Houston Astros icon J.R. Richard, whose career was cut short by stroke in 1980, dies at age 71 — espn.com We had a couple of catchers, one came with his arm in a sling and another came on crutches. There was something called J.R.-itis which was an incurable disease when you’re scared of J.R. Richard. It was like J.R. was only throwing from about 50 feet. With his reach and he was all legs, you didn’t have much time to make up your mind. … You didn’t really feel comfortable at the plate. He was the toughest guy I ever faced. — Dusty Baker Read more →
Author Archive: Paul Epps
Another Reason I’m Not a Christian
One of my nieces had a seizure, was taken to the hospital and diagnosed with a brain tumor. The last report I heard was that one doctor thought the situation was very dire, while another thought since she had no history of seizures, the prognosis was not so bad. We don’t know yet. This woman is a good person, religious person, faithful churchgoer . . . why do things like this happen if the world was created by a good, omnipotent God? As a purification for sin? In that case, why am I not the one getting a brain tumor? I haven’t been to a church in decades. It’s another reason I’m not able to believe in God. You have to spend too much time finding excuses for pain and misery in this suffering world. Read more →
Sometimes our fate resembles a fruit tree in winter. Who would think that those branches would turn green again and blossom, but we hope it, we know it. — Goethe
Will $5 Billion Solve LA Homelessness?
Rep. Lieu seeks to fight homelessness with a $5 billion federal program — smdp.com Rep. Lieu is Ted Lieu, who represents California’s 33rd District, encompassing the coastal areas of Los Angeles from Palos Verdes through Malibu, including Santa Monica, where I currently live. Who’s going to pony up the $5 billion, Ted? You, or you’re going to stick it to the taxpayers? The bill would authorize $1 billion in grants annually for five years for local governments to spend on supportive housing models with comprehensive services and intensive case management. Are there examples of this kind of plan actually working somewhere? Because I can give you examples of plans that don’t work right here in your district. There isn’t a Republican elected official for 100 miles. The LA mayor is a Democrat, every member of the city council is a Democrat, any proposal they want to implement, there’s no one… Read more →
A society that puts equality before freedom will get neither. A society that puts freedom before equality will get a high degree of both. -– Milton Friedman
Sad, Tumultuous Middle-Age Years
Divorce, abandonment, the unacceptable and the unattainable, ennui filled with action, sad. tumultuous middle-age years shaken by crashings, uprootings, coups, desperate renewals. — Elizabeth Hardwick, Sleepless Nights Read more →
That Is the Way to Get Attention
Divorces and separation — that is the way to get attention. Everyone examines his own state and some say: Strange, they were much happier than we are. There are streets in the East 90’s where youngish couples on the wave of success buy town houses and do them over at great expense, uncovering old wood, taking off the stoop so that drunks cannot loiter, making a whole floor for the children to be quiet on. The strain and the cost and the house, a mausoleum with both names on it waiting for the dates to be filled in, drives the couple to separation. The streets are called Death Row. — Elizabeth Hardwick, Sleepless Nights Read more →
The 5 Strengths
The 5 strengths are: strong determination, familiarization, the positive seed, reproach, and aspiration. How you conduct yourself is important. When you are dying practice the 5 strengths. Read more →
Bye Bye Berkeley
UC Berkeley’s Kroeber Hall was stripped of its name earlier this year because the building’s namesake — Alfred Louis Kroeber, born in 1876 and the founder of the study of anthropology in the American West — is a powerful symbol that continues to evoke exclusion and erasure for Native Americans. I hope I’m not being too cynical when I say that I don’t believe there are more than a handful of Native Americans in the country who could actually say anything of substance about Kroeber. I’d never heard of him myself. Granted I’m not a Native American or an anthropologist, but I’m well-informed. It turns out Kroeber was quite an accomplished scholar, a pioneer of American anthropology, author of more than 500 publications, a co-founder and president of the American Anthropological Association, presided over the American Folklore Society and founded the Linguistic Society of America. Among the key reasons highlighted… Read more →
Caveat Lector (Pinned)
This is not a blog. It’s a website populated by fictional characters, whose writing should not be taken as expressing the opinion of any real person, company or organization. It’s a work of entertainment. If you’re not entertained, read something else. Even when the author of a post is a real person, fact and fiction are intermingled, and are not always clearly labeled, so don’t spend a lot of time trying to figure it out. Read more →
Well first of all, tell me: Is there some society you know that doesn’t run on greed? You think Russia doesn’t run on greed? You think China doesn’t run on greed? What is greed? Of course, none of us are greedy, it’s only the other fellow who’s greedy. — Milton Friedman
Following the Science on D*ck Pics
Recently, mounting anecdotal reports – mostly by heterosexual women on Internet-based dating platforms – have drawn attention to the frequency of men sending unsolicited photos of their own genitals (i.e., “dick pics”). In a U.S. sample of 2,045 women of all sexual identities and 298 gay/bisexual men, among those who had ever received a “dick pic,” nearly all (91%) had also received an unsolicited “dick pic.” Women had a predominantly negative reaction to unsolicited dick pics — about 70 percent negative — but the math on that tells us that for every three dick pics you send out, you’re likely to get at least one positive reaction. I’m not making any recommendations on what you should or should not do, but that’s science, folks, and everybody knows by know that you’ve got to follow the science. A couple of other findings from the study: older women responded more positively to… Read more →
Hiding the Facts from Readers Is the Opposite of a Journalist’s Job
From the National Review: As you may have heard [I actually didn’t hear, for reasons that will soon become clear], on Friday night there was a mass shooting in Austin, Texas, in the Sixth Street entertainment district. Fourteen people were shot; as of this writing, one has died. This apparently wasn’t one of those loser-shoots-up-his-school mass shootings, but one of the more common shootings involving “some kind of disturbance between two parties,” as the police put it. So the shooter didn’t kill himself or wait around for the police and force them into shooting him. He fled, and the police, naturally, put out a description of him. The Austin American-Statesman, the local daily, refused to publish that description. Instead, it put this editor’s note at the end of its report: Editor’s note: Police have only released a vague description of the suspected shooter as of Saturday morning. The American-Statesman is… Read more →
But at times I wondered if I had not come a long way only to find that what I really sought was something I had left behind. — Jon Krakauer, Into Thin Air
EppsNet Book Reviews: Wittgenstein’s Mistress by David Markson
This book is terrible. It’s pretty well known and has a good reputation among fans of “experimental fiction” but it’s terrible. It’s so bad that there should be a law under which the author could be arrested and charged with subjecting readers to the endless meanderings of a mediocre mind. The book could be read aloud to terrorists as a torture device. I couldn’t come close to getting all the way through it and I hurled it into the garbage. Ironically, I found that I bought two copies of the book, I don’t know how. Maybe I bought one a while ago, forgot about it, and bought another one. Maybe I bought one online and one at a bookstore. So actually I threw both copies in the garbage. One star is a generous rating but it does take time and effort to write a book, even a bad one, and… Read more →
Athlete, Humanitarian, Champion
I’ve got a box of Wheaties that pays tribute to Muhammad Ali as an athlete, humanitarian and champion. I feel like those are the three words that best describe my own life: Athlete. Humanitarian. Champion. Except for the “athlete” part. And probably you could take out “humanitarian” because I don’t like people all that much. But “champion”? Definitely! Read more →
Bravery 2021
Bravery (1944): “Almighty God: Our sons, pride of our Nation, this day have set upon a mighty endeavor, a struggle to preserve our Republic, our religion, and our civilization, and to set free a suffering humanity … let our hearts be stout, to wait out the long travail, to bear sorrows that may come, to impart our courage unto our sons wheresoever they may be.” — FDR, June 6, 1944 Bravery (2021): “To transgender Americans across the country — especially the young people who are so brave — I want you to know your President has your back.” — Joe Biden Biden had nothing to say regarding the June 6 anniversary of D-Day. Read more →
Why People Are So Messed Up
When I was a kid, I had a cousin Kathy, who liked to eat meals one item at a time. For example, if she had what I had last night, which was salmon, spinach and brown rice, she’d eat all of the salmon, then all of the spinach, then all of the rice. Not necessarily in that order but you get the idea. Some adults in our family would get mad that she ate meals that way and would yell at her to stop doing it. Like, what difference could it possibly make to anyone in what order she eats portions of food? Mind your own goddamn business. Bad parenting is probably my hottest of hot buttons. Or as Philip Larkin used to say: They fuck you up, your mum and dad. They may not mean to, but they do. They fill you with the faults they had And add… Read more →
What’s the Frequency, Kenneth?
My son is visiting . . . we’re in a different place than the last time he visited so he asks, “What’s the wifi?” “PrettyFlyForAWifi,” I reply. “What is this, 2002?” “Don’t use it if you don’t want to.” Read more →