• What I’m reading: Montaigne’s Essays

    Cover of the third volume of Montaigne's Essais

    Who’d have thought a sixteenth-century Frenchman could seem so contemporary?

    (more…)
  • intention span

    intention span (in-ten-shuh n span), n. the length of time for which an individual or group is able to maintain motivation to do a specified thing or act in a specified manner, often inversely related to outrage levels generated from news reports or social media.

  • Wakanda: The black utopia
    [Video essay]

    My first video essay: a look at Black Panther’s Wakanda through the lens of the utopian tradition.

  • “Biblical” “logic”

    “This is a secular state, not a church,” Jeff Sessions told a crowd in Fort Wayne, Indiana, a couple days ago, “and I am a law enforcement officer.”

    Amen, brother.

    Only…why, at the same event, did he “take a little bit of digression” (see the video, above) and explicitly invoke the Christian Bible as the (shaky) foundation for a (shakier) moral philosophy?

    (more…)
  • nettribution

    nettribution (net-truhbyoo-shuh n), n. the action of ascribing a quote on the Internet to Abraham Lincoln, Mark Twain, or Albert Einstein. Ex.: “The problem with quotes found on the Internet is that they are often not true.” —Abraham Lincoln

  • What I’m reading: Red Sonja

    2 volumes of red sonja on a table

    Two words: Chainmail bikini.

    (more…)
  • A weekend away

    I spent a couple days in Pacific Grove, near Monterey, to wrap up my end-of-semester reflection.

    (more…)
  • marath-on sentence

    marath-on sentence (maruhth-on sen-tns), n. 1. a written sequence of four or more independent clauses that are not separated by a period or semicolon or joined by a conjunction. 2. any ungrammatical sequence of clauses or phrases that is characterized by great length and that requires exceptional effort or endurance on the part of a listener or reader. Also, con-fused sentence.

    Ex.: Look, having nuclear—my uncle was a great professor and scientist and engineer, Dr. John Trump, at MIT; good genes, very good genes, okay? Very smart, the Wharton School of Finance, very good, very smart—you know, if you’re a conservative Republican. If I were a liber—if, like, okay, if I ran as a liberal Democrat, they would say I’m one of the smartest people anywhere in the world—it’s true!—but when you’re a conservative Republican they try—oh, do they do a number—that’s why I always start off: Went to Wharton, was a good student, went there, went there, did this, built a fortu—you know I have to give my like credentials all the time, because we’re a little disadvantaged—but you look at the nuclear d—the thing that really bothers me—it would have been so easy, and it’s not as important as these lives are— nuclear is powerful; my uncle explained that to me many, many years ago, the power, and that was 35 years ago; he would explain the power of what’s going to happen and he was right—who would have thought? But when you look at what’s going on with the four prisoners—now it used to be three, now it’s four—but when it was three and even now, I would have said it’s all in the messenger; fellas, and it is fellas because, you know, they don’t, they haven’t figured that the women are smarter right now than the men, so, you know, it’s gonna take them about another 150 years—but the Persians are great negotiators, the Iranians are great negotiators, so—and they, they just killed, they just killed us.

  • “The Paranoid Style”: Déjà vu and something new

    Trump, Conway, Sanders, and Giuliani

    Trump’s endless tweeting , Conway’s epistemological contortionism, Sanders’s snowfake outrage, Giuliani’s media Blitz (Fox isn’t worried…): Is this all déjà vu, or something new?

    (more…)
  • bother-in-law

    bother-in-law (bahth er-in-law), n. an annoying, irksome, irritating, or troublesome member of one’s spouse’s family.

ABOUT ME

Mildly introverted. Mostly harmless.


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When I'm 64When I'm 64September 14, 2025

What I’m Reading

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Snow Crash

Neal Stephenson

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Cover of the Signet edition of Frankenstein

Frankenstein

Mary Shelley

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Naked Poetry

Stephen Berg and Robert Mezey (eds.)

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The Transgender Studies Reader

Susan Stryker and Stephen Whittle (eds.)

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