This is the thing about Rand Paul
I adore Rachel Maddow. Her quirky sense of humor and love of wonkery is at turns awe inspiring and bug cute. However, I think she did a lot of folks a disservice in the Rand Paul interview. She...
View ArticleOn the Sanity Train
I was interviewed by a CNN crew at the Rally to Restore Sanity yesterday. He wanted to find a theme. Why did I come? What were people trying to say with their attendance? What did it mean? Was it...
View ArticleAbout that Pat Down
I actually hate the liquids foolishness more than I hate backscatter x rays. I need product in my hair in order not to resemble Einstein. Every time I try to squirt the leave in conditioner into a...
View ArticleGrace under Pressure
We think we know ourselves. All of us. We tell ourselves and our friends how we would react if this or that happened. "I would have punched him," we say. "I would never have lost my temper," we say....
View ArticleOn my high horse
My mother was apparently very concerned about my riding skills when I was a child. "Get off your high horse," she would say. I assume she was seeing in me what I heard in my own children from time to...
View Article"Bodies Don't Have Handles on Them"
There's this guy, a cop guy, who looked at the video of the UC Davis Pepper spray incident. This guy, whose name is Charles J. Kelly, and is apparently a former Baltimore Police Lieutenant. didn't get...
View ArticleDeath and Secrets
I lost a sister to lung cancer in September. She would have been 59 or 60. I found out yesterday from my daughter. A cousin on Facebook told her.I found myself befuddled, confused, sad, anxious,...
View ArticleHe didn't know you had Cancer
I didn’t want to know.She didn’t want to talk about it. But it was there with us. My friend of 20 odd years was tiny and wizened, her hands trembling slightly, and I noticed how the skin on them had...
View ArticleThe Republican Distopia: An SF Perspective
In the world of Science Fiction there are two main traditions of storytelling: "What if?", and "If this goes on..."The new TV Show "Revolution," asks what if the lights go out? And in the oft alluded...
View ArticleThank you, Fred Phelps
I don't know that I believe many things. But I do believe in what is called Visionary or Outsider Art. My personal temple is AVAM, the American Visionary Art Museum in Baltimore. They keep the work...
View ArticleThe Suicide's Daughter
So, I had been away at college about two, maybe three hours. There was this girl in the room next door. I was trying on myself, inventing myself anew the same way I tried at the start of every new...
View ArticleThe World's First Atheist Orphanage
Okay, so there is this orphanage in Uganda that has captured my imagination. And in my imagination I hope it will capture yours. Billed as the world's first atheist orphanage, BiZoHa has as its...
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