In the March issue of The Atlantic, Darcy Courteau writes about the consequences that have been faced by the horse market in the years since the last slaughterhouse that produced horse meat in the United States was forced to close. I remember that story well, as I felt at the/… Read full post »

When last I watched something on Hulu, I was treated to an advertisement for Hulu Plus, which almost seemed like a thematic sequel to the commercial with Will Arnett that ran during the Super Bowl. I didn’t mention that one in my post reviewing the Super Bowl ads,/… Read full post »

Moving about my town this weekend, I made two markedly unpleasant observations, which were quite distinct from each other, but also meaningfully connected. They both spoke to the deplorable effect that many adults have upon the children growing up around them, in the one place through the influences/… Read full post »

In light of the subject of my post yesterday, it’s truly remarkable that I happened to click onto this NY Daily News’ story about Monday’s shooting at a school in Chardon, OH. One paragraph below a picture of the shooter, T.J. Lane being ushered into the back of a vehicle/… Read full post »

I’m quick to grow painfully tired of media buzzwords. Their overuse tends to strip them of all legitimate meaning. It takes a small-scale breaking point for the public to realize this in individual cases, but it will take a major breaking point for the media to recognize the counterproductive/… Read full post »

I’m doing some consulting work that has required me to look over some academic materials regarding hiring procedures. This has gone a long way towards reminding me of my personal distaste for formulaic assessment of human worth. Is this symptomatic of the computer age? Are we subjugating even/… Read full post »

I try to listen to A Prairie Home Companion each Saturday evening, in large part because, despite being politically and socially liberal, I am personally quite conservative and prone to nostalgia and wistfulness for a purer experience of things that it seems I was denied by the unrelenting pro/…

Read full post »

Every time a representative of the government goes on the television or radio to talk about higher education, my blood boils a little at my recognition of the simple-mindedness that governs policy in that area. On last night’s Daily Show, Jon Stewart’s guest was Secretary of Education Ar… Read full post »

An article by Daniel de Vise on the Washington Post website today explains that colleges are widely questioning the value of lectures and are exploring alternate ways of structuring their classes. The exposition of the topic strikes me as a strange mixture of common sense and misplaced priorities.… Read full post »

Mediabistro led its newsfeed today with praise for a Twitter user who broke the story of Whitney Houston’s death an hour before the Associated Press did. The story began:

Twitter has long-established itself as the ‘go to’ place for breaking news, and this has never… Read full post »

The other night, I discovered a new and enormously popular viral video in which an irate father exacts revenge for a Facebook post made by his teenage daughter. Naturally, it's of interest to me, because it depicts somebody hitting a breaking point and embracing it completely. It just so/… Read full post »

I often fear I’m destined to be a conservative. Many of the breaking points that I look forward to are reversals of modern trends. They’re usually not political, but they are conservative in more of a personal, romantic, yearning-for-an-imagined-past sort of way. In all probability, I’m just/… Read full post »

It’s been a while since I’ve posted any commentary about film or television here. Toward the end of changing that, it seems worthwhile to point out that I recently finished watching the entire run of Twin Peaks. It was wonderfully compelling, in large part because of the skillful blend/… Read full post »

This is something of an addendum to my post from the other day about talking to twenty year-olds about the future, particularly with regard to post-college expectations. I got to thinking more about my social interactions with youth after I wrote it, and I’ve come to realize that I have/… Read full post »

I originally wrote this piece to be posted elsewhere, so the comments and events it refers to are a week or so old now. I still thought it worthwhile to post it here.

I think it’s honest of me to identify myself as coming solidly from the left with all of… Read full post »

As much as I like to be topical and political, I need to start pointing this blog back in the direction of analytical commentary on things that I observe in ordinary life. That kind of thing really is my bread and butter. And I believe that the changes and/… Read full post »

Last night’s Super Bowl provided a nice opportunity for me to visit with family and watch the game, but I must admit that the better share of my motivation was to watch the commercials and keep a critical eye upon them. Despite that, when I made my way to my/… Read full post »

This is interesting. I’ve hit a rare breaking point in my philosophical beliefs. Yesterday, Jack Marshall wrote about Don Cornelius’ recent suicide, and today he took it as an opportunity to recall a post from years ago regarding Hunter S. Thompson having killed himself in 2005. In the/… Read full post »

Groundhog Day has always been kind of a stupid holiday. Far be it from me to try to tear down long-established traditions, but sometimes they really do lose their currency. I like to think that in the latter half of the twentieth century, no adult human has ever really/… Read full post »

I think I’m about ready to make a practice of fasting again. I did it regularly while I was in high school and college, but now it’s been about six years since I’ve done anything so spiritual or disciplined. First of all, I lost the better part of my/… Read full post »

On Monday, President Obama hosted a video conference to answer questions submitted online and speak directly to a small group of voters and students. During the chat, a Fort Worth, Texas woman named Jennifer Weddel shared her husband’s personal story and used it to challenge the president on the n/… Read full post »

The Huffington Post a few days ago reported on a certain legislative conflict in the Indiana General Assembly. Republican Jud McMillin sponsored a bill to require drug testing of all welfare applicants in the state, leading Democrat Ryan Dvorak to introduce an amendment to levy the same requirement/… Read full post »

I recall that a few years ago I received e-mails from Media Matters for America on a very regular basis. Since that time they seem to have substantially reduced their commitment to direct mailing, which is for the best since in that same time the quality of their content has/… Read full post »

The Yahoo! Finance web series the Daily Ticker today consisted of an interview with Gerald O’Driscoll, former Vice President and economic advisor at the Dallas Federal Reserve, and a senior fellow at Cato Institute. He was asked whether there was anything that either the Fed or Washington could do/… Read full post »

I think President Obama delivered a fine speech last night. I am particularly impressed with his remarks regarding higher education and unemployment. For the past three years, I have tried to be a particularly aggressive and passionate critic of the current administration’s policies and rhetoric/… Read full post »