My retort.
Author Archive | weeklyrob
Graph Jams
Wired magazine points us to graphjam.com, the best possible use of googledocs. Update: I submitted a graph, but apparently they’re very backed up. So rather than wait for mine to show up there, I’ll link to it RIGHT HERE.
A Kid is a Child
While titling my last post, I remembered a debate that seems to be important to some people about the word “kid.” Some people don’t like referring to human children as “kids.” They want “kid” only to refer to a goat (or possibly deer or antelope). For example, when someone asked a question on the kiplinger.com […]
Movies Are for Kids
This is a short rant. Only kids haven’t seen the same old tricks a thousand times. So when new movies use the same old tricks, I’m giving the movie-makers the benefit of the doubt and assuming that they’re making the movies for kids. This must be true even when the movies are rated R, or […]
Happiness
I’m finally getting around to reading The Best American Short Stories 2007, which I posted about earlier. Two things of note: 1. Stephen King, who picked the final 20 stories, wrote the introduction that made me want the book in the first place. Re-reading it, I see that he used a semicolon on the first […]
Wedding Bells
My brother finally asked his girlfriend to marry him, and we found out yesterday (I think he did it the night before). They’d been together a long damn time, and everyone in the family loves her and worried that we’d lose her if he didn’t propose. Now he has and we’re all happy. Also, while […]
Adventures in Repetitive. (Saying the Same Thing Twice)
My edition of J.C. Masterman’s book, “The Double-Cross System,” has an introduction, followed by a preface, followed by a forward. The Introduction, written in this century, spends some time discussing a certain series of events that’s slightly related to the book. Then you get to the preface, written in 1973 or something, which discusses the […]
Wize Up
We say “fall” and the British say, “autumn.” But they changed it, not us. They used to say “fall” in England, too. I just found out that the same goes for spelling “organize” with an s instead of a z. From AskOxford.com: Q: Are spellings like ‘privatize’ and ‘organize’ Americanisms? A: No, not really. When […]
Drowning
Christopher Hitchens is always deeply thoughtful even when he’s wrong (like agreeing with Bush on the Iraq war). I can’t find it online, but he’s been accused of regarding waterboarding as a sort of not-that-bad thing that Americans do. He was challenged to try it for himself, and he recently agreed. There’s video of it, […]
On Dissolving Political Bands
My version of the Declaration, modernized and more readable: — IN CONGRESS, JULY 4, 1776 The unanimous Declaration of the Thirteen United States of America When a group of people splits apart from another group to become their own power in the world, they should give their reasons. We think that the following things are […]