Randall Munroe imagines himself in the Olympics in today’s xkcd, and I notice that the funniest places he’d expect to find an unqualified amateur are in the sports in which style is the deciding factor. Which evokes a 1959 Peanuts that has always been close to my heart and which, apart from my extensive history […]
It’s always nice to get the family together for the holidays, and here they are before they went Hollywood. As for the current holiday, Greg Kearney noted the downpour in Maine, which was worse than we had it next door, but we also had some power failures and erasure of snow-making on the ski hills […]
Existential Comics, which just celebrated its tenth year, continues the birthday festivities with this contrast of Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Thomas Hobbes. It’s not a ground-breaking comparison. I think most courses in political science that delve in classical sources make a point of having students read, and discuss, both men, as we did in college. But […]
Alex offers a grim prediction for writers, or at least those who don’t go to the right cocktail parties in the right cities. Publishers already use the term “slush pile” for the vast quantities of unsolicited manuscripts that arrive on their doorsteps, and it’s newsworthy when something from the slush pile gets published. It’s nearly […]
Sunil Agarwal mocks a saying I take seriously, but I’m willing to laugh at the empty cans and bottles that are evidence of the thing this poor fellow loves to do. Yes, indeed, you do have to channel your interest in some sort of positive direction and, no, I’m not sure a love of drinking […]
The Boston Globe and The Nib cartoonist Ward Sutton will be honored by the Herb Block Foundation tonight as the 2018 winner of their eponymous prize. According to the Herb Block Foundation site: “We were greatly impressed by the quality and breadth of submissions, with so much outstanding work being done in all types of political […]