Explanations of daily changes in aggregate stock market indices are among the most ridiculous, speculative, and uncertain causal inferences made by journalists . . . Read more →
Author Archive: Paul Epps
Meet the Writers
Please welcome . . . Anton Chekov! Read more →
Dropoffs Through the Years
When I used to drop my son off for a half day of pre-school, he’d try every trick in the book — Dad, I need someone to push me on the swings! — to get me to stay just a few more minutes . . . Read more →
I Feel This Guy’s Pain
Misspellings are in the original document: I am not the most organised person in the world. I have a poor short-term memory, so I write things down. But because I have a poor short-term memory, I loose the paper. I tried to become more organised — I brought Getting Things Done. Then I lost it. I feel I might be more organised if I stop loosing my organisational aids. Read more →
Bush vs. Kerry
A photographic comparison Read more →
A Way of Life
Of course it is only a game, but somehow the Trojans, bursting out of that stadium tunnel, have come to stand for a way of life. The sight of those USC teams rolling across the Coliseum grass, dominating their opponents — and without a single penny of government aid that the UCLA’s and Oklahomas and Nebraskas depend on, damn it. All of it happened, year after year, because the school annually turned out a phalanx of new achievers, men who pulled themselves up by the bootstraps and went on to become the cream of their crops and the captains of their industries, men who started companies and expanded businesses that created jobs and took people off the welfare rolls, men who took care to plow back their superabundance into the institution that launched them, so that the Trojan tradition of independence and excellence would go on and on. Yes, the… Read more →
St. Patrick in Action
A little-known sketch of St. Patrick driving the snakes out of Ireland . . . Read more →
Love Hurts — So Does Frostbite
WINNIPEG, Manitoba — A Los Angeles man who sneaked into Canada in February to see his Internet girlfriend will be deported — minus all his fingers and some of his toes, the Winnipeg Sun newspaper reported Tuesday. Read more →
Homework Follies
“How did you multiply this times 2.5 and get this?” I ask. He looks at the problem for a while. “I multiplied it a different way,” he says. ME: Shouldn’t this answer be 41 instead of 71? HIM: No, Alex. ME: Why are you calling me Alex? HIM: What is “no”? He’s reading a word problem aloud: “Maggie was traveling with her family on the Oregon Trail. The first day, they traveled 11 miles, the second day they traveled 9 miles, and the third day they traveled 14 miles.” Pause. “Now that was a good story!” Read more →
Popstrology
See what song was #1 on your birth date and pretend it’s the theme song for your whole life! Makes as much sense as anything else! Mine is “To Know Him is to Love Him.” Here’s another idea: Go back nine months from your birth date and see what your parents might have been listening to when . . . you know . . . Read more →
Patrick Henry’s Crazy Wife in the Basement
My boy is doing a school report on Patrick Henry. Something I didn’t know about Patrick Henry is that his wife went insane in 1771 and was subsequently kept in a straitjacket in the basement of the family home. Read more →
Negative Milestones
I buy my first pair of reading glasses. My wife almost weeps when she sees them. “You’re getting old,” she says. Read more →
Ontological Tangents
I can’t figure out why it’s so hard to get my kid to take a shower every night. We ask him to take a shower, he leaves the room like he’s going to do it, but he doesn’t do it. Read more →
The Ephemeral Beauty of the World
Who shall blame him? Who will not secretly rejoice when the hero puts his armour off, and halts by the window and gazes at his wife and son, who, very distant at first, gradually come closer and closer, till lips and book and head are clearly before him, though still lovely and unfamiliar from the intensity of his isolation and the waste of ages and the perishing of the stars, and finally putting his pipe in his pocket and bending his magnificent head before her—who will blame him if he does homage to the beauty of the world? — Virginia Woolf, To the Lighthouse Read more →
Dark, Ironic Frost
My son was asked to memorize “The Road Not Taken” by Robert Frost for a 6th grade assignment: Read more →
Worst Day of the Year
A British psychologist has devised a mathematical formula for computing the most depressing day of the year: Read more →
My Next Career
Somehow at dinner the subject of moving to Texas comes up . . . not a discussion so much as a stream of consciousness monologue by my wife, who has relatives in Texas, and it’s much cheaper to live there than it is here, and so on. “But what would you do for a job?” she asks me. Read more →
Word of the Day
Dopeler effect n : The tendency of stupid ideas to seem smarter when they come at you rapidly. Read more →
Parental Guidance
I talked my 11-year-old son and his friend into seeing House of Flying Daggers instead of Meet the Fockers. The title alone — Meet the Fockers — is a tipoff to the level of wit that you’re going to be dealing with. Fockers! Get it? It sounds like a naughty word! HA HA HA HA! Geez, make an effort, will ya? How about House of the Flying Fockers? You meet the Fockers and throw daggers at them. That sounds like a good movie! Read more →
Structured Procrastination
I have been intending to write this essay for months. Why am I finally doing it? Because I finally found some uncommitted time? Wrong. I have papers to grade, textbook orders to fill out, an NSF proposal to referee, dissertation drafts to read. I am working on this essay as a way of not doing all of those things. This is the essence of what I call structured procrastination, an amazing strategy I have discovered that converts procrastinators into effective human beings, respected and admired for all that they can accomplish and the good use they make of time. — John Perry Read more →