people

We Did This

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When I was a young boy, whenever I went to a public library, I would always search for books on two subjects: Nazis, and nuclear weapons. I think this was because the biggest myths of my young life were told by Steven Spielberg. Reading about the realities of those two ideas: German fascism – its roots in Enlightenment philosophies, populist politics and art – and the successful construction of a machine so powerful it could incinerate an entire city, and destroy the planet, those seemed like the most important things to […]

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people

Harris Wittels Thought I Was Lame As Hell

Fancy Pants 2002
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  I barely knew him.  He was a rockstar and still super nice.  He was huge from the get-go for all the right reasons.  I was in the audience at the Cabaret at Emerson when Fancy Pants debuted.  I still remember a sketch (from their second show?) about going to work inside a living bear as the funniest fucking thing…     Please remember this is 2003 and they are like 11 years old.  This is before everything this reminds you of. They were a million times funnier and more original than the other comedy […]

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people

R.I.P. The Last Revolutionary Hero

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‘Out of the night that covers me, Black as the pit from pole to pole, I thank whatever gods may be For my unconquerable soul. In the fell clutch of circumstance I have not winced nor cried aloud. Under the bludgeonings of chance My head is bloody, but unbowed. Beyond this place of wrath and tears Looms but the Horror of the shade, And yet the menace of the years Finds and shall find me unafraid. It matters not how strait the gate, How charged with punishments the scroll, I […]

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people

Jason Rohrer Thinks Rape Jokes Are Hilarious

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“WAAHHH WAAHHHH!!! I’m a big cry baby and I need daddy to save me from the razor-sharp wit of an absolute genius!” This is what Jason Rohrer will read in this post, but I imagine everyone else will feel otherwise.  This is because in a brief twitter exchange between myself and Jason today, he managed to turn a perfectly civil discourse on casually offensive comedy, and the strategy of contacting advertisers to combat it, into a personal attack.  I figured I’d put my money where my mouth is and let Daddy know […]

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atheism

Tearing Down the House

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Imagine that you owned a house, and you discovered what might be a serious problem with its construction.  This is a problem that you yourself are not qualified to deal with – let’s say that it’s some combination of engineering and local construction code which only someone with intense training and experience could competently solve.  You call a contractor, or an engineer, someone who professes and certifies their expertise in exactly this sort of matter.  You pay this person to inspect the damage and give their honest opinion, and recommend […]

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los angeles

#OccupyLA: Eviction and the Detention of Tyson Heder

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  I drove myself down to City Hall on Tuesday night to take part in what would probably be the most important political event in our city for a long time.  I live tweeted as much as I could – right up until my Android phone ran out of batteries.  For those of you who thought I may have been arrested or hurt – do not fret.  Yours truly stayed well out of the way of both protesters and the police, I didn’t even yell and scream.  I just wanted […]

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atheism

It’s a Theory That’s Out There

It's a Theory that's Out There
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In an op-ed in the ‘On Faith’ section of WaPo, Richard Dawkins lays into Rick Perry and every other politician who uses their ignorance of facts as a tool to court the scared and uneducated Republican base. Except that a politician’s attitude to evolution, however peripheral it might seem, is a surprisingly apposite litmus test of more general inadequacy. This is because unlike, say, string theory where scientific opinion is genuinely divided, there is about the fact of evolution no doubt at all. Evolution is a fact, as securely established as […]

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