First of all, I can’t quite believe my title. Impeachments should be vanishingly rare. The fact that there have been two in my lifetime is extraordinary. I was twenty-three when the House of Representatives impeached Bill Clinton. I’m forty-four as they impeach Donald Trump. It’s crazy how different the two situations feel. I know that…
I want to say right at the top, I have nothing against Greta Thunberg. I agree with her message. I’ve never met her, but I’m sure she’s a wonderful kid. I’m not talking about her because of her. She just happens to be the latest iteration of something that has bothered me for a long…
Here is my tenth story for the twelve stories in twelve months challenge. The prompt was “The Signature” and the word count was 1,000. I’m not sure what to think of it. The prompt didn’t exactly inspire me, but it’s gotten positive feedback on the challenge’s website. Let me know what you think. Doug stood…
There’s a great scene in Star Trek: Deep Space Nine where our heroes (Captain Sisko and his officers) are battling the villains (the Jem’Hadar), and offer them the chance to surrender: That phrase, “The order of things,” has stuck with me since I first watched this episode all the way back in 1997. For the Jem’Hadar,…
It’s so easy to denounce Trump supporters as rabid racists and misogynists. Yet more Hispanic voters cast ballots for Donald Trump than Mitt Romney, despite his anti-Mexican rhetoric. More white women voted for Trump than Hillary Clinton, despite his “Grab them by the pussy” comment. On the left, we continue to ask why. Why are these…
I’ve written in the past about not voting. I was writing in the midst of President Obama’s second term, after five years of watching Hope and Change fail to live up to my expectations. Where was the closure of Guantanamo? Where was the single-payer healthcare law? Where was the era of peace promised by resets,…
[For a brief explanation of this project go here.] I am starting my public reading project with Montesquieu’s The Spirit of the Laws. I had a few reasons for picking this. First, it is an absolute classic, but I’ve never read it, not even excerpts. Second, this is a presidential election year and I know…
There was another mass shooting yesterday at Umpqua Community College in Oregon. I was going to write about it yesterday, but I was too sad and angry. I read that this is the 45th school shooting this year. That is shocking to me. I had only heard about a few of those. Apparently school shootings…
I hate the news. I suppose I don’t hate the news per se, but I really hate the people who deliver the news. They do a horrifically bad job. Everyone complains about meteorologists, but their job is really hard. The weather in incredibly complex and they are trying to tell us things about the future. The…
It’s been a while since I’ve done one of these Logic 101 posts. Just as a refresher, I like to look at a topic from the point of view of logic 101. That is, I try to see where the basic errors in reasoning occur. My theory is that if everyone took an intro to…
