Last month, I was chatting with somebody who, upon finding out that I went to MIT, asked me if I had ever taken a class with Noam Chomsky. I said that I hadn’t, but I’d read a couple of his books, so he asked me what I thought of them. I said something like “I […]

(written 11/14/03) A friend of mine offered up this piece of advice about how to deal with children, learned from experience with his own two-year-old: Offer them choices where you’re happy with both outcomes. That way, they get to make a choice and feel in charge of their life, and you’re happy regardless. Choices like […]

(written 11/7/03) We were talking yesterday at lunch about the new Joe Millionaire. Apparently, it features a young Texas cowboy, who’s pretending to be the heir to an oil fortune worth $80 million. The women wooing him are European women, who appear to be a gaggle of loud-mouthed, ineffectual, jealous moneygrubbers. My immediate thought is […]

(written 11/5/03) Just after writing my previous post about how Howard Dean is a hopeless case in the South, I read an article on Yahoo today, where he apologized for making an insensitive mark about the South. Apparently, “Dean got in trouble while defending his moderate views on gun ownership, saying Democrats need to address […]

(written 11/3/03) As long as I’m ranting about politics, it’s time for Howard Dean to get the hell out of the race for the Democratic nomination while he still has credibility, and throw his support to Clark. If he were serious about the priority being to get Bush out of office, that’s what he would […]

(written 7/30/03) I’m reading a book on the history of anarchism (Anarchism: a history of libertarian ideas and movements, by George Woodcock), because I’ve been interested in the political concept of anarchy for a while, but didn’t really know anything about the historical and theoretical tradition of it. Plus the book was only a couple […]