My wife’s car has preference settings for each driver. When I drive it, I get in, push a button, and the seat moves into position automatically — no manual effort required. “In the future, people are going to be really fat,” my son says. “People are pretty fat now,” I point out. “They’re going to be fatter because they don’t have to do anything.” “George Jetson isn’t fat.” “He’s kind of fat.” “He’s not fat.” “Maybe I’m thinking of Fred Flintstone.” “Fred Flintstone is fat, but he’s from the past — which kind of discredits your theory, if you think about it.” Read more →
Author Archive: Paul Epps
Secret Griefs and Fears
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 →
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 →
Great Orators of the 7th Grade
I can’t really hear what my son is holding forth on downstairs — just snippets about tyranny, racism, slavery, Abraham Lincoln, Harriet Tubman, civil rights and child abuse — which means his mom must have asked him to turn off the TV and get started on homework . . . Read more →
Dogster
Someone sent me a link to Dogster. OK . . . I just looked at the doggie diaries a little bit. Some people are waaaay too into their dogs. Now, don’t get me wrong . . . I love my dog, but anyone referring to pets as “kids” or to themselves as the “mommy” or “daddy” of an animal should be euthanized. Read more →
Soak the Rich — Colleges!
A core value of American liberals is the importance of redistributing wealth from the prosperous to others, through highly progressive taxes and transfer payments. Which leads to a question: If redistributing wealth is a good idea for workers, companies, individuals, and families, then intellectual consistency suggests it should be equally valid for institutions like colleges and universities. Right? Read more →
How the Intelligent Design Hoax was Perpetrated
. . . the proponents of intelligent design use a ploy that works something like this. First you misuse or misdescribe some scientist’s work. Then you get an angry rebuttal. Then, instead of dealing forthrightly with the charges leveled, you cite the rebuttal as evidence that there is a ‘controversy’ to teach. Read more →
Republicans Cause Sneezing?
My son is standing in the kitchen like he’s about to make an announcement. Suddenly . . . “Ah-CHOO!” “Geez, man,” I say, “you just sneeze like that without making any effort to lift your hand up and block it?” “Did the people in New Orleans make an effort to block Hurricane Katrina?” he asks in a loud voice. “NO! They just let it happen and blamed President Bush!” Read more →
Medical Front Office Ass
The job ads on the right were dropped into a business article I was reading last weekend. Evidently the job titles get truncated after 24 characters, which is probably a bad idea, given the unintended consequences . . . Read more →
The Algebra of Poetry
If poetry is reduced to an algebraic equation with one meaning, and only a teacher has the meaning, and you can’t figure it out without the teacher, it’s no fun. And when you become an adult, when you see a poem in The New Yorker, you’ll turn the page and look for a cartoon. You’ll say, ‘I don’t have to work for a good grade anymore.’ — Ted Kooser Read more →
Micromanagement
I don’t know where my 12-year-old kid learned the concept of micromanagement, but he’s launched into a speech on the topic: “This is beyond micromanagement!” he says. “This is proton-level management! No, wait, it’s negative, so it’s electron management!” This is occasioned by the fact that we’ve asked him to stop playing video games and take a shower . . . Read more →
Three Questions Psychopaths Ask Themselves
Is it thrilling? Is it a game I can win? Does it hurt others? Read more →
Lurch to the Right, Lurch to the Left
. . . we don’t need some great lurch to the right or lurch to the left or redefinition of the Democratic Party. — Sen. John F. Kerry Read more →
Fighting Words
The NCAA has put together a list of colleges with “hostile and abusive” team nicknames, including the Illinois Fighting Illini, the Utah Utes and the North Dakota Fighting Sioux. Remind me again why Fighting Illini, Utes and Fighting Sioux are hostile and abusive, but Fighting Irish, with a dopey guy prancing around in a leprechaun suit, is okay? Read more →
Jesus at a Republican Fund-Raiser
I want to say to the meek: Once we finally get rid of the death tax, you’re not inheriting anything. — Jesus Christ Read more →
Sacrilicious
An open letter to the Kansas School Board on an alternative theory of Intelligent Design, i.e., that the universe was created by a Flying Spaghetti Monster. Read more →
The Democratic Dilemma
A Democratic shift to the right risks inflaming the party’s Angry Left base, while a shift to the left would surely cost the party whatever support it has left from normal people. — Best of the Web Today Read more →