Vive La Protestation

When I lived in France, I became convinced that the primary purpose of the French government was to undermine the French economy. It’s become clear to me that the population is now in cahoots. There have been sweeping protests across the country in response to proposed legislation to reduce the […]

Heeb Hop

A few years ago, I was in Washington Square Park when a friend of mine ran up to me and said, “There’s a Jewish guy singing Reggae and he’s ridiculously good.  And he’s not Jewish like you…he’s one of those serious Jews.  You know — with the beard and the […]

Microsoft Humor

Think Microsoft employees can’t poke fun at their company’s products? Think again. This bit of CSS code was posted on a Microsoft webpage: /* fix for the IE 1px-off margin error */ * html .StupidIEMarginHack { margin-right: 1px; } * html .StupidIEWidthHack { width: 100%; }

Origami

This weekend, while dealing with tendonitis in my left knee, I found myself on the couch watching Brainiac.  I had never seen the show before, but it struck me as a lightweight version of Mythbusters.   One of the assertions that the Brainiac cast validated was that paper can only […]

Unhealthy Systems

I was in college when Hillary Clinton was charged with overhauling the U.S. health care system.  My contention at the time is that the last people who should be impacting the decisions of doctors were lawyers.  I still feel this way.  (It was particularly galling to many that doctors were […]

Bowden’s Blunders

Thank you, Jacob Luft. In his piece, “Defensible Position,” Luft writes, “If the Nationals had an owner — and a GM that wasn’t pulled off the set of Cold Pizza, for that matter — they could have gotten serious about winning and acquired some Mike Cameron types to take advantage […]

Guilt By Association?

April will be the first month of 2006 in which — unless I am pleasantly surprised — I will not be mentioned in the acknowledgments of a book. So if you’ll allow me this indulgence, I’m going to shill for those who were kind enough to include me in their […]

Blank-forsaken Politicians

Slavoj Zizek makes an argument that I sometimes toss around in discussions with friends: atheists would make the best governmental leaders. I highly doubt that a non-believer would be palatable to the majority of the American electorate, but the consequences of removing a religious agenda from a political one are […]

Is Bonds a Hall-of-Famer?

ESPN’s Gene Wojciechowski writes, “Bonds is finished. He might play again, but there is only a chalk outline left around his integrity and home run totals. And the only way he gets into Cooperstown is if he spends the $14.50 for a Hall of Fame admission ticket.” I disagree. What […]

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