That’s a new acronym, invented by me. It means, “Oh, for God’s Sake.” I invented this acronym specifically for an article posted on FB yesterday by several of the people on my FB friends list.  You can find it here http://davidbrin.blogspot.com/2013/09/bringing-back-feudalism-is.html And I’ll get to it in a moment. First, however, I’d like to formulate…

I know I make a lot of fun here about the silly trivialities of our local news, and I have every right to do that, because mostly our local news is about silly trivialities. This is not necessarily a bad thing.  There is something very comforting about living in a place where the stuff people…

But before I get specific about that–you guys do realize that Mique is talking about Australia, which may have different water issues than the US? The short answer to Mike F is that I did not say I did not want any advice at all, I said I didn’t want any advice from Michelle Obama.…

So, in case you’re wondering, I’m here at office h0urs.  It’s Friday, and almost nobody is even in the building, never mind in this room looking to talk to me.  I’ve done my Blackboard update.  I’ve corrected all the papers I can correct.  I’ve played a PopCap game because, you know, eventually this gets boring …

I’ve been sitting here over the last week basically tearing my hair out and having a cold.  I’ll admit, if this is my traditional start of term catch something from students, it’s very mild, and I’ll take it. My book still isn’t finished, although it’s preceding better than it was, and I’ve got a stack…

After considering the whole situation from every angle I could think of, I decided it was about time to take a couple of days off. This does not make me very happy. There is a deadline involved here, and it’s getting very, very close.  But writing huge swaths of stuff and tossing it at the…

It’s quarter after six on a Tuesday morning, and as the day and time will attest, I’ve just had a REALLY bad day at work.  I don’t know what it is about this book, but writing it has been one of the greatest struggles of my life. Some of that can be put down to…

Okay. The real post for today is the one just below this one, where the August reading list is. But I just couldn’t pass up linking to this http://www.slate.com/articles/double_x/doublex/2013/08/private_school_vs_public_school_only_bad_people_send_their_kids_to_private.html

It’s the first of September, so I owe the blog this, and the comments on this. This was August–and yes, I know, I haven’t gotten around to the Aquinas commentary yet. The list:  48) Gertrude Himmelfarb. The Demoralization of Society: From Victorian Virtues to Modern Values. (rr)  49) Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle. Inferno. 50)…

I spent a great deal of time and trouble this summer trying to make sure I would have my book done before classes started up for fall term.   That worked out in the way in which that kind of thing always worked out.  Not only was I not finished by the end of the term,…