June 2008
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Hatemongering right-wingers have been using Obama’s name to attack him. It’s only-slightly-disguised bigotry. Obama sounds like Osama, Hussein is the late, unlamented dictator, while Barack is strangely foreign and rhymes with Iraq. It’s primitive tribalism –a way of calling Barack "foreign" or "un-American" without actually using the words. Although Obama generally calls himself "Barack Obama,"…
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My brother Jonathan says, "The wheel. I could have invented the wheel." Meaning, I think, that he understands the advanced scientific principle — a wheel turns round and round. Unlike, say, the refrigerator or the radio, which he doesn’t understand and will concede that he couldn’t possibly have invented. As for myself, I don’t think…
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My Internet consultant, who is forty-something years old, signed me up on Facebook. He said that I needed to understand how communication takes place between young folk in the modern era. He also thought that I should assemble some Facebook friends. He himself concedes that in Facebook years he is an oldster. "You’re on Facebook?"…
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The new clerk at the local Aubuchon has a green Mohawk. The non-Mohawk part of his head is clean-shaven. The clerk looks to be about twenty years old. He couldn’t tell me in which aisle to find a S-hook. I’m surprised but not offended by the Mohawk. I wonder, though, how the would-be clerk dressed…
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My granddaughter Ella, who is pushing six, is here for a brief visit. Yesterday, after catching four salamanders, kicking the soccer ball, planting the yellow snap beans, and running in exuberant circles, she asked me to tell her a story. I’ll report only the gist of my long, detailed, but uninspired narrative. A young princess…
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It’s just about 2000 miles from our residence in Colorado to our summer quarters in Vermont. Early this week I made my 33rd drive from the one to the other. We were lucky — we sidestepped both floods and tornadoes, though fields were flooded throughout Iowa and there was impressive and nasty twister damage in…
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Regular readers of this blague will remember that last year I made myself available for the NBA draft. I'm sorry to report that not a single one of the general managers was daring enough to gamble on me. It was disappointing and inexplicable. I would have suspected that at least one or two of the…
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Today we covered 200 miles or so of Route 34 of western Nebraska, the reddest part of one of our reddest states. We started in the high steppes and finished in fertile (when irrigated) farmland. Here are some of the roadside highlights. Nine reassuringly green John Deere dealerships, evenly spaced along the route. A number…
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It's not just sexual prudery that makes a novel "Victorian." The more of these novels I read (and trust me, I've read my share), the more clear it is that the heart of the matter is that hero and heroine are kept apart not by Mrs. Grundy but by paralyzing social constraints. To demonstrate my…
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A new and useful word is "greenwash," which is what happens when a can of ozone-destroying chemicals comes to be decorated with cute bunnies. Corporations have perfected this kind of propaganda: it's cheaper to portray the company as green than to cap that smokestack. The Bushies have brought greenwashing to politics and given us Clear…