Do you ever wonder how something becomes a Thing? I wonder about it all the time. How did knock, knock jokes become a Thing? Can you imagine the first person to tell a knock, knock joke? “I’m going to say, ‘Knock, knock,’ and you say, ‘Who’s there?’ OK?” “Why?” “You’ll see. Just do it.” “But…
A couple years ago, a student was working with me on a history paper. She was a regular and I had worked with her often. She always seemed smart and nice. This day she asked me, “What do you call me?” I hesitated and tried to glance at her folder. I figured I had called…
I saw the final installment of Peter Jackson’s Hobbit trilogy. Apparently (according to the credits), it is based on a novel by JRR Tolkien called The Hobbit. I have read a book called The Hobbit by JRR Tolkien many times, but I’m struggling to find the connection. I can only conclude that Peter Jackson and…
The title of this piece is not accurate. Hannah Davis is the cover model for the 2015 Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue. But every single headline I saw lead with Derek Jeter, look at Yahoo!, CBS Detroit, and the Huffington Post. In other news, Pierre Curie’s wife won the 1903 Nobel Prize for Physics. Oh, and…
Today is my 40th birthday. One question that I got repeatedly today is, “How does it feel to be 40?” Well, so far, it feels like I have a head cold. I guess I’ll have to wait a few days to figure out if I have a head cold or if being 40 feels like…
There are two types of facts in the world. I know it sounds odd to say that, but it’s true. There are facts that are true no matter what and there are facts that are contingent. That probably still sounds odd, so I’ll give some examples. A fact that is true no matter what is…
If a person is looking to find out what Cyrus Chestnut is all about, this is the perfect record. It is thoroughly modern, but his influences are all there. It is jazz, but blues and gospel are never far away. It is clearly improvised, but never lacks direction. The album was recorded live at Smoke,…
In part one of this post, I talked about how difficult it is to use rights as the basis of an argument and proposed some ways we can make the discussions involving rights more fruitful. Now, I’m going to talk about what got me thinking about this in the first place, guns. There are two…
This started out as a post about gun rights, but as I thought about it, I realized that post wouldn’t make much sense without a more in depth talk about rights. So, I’m going to attempt my first ever two part post. This one will deal with rights in general and the next one will…
I went to see Eddie Izzard the other night. It was a very funny show. He did one bit about how Myanmar, Liberia and the U.S. are the only countries that haven’t converted to the Metric System. It was a funny bit. And it got me thinking. Personally, I’m glad there are three countries that…
