Current Events

Returning to the fray

Two weeks is enough. I think my self imposed mourning period is about over. I don’t want to shock the system, so I’m taking it slow. On Tuesday I watched a documentary on the Middle East. On Wednesday I read the paper. This morning I listened to NPR. Tomorrow I’ll try to put the pieces of my routine together, reading the paper, listening to NPR AND checking up on the world news…
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Current Events

The Middle East on my mind

I’m about to speak on a topic which I have very little expertise. Actually, I’ll probably talk about several topics on which I have very little knowledge. You know what they say, a little bit of knowledge is a dangerous thing. In my case, well, I must be positively lethal. Throughout the ages, or at least since bottled water, the water cooler has been fertile ground for inane chatter…
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Current Events

Evolution of a debate

The latest battleground in the “teaching Evolution in public schools” debate is a sticker. That’s right, stickers are not just for scratching and sniffing anymore. The Cobb County School Board in Georgia decided to place a sticker on science textbooks, which “,advised students that evolution was a scientific theory, not a fact, and urged students to use critical thinking in…
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Current Events

A day like any other day, elections not withstanding

You know what? The sun rose this morning. The Earth continued on its orbit around the sun. There were cars on the street. People were going about their business. CNN, MSNBC, et al. were still broadcasting the news. My daughter got up and went to school. My son woke up early in the morning with his trademark “feed me” cry. I still love my wife as much as ever. Why then am I grasping at…
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Current Events

My acceptance speech, modest delusions of grandeur, and a pinch of doom and gloom

Well folks, it’s been a long night. Like many of the other candidates for elected office this evening, I’ve been sitting by the television sweating out the election results. But, after a long evening, after months of work and countless hours of effort, victory is mine. By a unanimous 1-0 vote (mine ultimately being the only vote that counts), I have won another term as speaker of the…
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Current Events

Sweet irony

This political season is much like other political seasons; the hacks are out in full force repeating the sound bites like dolls with pull strings. My favorite is the line about government run health care, shortages, and rationing. While there is a rational explanation, and it is only one isolated example, I think it is just precious that the industrialized world’s most free market driven…
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Current EventsSports

No Alex? No Nomar? No problem.

The other day I was talking with a coworker about how I always manage to get on the wrong end of a rivalry, or in other words, the only team that saw it as a rivalry. Dunedin High School versus Clearwater (basketball and football), UF versus FSU (the last fifteen years or so in football), Red Sox versus Yankees, Rays versus, well, I guess we don’t really have a rival there, but you see the…
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Current EventsSports

That knot in your stomach that just won’t go away

It is ten a.m. and I have just woken from seven hours of uninterrupted sleep. I went from deep sleep to fully awake in the blink of an eye (two of them actually). Why? Because I must live through another game seven tonight. There are ten hours until the first pitch and already I’m worried. This is what it means to be a Red Sox fan, even if baseball isn’t my favorite spectator sport. It…
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