Author: mongreldogs
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Another disturbing slip
On 2008 May 22, John McCain attacked his presumed opponent Barack Obama (and of course, that’s just politics, so it’s fine), saying But I am running for the office of Commander-in-Chief. Here’s the problem. McCain is wrong. He’s not running for the office of Commander-in-Chief. In case it’s slipped his mind, he’s running for the…
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Thespiatic
Wow. It’s been a long time since I’ve written anything. Someday soon I’ll document what a blur my April and May have been, as explanation if not excuse. Meanwhile, let me share my tiny contribution to the recent play The Peter Pan Project, conceived as a community-written work. The prompt was, “Describe the moment you…
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The decline of American political reporting
As always, let me begin by stating I am an Obama supporter, so I’m a mite sensitive on the following. But it shocked me this morning to hear NPR’s coverage of the “debate” last night. We’ll leave aside the astonishing fact — which they tried to explain away — that forty minutes (nearly half the…
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Bitter taste
{Minor edits for grammar.} For full disclosure, I am an Obama supporter, I feel he is the best candidate both in terms of electability and in terms of actual ability to do the job. I’ve watched his campaign with interest and rising enthusiasm. All of that said, I think people have to recognize that his…
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Star Wars at 31
Apparently Spike TV is running all of the Star Wars movies as a “mega saga event” over the course of the next weekend. I happened to come across their “ultimate trailer” online, which stitches together bits from all six movies. And strung together like that, all those bits suddenly make clear what’s gone so horribly…
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Lunacon 51 (2)
Lunacon 51 (2) Some thoughts on my second con (should that be “sec-con”?), jotted down at midnight, though they’ll be posted much later. The first panel I intended to attend was “Yesterday’s Tomorrows”, a documentary on the failed vision of futurists from the 1930s through 1960s. Due to the weird layout and unpredictable spacetime anomalies…
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Lunacon 51 (1)
Well, here I sit in the Hilton Rye Town waiting for Lunacon to get started. If you are paying more attention to this blog than you should be, you’ll recall that I attended Lunacon 50 last year as well. This year I managed to reserve early, so I am staying at the correct hotel and…
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Why We Fight
Every once in a while, someone comes along and says something that makes you wish you had said it first. For me, it’s often Keith Olberman. In this clip, he calls out President Bush and names him for what he is. Let’s hope it’s like we read in those fantasy novels — that naming someone…
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Review: His Dark Materials
His Dark Materials: The Golden Compass The Subtle Knife The Amber Spyglass a triology by Philip Pullman InstaRating: 4 out of 5 This trilogy has apparently sparked quite the bitter controversy, especially online. It’s a tale of High Fantasy, quite consciously in the vein of Tolkein or C.S. Lewis, but it takes a tack quite…
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Civics Lesson
I’m sure that this is going get me marked as a rabid Obama supporter (which I am not). But I can’t help but gush over his impressive response on the issue of church and state. In an interview with BeliefNet, he was asked, “You wrote in The Audacity of Hope about the role that faith…