"When I do not want to say things in real life I often say them here." — Mimi Smartypants
Just home from scouting trail for an upcoming bicycle hash. As I pedaled I listened to NPR through earbuds … well, mostly: when Will Shortz came on with his weekly Puzzler segment, I switched to the local alternative FM station, KXCI. I’ve had the urge to change stations during the Puzzler before, but this is […]
Just heard NPR Morning Edition correspondent Steve Inskeep cut Rep. Barney Frank off in mid-sentence (audio link here). Inskeep says (at 4:13 on the tape) “the biggest part of the federal budget is entitlements.” Frank says “No, wrong, I’m sorry, the defense budget is bigger than Medicare, and Social Security is in fact self-financing, and […]
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 […]
Last night I sat down to watch a Netflix rental (A Woman, a Gun, and a Noodle Shop) but Turner Classics was running an all-nighter of 1950s science fiction drive-in movies and that was all she wrote. I am such a sucker for that stuff. The two I watched were giant bug movies, a favorite […]
This is awkward. My daughter and I are Facebook friends. I have learned to read her Facebook updates the same way educated North Koreans have learned to read the propaganda articles in Rodong Sinmun, as an indication of where the Kim regime’s collective head is at. When my daughter starts posting intense rants, I know […]
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 […]
I make a dish called pasta puttanesca; literally, “whore’s spaghetti.” The sauce is made of olive oil, garlic, anchovies, chopped tomatoes, capers, basil, and perhaps a few olives, tossed into pasta. Last night, since I was about to sit down to watch President Obama deliver the annual State of the Union address to an assembly […]
. . . to serve the corporate masters. Warning: NPR kvetching ahead. I thought Diane Rehm’s show started off well this morning: she interviewed presidential science advisor Dr. John Holdren about the latest White House report on climate change. And here’s the thing: she had him on by himself, not up against a panel of […]