I am scrupulous

in following walk lights, crosswalks, and other traffic laws, so that, if I’m ever run over and killed, I will have full and just right to complain.

A Life Examined

People are offended by universal truths pithily expressed.

If you doubt this, try adding “if you like that kind of thing” to any compliment and observe the effect. For example, “That is a pleasing blouse, if you like that kind of thing.” Or, “I thought your new story was lovely, if you like that kind of thing.”
It’s obviously true that only people whose taste inclines them to like a kind of thing will like an example of that thing. And yet try slipping awareness of that fact into conversation and you will soon find yourself an outcast.

A Life Examined

I’m just grateful these days

to have socks that stay up.

A Life Examined

I’ve turned incoherence into an art.

A Life Examined

Parents Use Big Data to Engage More Meaningfully with Children

Arthur Igwana loves his kids, but he says his many work commitments make it difficult to spend as much time with them as he would like. So last Christmas, his wife’s gift to him was a yearlong contract with Perennial Systems Integration, a data mining company that services businesses such as Microsoft, General Motors, and Walmart to enhance their customer interactions.

Correctives

Put Skin in the Game for Better Scandals: Fiction Writers for Better Misinformation Proposal #433

In our opinion, the whole apparatus of of scandal-seeking is beneficial when there is genuine miscreancy and harmful when it’s all a confection of palaver and false umbrage. The key is to separate true scandals from false.

The Cynic's Notebook

Manichaeism is alive and well in the world today.

When you hit a red light, you believe in the malevolent will behind creation. When a light turns green, as if just for you, then you believe in the good god. Our altars are those obelisk-shaped traffic signals.

A Life Examined

One key to a happy marriage

is to choose the right times to be stupid.

A Life Examined

Every parent of an infant or toddler knows

that sometimes you don’t get to sit down and eat because you’re so busy getting food for the kids. And, of course, kids spill a lot. So, after dinner you find yourself, still hungry, on hands and knees under the table fighting with the dog over the scraps.

A Life Examined

The hatred of the cyclist for the slow pedestrian

is equaled only by the hatred of the motorist for the slow cyclist.

A Life Examined

A Ritual of Destruction Hidden in the Everyday

We have recently had occasion to observe a ritual that is rampant across the United States. It is one that, in our opinion, speaks to deep fissures in the civilized psyche, but it is seldom recognized or understood for what it really is.

Frontiers of Knowledge

Research Brief: Terrorist Acts Create Safety

A sociology professor at Upland Downs University has published a working paper arguing that terrorism saves lives. Gerald Singhe, the researcher in question, compared cities that experienced a significant terror attack with demographically similar municipalities that didn’t. He found lower murder rates, traffic deaths, and suicides in the cities that experienced terror in the year following an attack.