The Last Patrician
A comment on the life and times of George H.W. Bush, after a day of eulogies: It seems proper, here in the chaos of the Trump Era, to feel a certain nostalgia over the passing of a man so closely identified with the Old Establishment values of discipline, restraint,...
One true thing about writing fiction
Back in 2013, after converting one long book into two shorter sci-fi fantasy novels, knocking out a voodoo potboiler and entertaining myself with a silly romp called “Another Goddamn Novel About The Collapsing Quantum Multiverse,” my most recent Bataan...
One hundred and thirty-eight days
The first skirmish in the “President Puts Kids in Cages and Lies About It” scandal ended yesterday with a tactical retreat by the White House and little else. More than 2,000 immigrant children are still in cages. Trump’s executive order just sets up...
In all but narrowest sense, Trump is the target
Part of the game we’re all playing right now (and let’s be clear: Our role in the game is “public opinion,” which means what we believe is insignificant except in the aggregate) is “Who are the targets of the Mueller Investigation?”...
U.S. soccer’s future is expansion, not World Cups
Beau Dure, a Virginia sportswriter, has a column in The Guardian this morning (Why the US men will never win a World Cup — and that’s OK). It’s an entirely acceptable restatement of the current consensus among American soccer writers, a relatively...
Muddling through decline, happily
Today’s long but thought-provoking read is Dylan Matthews’ “The myth of an ending: why even removing Trump from office won’t save American democracy/It feels like this moment in history deserves a definitive ending. It won’t get one,” at Vox....
2018 Black Sheep Manor ag plan
For those of you keeping score at home, here’s the run-down on the current state of the 2018 BSM food-raising plan. BACKGROUND In 2016, we cleared an overgrown, eroded field that I calculate at about 0.30 of an acre. We made a vegetable garden on about 2k square...
The Republic is doomed. Here’s why.
While searching today for the answer to a relatively simple question (“After three-fifths of the Senate votes for cloture, can the bill itself pass on a simple majority of those present during the vote?”) I was reminded of what should be the most obvious...
Blaming the Dreamers: How we reached shutdown
I participated in a thread this morning that reminded me how little I actually knew about how we got to this shutdown impasse, which is generally being described in the press as being about an Obama-era policy called DACA. Fox News is tending to frame the impasse in...
Thrown overboard into a cold, dark sea
In 1620, an indentured servant named John Howland climbed the rigging aboard a ship called the Mayflower in the middle of a storm and was violently thrown overboard. As the 28-year-old plunged toward certain death, his hand touched a rope that had come loose from the...
Dan Conover
Howdy
Howdy! This is my current blog,