Okay, let me see if I can frame this in a way that it sounds coherent. I am working out the characters–and eventually the plot–in a new Gregor Demarkian.  This is not the Demarkian that will come out next year, which has already been written, but the one for the year after that. This new…

Yesterday, I had one of those days that explains a lot about why I do what I do in my spare time. This term I have had, in one of my courses, a student we’ll call X.  X is very bright, but she’s also very belligerent.  If you’ve never worked with the kind of student…

Before I start in on this here, I’d like to point out that I was not advocating in favor of “progressive” government policies in my last post–I was just pointing out the obvious, which is that the way to GET such policies is for the people (Wall Street, the insurance companies, etc) whose ox would…

Seveal years ago–it might have been all the way back in the Clinton administration, I don’t remember–Reason magazine ran an article about the health insurance mess that amounted to one long exasperated scream. Faced with an increasingly hostile political climate and a populace increasingly convinced that they were nothing but lying, deceitful dirtbags–the insurance companies…

Okay, so here’s the thing.  I’m about to have a very odd week-end. First, you have to understand one of the n icer peculiarities of my life.  People send me books.  Fans send me books.  Students and former students bring me books.  And people in the business pack up and ship out whatever they think…

So, I’ve been thinking about Cheryl’s post. And I do think it is true that, these days, a number of Western cultures have started to think as she indicated–to assume that there is not, and should not be, a common culture that everybody ought to be part of. But I don’t think that that’s true…

Late in the day. First, I think there’s a misperception that I’m bashing libraries–I’m not.  I know something about the constraints on how libraries operate these days. My question is this–when did we, as a society, decide that libraries had to run this way? I’m fairly sure that, back in the dim Fifties, nobody at…

So the comments yesterday brought up some interesting points, the most interesting of which was Jem’s mention of  a basic list of books that all libraries had to have, a list that no longer binds libraries on any level. I’d never heard of such a list, but it doesn’t surprise me that there was one. …

It’s not Sunday, of course, it’s Monday, but it’s a national holiday, so I’ve put a CD on, and in honor of it being only the second time I’ve had to put on the heat since last April, I’m listening to actual Hildegarde, as well as things Hildegarde herself probably heard–Anonymous 4’s O Yoolis Night…

So, okay, I’m usually pretty good at keeping up with the news. In fact, I’m usually something of a cable news junkie, the kind of personwho has to see all three twenty-four-hour-channel reports of any situation, and then the commentary shows on the same situation, just because…just because. Never mind.  There isn’t a because.  This…