The Archives

This week’s helpful tip for nicknaming your friends and co-workers
01.27.03 | Permalink | 8 Comments

Coming up with snappy nicknames that pin your cubicle comrades to the corkboard like the bugs that they are can be challenging even for the best of us. The point isn’t that the nicknames stick but that they hurt just enough to be short of causing harm—like a carpet burn. To help you out, here’s […]
Irony this
01.27.03 | Permalink | 1 Comment

There’s been some controversy the last half dozen years about what irony is and what irony isn’t. One one side we have AP English teachers preaching the good news of literary orthodoxy. Then there’s lived, experienced irony that doesn’t have the courtesy to confine itself to the stage and novel. The key proponent of lifestyle […]
America has gone mad. Europe is for wussies.
01.26.03 | Permalink | Comments Off on America has gone mad. Europe is for wussies.

And there you have it. Europeans think the US has become a nation reckless cowboys, and America has long been convinced that Europe is populated with snail-snacking wimps. What’s a girl to do?
I’d like to teach the world to sing. . .
01.25.03 | Permalink | Comments Off on I’d like to teach the world to sing. . .

The reason to begin talking about possible forms of global governance is we’re already drifting toward global governance. Model number one is Global Corporate Feudalism. In this scenario, the power of multinational corporations outpaces the power of nation-states (even the US) and international treaty organizations (like the UN or IMF). Many smaller states would bercome […]
Gollum, gollum: The effect of small cruelties on those in moral transition
01.23.03 | Permalink | Comments Off on Gollum, gollum: The effect of small cruelties on those in moral transition

Twisted and misshaped by centuries of attachment to the all-powerful One Ring, the creature Gollum finds his way on screen for the first time in Peter Jackson’s adaptation of J.R.R. Tolkein’s The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers. Played as an eighty-year-old heroine addict by the critically lauded Andy Serkis, the computer-generated Gollum follows (and later leads) the hobbit Frodo and his servant Sam on their quest to carry the One Ring to its destruction inside the evil realm of Mordor.
Post-9/11 guidelines for the safe deployment of irony
01.22.03 | Permalink | Comments Off on Post-9/11 guidelines for the safe deployment of irony

I know. It’s old. But in the interests of public safety, here are the rules. Be safe out there.