Purveyor of Iniquities

Harper’s Weekly Review is all about finding unexpected parallels and connections within torrents of news that wash over us daily. In its cheekiness, the Weekly is not always successful. In this week’s edition, for example, it links the accidental killing of civilians in Afghanistan in a bombing mission with the kidnapping and manipulation of a [...]

The two Quotes of the Day on today’s Google custom homepage:
Patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel.
- Samuel Johnson
Everything in the world may be endured except continued prosperity.
- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

According to the Times, younger Americans are puzzled by a particular practice of etiquette and social pleasantry that’s gone overlooked on its way to extinction. Letter-writing is at best now a novelty and more likely a dying art.
The last letter I wrote was to my doctor, who is probably forty years older than me [...]

Cleaning out the refrigerator as a sign of acceptance.
Filling the ice cube trays as a sign of hope.

After a decade or so of thinking it over, I am now fairly certain that the idea of vegetarianism (or pescetarianism–whatever) appeals to me far more than the actual practice of it.
A turkey sandwich would be really great right now. But it’s a bit of a hike to the Metro Gourmet (totally appropriate scare [...]