Hey folks, sorry posting has been so light. (Well, nonexistent) Between the new gig at Ars and a move to a new apartment (without Internet for another week—thanks Comcast!) there hasn’t been a ton of time for posting.  But here’s what I’ve been getting up to at Ars: Secretive surveillance court rejects plea for transparency […]

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There’s something really comforting to me about looking back at a piece I wrote four or five years ago and thinking, “God, what a clumsy piece of crap.”  If that sounds strange, consider the alternative: I feel like I used to look over stuff from a few year previous and think, “Huh, that’s as good […]

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I expect we don’t agree on a whole lot—beyond not caring much for the Bush administration—but I’ve long thought Rachel Maddow was the sharpest, most engaging personality on the regular bobblehead circuit. So I’m glad to hear she’s finally getting her own show. Might even make it worth keeping a TV when I move into […]

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Thomas Frank unleashes a volley of overstuffed, Laphamesque prose to kvetch about the creation of a Milton Friedman Institute at the University of Chicago. Frank graciously allows that, since we’ve got K-Mart chairs of marketing, it might not be totally beyond the pale for a school to similarly honor a Nobel Prize–winning former professor. But […]

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Just when Obama’s economic rhetoric is giving me hives, I see something like this and get, if not a thrill running up my leg, a little more at ease: But you know, the truth is that my education was a pretty standard, liberal arts education. So I was exposed to thinkers on the left. At […]

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A commenter over at Spencer’s notes a fun fact I was heretofore unaware of: Guitarist Robert Quine of the Voidoids was actually the nephew of legendary philosopher W.V.O. Quine. Possibly less fun, but still sort of entertaining factoids for you all: David Berman of the Silver Jews is, as I may have mentioned here previously, […]

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Ygz makes a sound point about the folly of categorizing foreign actors as “pro-American” or “anti-American” when, for the most part, they’re following their own interests—and whether those interests coincide or conflict with ours is secondary. Actually, I’ve always thought the especially ingenious bit—which I suppose I tacitly endorse with that “ours” in the last […]

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Apparently some folks I know slightly have been working on a new film adaptation of Kurt Vonnegut’s short story “Harrison Bergeron.” I have mixed feelings about this: On the one hand, I’m a fan of original story, and I even have a soft spot for the 1995 Showtime version. The latter deviated massively from Vonnegut’s […]

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For a while now, as regular readers know, I’ve been a frequent contributor to the remarkable, super smart tech news site Ars Technica. A few months ago they became part of the Condé Nast imperium, which has allowed them to begin expanding their coverage in a variety of ways.  And, as it turns out, I’m […]

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Whew! Deprived of a blog outlet, Matt Yglesias had been constrained to Twittering mini post-synopses for the past week.  I was worrying the backed up ideas might cause an aneurysm. Fortunately for him—and for those of us who’d missed the geniuine article—he’s back blogging at his new home on ThinkProgress.

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