Whither Weather Wear

The wife and I went to a party yesterday. It was supposed to be a pool party in someone’s backyard, sort of a goodbye to summer thing, but we had a surprise thunderstorm here in the Bay Area Saturday morning, so it was overcast, although surprisingly warm for northern California rain.

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A Strangely Jolly Commute this Morning

I did the casual carpool this morning. For those outside the SF Bay Area, the casual carpool is a way to reduce congestion during rush hour. I think it’s primarily in the East Bay (across San Francisco Bay from the City), rather than down the peninsula or in Marin county, but they may have it [...]

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The Lie of the So-Called Liberal Media

For a couple decades now, but especially during the rise to power of  Limbaugh, Gingrich, et al., we’ve heard how liberal the “mainstream media” supposedly is. It’s probably the most devastatingly successful con job of the last two decades, if not in journalism history.

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Bernie Madoff Isn’t Our Worst Villain

 The mass media were all over the Madoff fraud story recently, broadcasting how well-heeled Bernie Madoff ran a Ponzi scheme the size of Fort Knox and bilked so many people, including old and dear friends, out of billions of dollars.
The story has its own hero, Harry Markopolos, the whistleblower whom no one heard, and its own red herring distraction, Bernie’s wife, [...]

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Another Useless Talent Exhibited

My assistant brewer, Dave, is good at incredulity, among other things. He’s smart, a fount of the kind of quasi-useful knowledge copyeditors excel at (e.g., they are vocal cords, not chords; the word is actually supersede, not supercede, although some style manuals now accept the typo as a new “variant”), he knows a lot about movies, [...]

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Disney Does the Zoo

I have a lot of ambivalence about animals in cages or pens. It’s born of childhood visits to Como Park Zoo in St. Paul, Minnesota, and seeing the pacing cats behind bars in small cages. Fortunately, those cages are long gone now, and zoological parks have generally been upgraded and are more “humane” (ahem). Someone [...]

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Glimpses of the Magic Kingdom

If you remember when the Wonderful World of Disney was on ABC on Sunday nights, then you also remember their wonderful world of “color! color! color!” and this first picture is for you:

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My Most Hair-Raising Moment

Okay, so we were at Disney, and Disney isn’t really known for hair-raising rides. So the competition wasn’t too stiff.

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Some Reflections on Disney

 
Disney seems to be an irony free zone. There is an immediacy to the experience here, a lack of reflection, doubtless derived from the novelty of childhood, the newness of sensations.

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A Spring Day in Florida

Having had my ticket to see the Twins play the Pirates stolen before we left town made things interesting, as far as getting into McKechnie Field (“Southern Home of the Pirates”) goes. StubHub, who supposedly guarantee the tickets we bought in December of 2008, and which were stolen 6 days before we left town, was [...]

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