The joys of parents are secret, and so are their griefs and fears. — Francis Bacon, “Of Parents and Children” Our son turned 12 in July . . . “I almost cried today,” my wife says. “Every year, I take Casey to the pumpkin patch and I take the best photo, but when we drove by today, he didn’t want to go . . .” Read more →
October 2005
The Dog Who Has Everything
Today is our dog’s second birthday, my son informs me. “Every day is a birthday for that dog,” I say. “We didn’t get him any gifts,” the boy says. Read more →
USC Business School
I was happy to see the USC business school get a Top 10 national ranking in the Wall Street Journal Guide to Top Business Schools, ahead of Stanford, ahead of Harvard and, of course, ahead of UCLA. Read more →
Which Side Are You On?
There are only two serious attempts at swamp-draining currently under way. In Afghanistan and Iraq, agonizingly difficult efforts are in train to build roads, repair hospitals, hand out ballot papers, frame constitutions, encourage newspapers and satellite dishes, and generally evolve some healthy water in which civil-society fish may swim. But in each case, from within the swamp and across the borders, the most poisonous snakes and roaches are being recruited and paid to wreck the process and plunge people back into the ooze. How nice to have a ‘peace’ movement that is either openly on the side of the vermin, or neutral as between them and the cleanup crew, and how delightful to have a press that refers to this partisanship, or this neutrality, as ‘progressive.’ — Christopher Hitchens Read more →
Free Advice . . .
. . . for anyone thinking of handcuffing themselves to a tree: If you handcuff yourself to a tree you would die fairly quickly but maybe not as quickly as you would like. Read more →