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The Most Famous Address in London
A “practical joke” is called practical because it is a joke carried out in the real world rather than merely told. The word practical here means something like “put into practice” or “involving action.” A practical joke therefore involves manipulating a situation so that another person experiences something unexpected, usually for comic effect. “What do…
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Goodbye Jackie
For almost a week now, I have been struggling to write about Jackie, a bald eagle that lived in a nest with a live webcam trained on it 24/7 high above Big Bear Lake, California, in the mountains just north of me. You see, she died last Monday, and I have been profoundly sad. There…
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More Than This
Ok. I know how ridiculous this is going to sound. And I don’t believe in this sort of thing. But this really happened. Really. There is always a rational explanation for these things. But I never found one. And sat here today, 37 years later, I still haven’t. As an undergraduate, I attended the California…
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The Entirely Unnecessary History of Gaylord
Ask any gay man born as part of Generation X (Gen X) or earlier and they will tell you of a name they were called. For some it was Fag. Others might have been saddled with Queer. For me it was Gaylord. There was a time when Gaylord was a perfectly respectable name. A dignified…
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Clear the Shelters
August is not just the month I irrationally believe the universe has it in for me. It is also the month of the nationwide Clear the Shelters event. Shelter pets are very near and dear to my heart – and I’ll tell you why: they saved my life! Since becoming ill, and retiring to the…
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Observation
The first of August. Now, I am not superstitious, except for triskaidekaphobia, but my track record when it comes to August is not good. I was run over by a driverless car in August of 1974, I tested positive for HIV on August 1st, 1997, in August of 2006 I suddenly began limping in what…
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Two responses to Nihilism
In the 19th and 20th centuries modernity came into its fullness, and with this maturation the religious worldview began to fall away leaving us with a crisis of meaning that we’ve come to call Nihilism. The emergence of Nihilism prompted philosophers to ponder anew that clichéd philosophical question – what is the meaning of life?…
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The Holes of Justice
Today, we describe someone as “in the hole” if they are in debt, upside down on their mortgage, or more generally in dire circumstances, but in medieval Germany that might literally be a description of your day in court. Imagine receiving a court summons that reads: You are hereby ordered to appear before the court…
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Chesterton’s Fence
Few things are easier to ridicule than a regulation. Republicans have made a meal out of this since Ronald Reagan mockingly said, “The nine most terrifying words in the English language are: ‘I’m from the government, and I’m here to help.’” Nobody wakes up in the morning excited about fire codes. No one tells friends…
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The life we live and the stories we tell
Daniel Kahneman was an Israeli-American psychologist and Nobel laureate. Along with Amos Tversky, Kahneman established a cognitive basis for common human errors that arise from heuristics and biases, and developed “prospect theory” (cited in the decision to award him the 2002 Nobel Prize in Economics). In his book Thinking, Fast and Slow he explores what…
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