Unqualified Offerings

By Thoreau
President Hopey McChangealot has signed a renewal of the Patriot Act.  All those Teabaggers (hee!) who call him a communist or fascist may actually have a point, but not the point they think they have, and it applies just as much to The Old Boss as it does to The New Boss.
I don’t know [...]

By Mona
What a fantastic idea. Union of the Unemployed, aka UCubed, a month-old movement to unionize the jobless has been growing rapidly, agenda to pressure Congress for Unemployment Benefits and COBRA extensions, plus more. (Via Libby Spencer’s tweet.)

By Thoreau
If Gen. McChrystal is sad about civilian casualties, well, there’s only one way to avoid civilian casualties:  DON’T FIGHT A FUCKING LAND WAR IN ASIA!!!!
I’m not the first person to come up with this idea.

By Thoreau
The last post from Jim is dated Feb. 25.  It’s now Feb. 27.  Do we need to have an intervention?  He agreed to give up not blogging, but I’m starting to question his commitment.

Quick notes, cause I just got home and haven’t blogged today, and I blog daily.
1. Players to Be Named Later, the placeholder moniker for the newly formed improv troupe I’m in, will open this Saturday night at 7pm for Precipice Improv Theater at the Writer’s Center in Bethesda, Maryland. Our show is free, and if [...]

Does it really take 21 days to cement a habit? Or is it a myth?

What [a study by Lally et al] reveals is that when we want to develop a relatively simple habit like eating a piece of fruit each day or taking a 10 minute walk, it could take us over two months ofdaily [...]

By Thoreau
So, my student and I had a great conference, and I was all set to return home as a conquering hero, but while waiting at the airport I got an email notifying all faculty that they have begun the initial bureaucratic preparations for layoffs.  That doesn’t necessarily mean it will happen, but they are [...]

Obviously, YouTube concert videos are hit-or-miss. So let me just award the Unqualified Offerings Seal of Quality to the clip of Elvis Costello joining the Tim Jumpers onstage in Nashville for “A Good Year for the Roses” last night.

By Thoreau
So, today I’m busy sorting out some fundamental problems that a lot of people didn’t even realize were problems, or at least didn’t realize that there was a better way to do it, and I’m thinking back to the review that sunk my grant proposal and how sadly epic fail they were to not [...]

By Thoreau
I echo everything in this post by The Editors. Especially this:
There’s another objection, more fundamental, and it goes like this: you shouldn’t kill people who haven’t done anything to you, because it isn’t nice.  It’s considered bad manners, under most circumstances, which is why, in our day-to-day lives, most of us go out of [...]