Uneasy Rhetoric

Back in the 80s (remember them?), Simple Minds had a song called “Ghost Dancing.” It was perhaps their most overtly political song at the time. I have always wondered exactly where the title came from and thought perhaps it was just the band being clever. Clever, absolutely, but not original. According to this article by [...]

Gerri Willis on CNN Money has a column called “How to manage your manager, 5 Tips: Improving your work life.” (via LifeHacker) The column lists five relatively common sense tips: Ask: what’s the problem? Have regular meetings. Toot your own horn. Learn from it. Know when to bail. I want to expand on the first [...]

Freakonomics by Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner purports to use the tools provided to economists to reexamine some interesting life questions. For example, Levitt ponders why the crime rate fell in the 1990s when most criminologists expected an increase. His answer? The children most likely to commit crimes had never been born. Fetuses aborted as [...]

It was too hot to do much of anything outside today, so I sat inside and read a book about beer. The title says it all: The Ale Master: How I Pioneered America’s Craft Brewing Industry, Opened the First Brewpub, Bucked Trends, and Enjoyed Every Minute of It by Bert Grant with Robert Spector. Bert [...]

Scotty was always my favorite character on Star Trek. Once upon a time I used to have this vision of myself as a kind of Mr. Scott – nerdy, more comfortable working than anything else, something of a social misfit. Turns out I was romanticizing myself. Scotty was a specialist, I specialize in nothing. Unlike [...]