OK, next time I'll announce the vacation before I do it, but this was a rather unexpected post-Christmas unwinding. Sarah and Blackie an...

You know how Andrew Sullivan sometimes says something real dumb and then  takes it back after weeks of having his mistakes pointed out t...

RadioLab did a recent piece on a customs loophole whereby human-shaped dolls get taxed at 12% and monster dolls get taxed at 6%--which led M...

Ben Nelson announced today that he would not seek reelection , meaning that Nebraska might elect a Republican for Senate. (A: Incumbents u...

I'd like to say that my political awakening was probably somewhere between Alien / Aliens (corporations will kill you for a profit) and...

This is just a short note on Christmas Eve Eve in response to two comedians on Marc Maron's damn WTF podcast. (Is it just me or do other...

Confess: you tear up when you think about the spontaneous Christmas truces of 1914. I do--there's something undeniably great about oppos...

Christopher Hitchens, Vaclav Havel, and Kim Jong Il--which of these was a threat to the world? It seems clear that, among those three rece...

This post is light on links because it's about linkwhores--and who wants to give them the satisfaction. In case you don't know, a li...

This will be very short because I know nothing about football or the football equivalent of baseball's sabremetrics; but it seems to me ...

When the rebels got to Qaddafi's palace, there was a lot of pointing-and-laughing at his tacky and outlandish stuff, from jewel-encrust...

As a break from all the heavy stuff the last few days... Limitless There was an episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation , where Data wa...

We've inherited a bastardized version of Adam Smith in America, a version which remembers "the invisible hand" but forgets eve...