I’ve been following the news about the protests in Iran, mostly because police brutality is a subject I’m interested in and write about regularly. But it’s been hard to discern exactly what’s going on there because of the breathless way that American news commentators have talked about them. One phrase that’s continually thrown around is…
Certain people are really concerned with authenticity. For them, it’s a point of pride. When they eat Italian or Chinese or French food, they don’t want the Americanized versions. They want the “real” thing. Only, as my brother pointed out to me recently, it’s hard to say what the real thing is. Take Italian and…
There’s a brilliant scene between Bert and Ernie from Sesame Street and Doc from Fraggle Rock in A Muppet Family Christmas that goes like this: Ernie: “Oh, hi there. We’re Ernie and Bert.” Doc: “Well, hi there yourself. I’m Doc.” Bert: “Did you know that the word Doc starts with the letter D?” Doc: “Why,…
I used to be a climate change optimist. Not a naive optimist, mind you, just an optimist. I wasn’t expecting a silver bullet or anything. I thought tackling the problem would be difficult and people would have to sacrifice quite a bit, but I thought it was doable. Over the last few years, I’ve become…
Applying for things sucks. And we have to apply for lots of things. We apply for jobs, schools, and clubs. We apply for loans, credit cards, and financial aid. We apply for scholarships, insurance, and governmental benefits. This isn’t a complete list, by any means, but it gives a good idea of the ubiquity of…
One of the biggest problems facing humanity is a general lack of imagination. People may object to this statement, but we are a very conservative species. People act like all of our problems are merely variations on a theme and they only consider a handful of solutions to deal with all of them. It doesn’t…
People have become kind of obsessed with facts. Trivia nights are a trivial example. Many of our leisure activities are about facts and nothing more. Fandoms of all types obsess over facts. How much money did it make? How many people of color are involved? Sports talk is all about statistics. You rarely hear a…
A little bit ago, I wrote What Am I Missing? | Nutmegger Daily – Quality writing on many topics about the inadequacies of the Democrats’ responses to the latest Supreme Court decisions. In it, I suggested we need more radical solutions. Today, I want to talk about some of those possibilities. They may not seem…
I read this article in The Conversation, Does it really empower women to expect them to make the first move? (theconversation.com). It’s about the dating app Bumble. Bumble’s twist on online dating is that it makes women go first. The whole looking at profiles and swiping part is similar to other apps, especially Tinder. But…
Sorry about the clickbait-y headline. This piece actually has almost nothing to do with the Reverend Doctor Martin Luther King Jr. It’s just that the commentary surrounding MLK is illustrative of a problem that needs attention. Before getting into it, as a sort of introduction, I will answer the headline’s question. Yes, I knew that…
