Weekly, Feb 19, 2009: Police Dispatch By Anna Mirocha Semi-Insane East Benson Highway, Jan. 21, 7:04 p.m. A lone woman, possibly impaired by serious alcohol or drug ingestion, put her own life in danger and annoyed many […]
You couldn’t make this shit up if you tried: That a major metropolitan newspaper in the USA would print a cartoon like this shows you just how ugly it’s going to be for the next eight years. And you’d better get used to it, because the mouth-breathing racists in our midst who we thought might […]
Is it just me, or does anyone else think this Hero Pilot stuff is spinning out of control? I dunno, it hits me as wrong. Mawkish, lowest common denominator, on-display-for-your-beer-guzzling-delectation wrong. I’m surprised Sullenberger’s going along with all this. It’s like Real Men Don’t Eat Quiche: real pilots don’t strut around like peacocks when they […]
From 1981, a news report both touching and chilling: touching in its enthusiasm for the future, chilling in its failure to recognize an implicit threat. Oh, and I loved the part where the guy talks about being able to print what he sees on the screen! Why, you can PRINT IT ON PAPER! God we […]
“Death Map”: Where Americans Are Most Likely to Die You see a headline like that, you just can’t not read the article, right? I mean, if we’re less likely to die in Dubuque than in Tucson, hey, let’s all move there. Today! But you know there’s gotta be a gimmick. Too good to be true, […]
My September 2007 prediction on the upcoming Sirius/XM satellite radio merger: Okay, one more and then I’m done: the Blues Channel on Sirius Radio. How come they have such a restricted playlist? It’s the same old stuff, all the time, and never any new blues. Apparently they’d rather spend my subscription money on executive salaries, not […]
In the comment thread to my Choosing Day post, I responded to a reader by saying, in part: “In the weeks leading up to Nov 4th, I’d see polls on the internet that consistently showed Obama winning the electoral count with considerably over 300 votes to McCain with 170 or so. Yet the media felt […]
Dropping ballast in anticipation of retirement: satellite radio. Talk about not living up to promises. When I listen to Sirius today, not only do I hear the exact same playlists of songs I heard five years ago (particularly on the Blues Channel, my one-time favorite), I hear commercials. Yeah, terrestrial radio is ten times worse, […]