Never forget

By Dan Brooks in American History 2 Comments

Not long ago, a symbol of American freedom fell under vicious attack from an enemy who knows neither compassion nor hope. It was a day that we will never forget, and it signaled a new frontier in the struggle of this great nation. Of course I am referring to yesterday’s GoDaddy outage, which took down 53 million websites including this one. After literally threes of you contacted me about it, I spent literally minutes trying to figure out what was going on. It turns out that a series of freedom-hating routers sent bad table information that clogged the GoDaddy servers with electrons or something. It was not some douche from Anonymous, although everybody went ahead and reported that anyway.

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Mitt Romney submits maybe impossible tax plan

By Dan Brooks in Republican Candidates 0 Comment

Every night at 10:30, “Everybody Loves Raymond.” I tell him it’s stupid, but no, we have to connect with ordinary—he’s behind me, isn’t he?

Can you really say that you’re better off than you were four years ago? Don’t think about exactly four years ago, when the economy collapsed and we were still deciding whether Barack Obama or John McCain would be our next president. Obviously you’re better off than you were right then. But think about five years ago, before the crash and subsequent gradual improvement, and ask again: are you better off than you were four years ago? Because if you aren’t, Mitt Romney would like to point out that he has not been president during that time at all.

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Friday links! Bracing discoveries edition

By Dan Brooks in Uncategorized 1 Comment

You will understand soon enough.

Depending on your attitude toward philosophical idealism, pretty much everything that can be known is out there, waiting to be discovered. Like the word “discovery,” knowledge has little meaning apart from a human subjet to know it, but knowledge as object—the location of your old apartment keys, what went wrong with Amelia Earhart’s plane, the mass of an undiscovered planet—is out there, waiting to be figured. Today is Friday, and the weekend, defined by possibility and inactivity, is upon us. Who knows what the future will reveal? I’m still trying to catch up with the past. Won’t you look back forward with me?

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Amazon product reviews: skeleton stands

By Dan Brooks in consumerism 4 Comments

Poor Mr. Thrifty

I write this while standing up, because I am a weirdo. In my ongoing, possibly insane quest to fix my rickety body before I get too old, I have constructed a standing desk. It is not a work of great craftsmanship, but it delights me. I have come to suspect that human hamstrings were not designed for eight hours of boneward pressure each day. Standing work makes me very happy, although my standing desk does not, and so I set out to find some new means of raising my laptop to eye level. What holds things at eye level? I asked myself. That is how I lost several hours reading Amazon reviews of stands for model skeletons.

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Killin’ it!

By Dan Brooks in representative democracy 2 Comments

Michelle Obama’s speech was almost exactly twice as good as Mitt Romney’s, at least according to Twitter. It’s possible that points to a difference in the media habits of people who watch the DNC and the RNC, respectively, but I’m going to say it’s because she was twice as good. Lots of people agree with me, even if Charles Krauthammer issued a formal bah, humbug. “And the brilliance of it is this,” he said: “It drained Obama of any, either, ideological motivation, or any having to do with self-interest or ambition, which I think is sort of a more plausible explanation.” You saw through it, Krauthammer: the president is ambitious.

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