I was listening to the radio yesterday when I heard about Mary Pipher returning an American Psychological Association award in order to protest the APA’s stance on psychologists being involved in torture at Guantanamo and other American “Black Sites” around the world. Here’s the entirety of her letter, along with the parts I found most [...]

I’ve had a fun week — my father and stepmother came into town and we had a few days of seeing the local sights, as well as going out to see plenty of music (from a free symphony performance to a musical to some live music in the park). Good times, and through it all… [...]

Some readers of this weblog asked me to follow-up a little bit on my newfound Holmes fascination, and my attending the meeting of the Notorious Canary-Trainers on Sunday. Like I said in the earlier post, I had a great time and was very impressed with both the voluminous Holmes knowledge everyone had, as well as [...]

So, I’ve never really understood why this dumb “Obama Girl” video made the rounds a few months ago, with various media scholars hootin’ and hollerin’ about how it was a fascinating new use of digital media or whatnot. It’s not, really, it’s just a bad song with awkward lyrics and a joke that isn’t all [...]

Every few years, I find myself, thanks to circumstances too dull to recount here, revisiting the Canon of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes novels and stories. Four novels, fifty-six stories. They’re fun, they’re sometimes boring, they’re often inconsistent, and they afford reading and rereading like no other popular literature I know. The other day, [...]