Miniver Cheevy

Corey Robin explains how the Democrats came to be the party of fiscal responsibility. Consider the two major presidential cycles of the l...

So in the update of the format of my blog, a number of old posts have just plain gone missing, with no rhyme or reason. I am not amused.

I've not been watching The Newsroom despite my unreasonably vigorous love for Aaron Sorkin's writing because HBO are numbskulls...

Living national treasure Ta-Nehisi Coates has written a vitally important meditation on race politics and Obama, Fear of a Black Presiden...

So I've done a major refresh of the design of this blog, which I've been meaning to do for ages. The old design was built using the...

The Encyclopedia of American Loons currently indexes about 350 people promulgating absurd ideas, from familiar faces like Sarah Palin and...

The Tenderloin neighborhood in San Francisco is an exceptionally skeevy slum that often catches travelers by surprise, because it lies jus...

In a comment at Making Light (where the comments section is, stunningly, often even better than the blog itself), nerdycellist has a strik...

This is meant to become an index of Paul Ryan stuff. So far it only has a few things: Just before Governor Romney chose Ryan as his ve...

In case you're puzzled, that's a math thing . Also: It turns out you can build a Turing complete computer out of Magic: The G...

The Martini FAQ goes above and beyond the call of duty. A highly vocal minority of Martini drinkers, the Prescriptivists, 1 insists that...

Dissatisfied with existing versions of a D & D alignment chart for characters on The Wire , I constructed my own. (I also wanted t...

“I am not in danger. I am the danger.” If you don't recognize the quote, an explication:

This old post has been superceded by a new post including the surviving suppliers here, plus more. In case you want to spend so...

In a sequel to a similar silly post , I offer this joke at the expense of the folks at ScaledAgileFramework.com , who may be very smart and...

I was struck by this passage in a kvetch from Sean Oliver about the new Apple Genius TV ads: Collateral like this happens when there is n...

Facebook event discussion: Yeah, that's the problem right there. Update: More from Eric Throw Molotov: Let's be clear about...

There is only one god. And his name is Death. And there is only one thing we say to Death. Not today.

George Monbiot reports that there's plenty of oil after all, if we are willing to spend enough money and wreck enough of the environme...

Programmers often talk about a “SMOP”. It's an exceedingly useful expression. Here's Eric Raymond's instructive Jargon File on...

The long Esquire article The Lethal Presidency of Barack Obama is an important piece of journalism. It's written as a letter to the P...

This article from Matt Buchanan at Buzzfeed is framed as advice for consumers, but the important lesson is for tech product and service co...

It will lead you to enlightenment. .... Bearing in his right paw the Shovel that digs to the truth beneath appearances; cuts the roots o...

Occasionally I encounter someone who has become enamored of the insights of New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman. So I have to hunt ...

A friend on Facebook just pointed me to the terrific post The Art of No at CaptainAwkward.com, talking about manners and ethics while da...

The talk “Growing a Language” by Guy Steele says a good thing that you may want to know about programming languages. Even if you do not kno...

This week I have felt a vague sense of guilt that I planned my weekend such that I won't attend the San Francisco Pride parade today. ...

I keep telling people to watch the HBO series The Wire , and it occurs to me that I should have my pitch somewhere handy. Here's the ...

A refined version of this post appears together with several other comments on my Game Of Thrones master post . Laurie Penny's a...

Want to buy me a present? Of course you do. The ideal gift for me is cufflinks or a big scarf or a colorful pocket square ; fun, deca...