February 2011
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Dr. M: "Do you think that these tea party Republicans can be educated?" State Rep: "I'm not hopeful. They don't know much about governing. They don't want to know anything. They're very disciplined — they vote exactly the way they're told to vote. And they're not very intelligent."
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I went to a forum, sponsored by local Dems, with our congressman. Fifty or sixty of my friends and neighbors were in attendance. Our congressman is a good person — smart, informed, energetic, and progressive. He described the situation in the House of Representatives — the difficulty of serving in the minority, especially when so…
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Ella: "Say 'duck.'" Lola: "Duck" Ella: "Say 'ball.'" Lola: "Ball." Ella: "Say 'hair.' (Pause.) No, no. Don't touch your hair. Say "hair."
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A good friend, a distinguished biologist, asked me to read his cancer manuscript. When I read science books (popularizations, for the most part), I usually do so with only half a brain. I'm lazy; I skip the hard parts. But because I was being asked for a serious opinion, I read this book closely. In…
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In 1968, the average AL batter hit .230 and Carl Yastrzemski won the batting championship, hitting .301; in 1930, the average NL batter hit .303. In 1904, 87.6% of starting pitchers completed their games; in 2004, of 4854 starts, only 150 were completed (3.1%). In 1997, the Texas Ranger franchise was purchased for $252 million;…
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It is possible that in the entire history of capitalism in America, the silliest name that has ever been devised for a business is "Lady Footlocker." I understand the reasoning behind the name: "Footlocker" was a successful athletic goods store for men and the geniuses in charge wanted to hive off a parallel enterprise for…
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Charles Dickens and I are intimate friends and have been so since 1952, when, delighted and astonished, I zoomed through David Copperfield — the first of ten or a dozen readings. At this very moment, I'm renewing our long asymmetrical friendship by re-reading the fifteen novels (fourteen and a half, actually, inasmuch as Dickens collapsed while Drood was…
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Laura is a stylish noir mystery that maintains its fascination even after the passage of sixty years. It is cleverly written and handsomely cinematographed but it also comes with some murky psychological baggage. At the heart of the enigma lies Waldo Lydecker (played by Clifton Webb). He's so head-over-heels in love and so ferociously jealous…