The federal government is shutdown. While I’m sympathetic to the smaller government impulses driving the Republicans behind this particular charge, I think it’s the wrong way to go about it. In some ways I am glad to see things finally come to a head — Congress hasn’t passed a budget since 2009, so it’s not … Read more
Reason has posted a good article discussing the merits of New York City Department of Education Ronald G. Fryer’s plan to give kids monetary bonuses for both taking and scoring well on academic tests. Some have praised the plan as providing much needed incentives to poor students; others slam it as corrupting the noble nature … Read more
Hell, that’s not even the word. I can’t use the word I really want to use to describe the incident in which two brainless twits reproduced and then left their helpless children to fend for themselves while they got lost in in an online fantasy game for a few hundred hours. Because you see, this … Read more
In 2002, a great science fiction series named Firefly debuted on Fox, won some critical acclaim despite the boneheaded re-scheduling efforts by network bigwigs, and was promptly pulled after 11 episodes. It was probably one of the great science fiction series never seen, and at the time its passing was mourned by only a handful … Read more
There are a lot of liberals out there who think that the media is not biased in their favor; indeed, they think that the major media are play things of the government, and are handling the Republicans with kid gloves. Exactly how liberal (or conservative) individual publications are varies of course, and I do not … Read more
The other day I got into something of a debate with a liberal-minded individual and I got a healthy reminder of just how much folks on the left dislike and distrust business. No, those words are too weak — “hate” is a much better descriptor. The debate arose with in the context The X-Files — … Read more
As most of the world knows right now, Janet Jackson — either by accident or on purpose — ended up showing one of her breasts to about half of America during the Super Bowl half-time show. Although I was watching the Super Bowl, I missed this scandalous event — I had the half-time show on … Read more
Right now estimates are that 1 out of every 12 pieces of e-mail flying around the net is infected with the MyDoom worm, a statistic that puts the worm on track to out pace earlier infections by a wide margin.
I bet the Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix is making a heck of a lot of school administrators very, very nervous. And if they’re not … they should be. The latest Harry Potter book — the fifth in the series — is a story of quiet rebellion and passive-aggressive resistance against the … Read more
I’ve been gaming for a hell of a long time. For the last few years ago, most of the stuff I’ve been doing is d20 based. There are a lot of reasons for it, the biggest being that we converted our Greyhawk campaign to D&D 3E in 2000. It’s worked well for us (none of … Read more