Bookstores as Literary Outposts in the Digital Age

Last updated on: August 13, 2014 at 1:31 pm By Paul Fidalgo

Virginia Postrel at Bloomberg has an idea for saving bookstores like Barnes and Noble in the digital era: Separate the discovery and atmospheric value of bookstores from the book-warehousing function. Make them smaller, with the inventory limited to curated examination copies — one copy per title. (Publishers should be willing to supply such copies free, just as they do for potential reviewers.) Charge for daily, monthly or annual memberships that entitle customers to hang out, browse the shelves, buy snacks... Read more

Toad Pays its Dues

Last updated on: August 13, 2014 at 1:31 pm By Paul Fidalgo

Toad the Wet Sprocket is back together, much to my delight, and about to release a new record, which last happened during the first year of Clinton’s second term. I’ve been following frontman Glen Phillips’ career since then, watching as he’s had to reestablish himself as a viable performer and recording artist with little name recognition outside the Toad fan base. In this interview with New Times Broward-Palm Beach, he describes a realization of what it actually takes to be... Read more

On the Occasion of My Little Girl Turning One

Last updated on: August 13, 2014 at 1:31 pm By Paul Fidalgo

“I’m the nicest guy I know, and I’m an asshole!” This is my standard line to describe my anxiety about being the father of a baby girl. Here’s another way to put it: A friend of mine related this line to me, but I don’t know the original source. “When you have a boy, you only have to worry about one dick. When you have a girl, you have to worry about all of them.” I was delighted when we... Read more

Gerson Shows a Heart

Last updated on: August 13, 2014 at 1:31 pm By Paul Fidalgo

Michael Gerson, though I have accused him of having a lizard brain and doing the Douthat Twist, shows a heart with ambition, calling for a great national project to lift up African American young men: If the reelection of President Obama is to mark a new era of liberal governance, let’s at least have some causes worthy of the liberal moral impulse. The one advantage of a social challenge on this scale is that it offers broad opportunities for creative... Read more

A Song I Wrote Was Gonna Be in a Movie But Now It’s Not So You Can Hear It Now I Guess

Last updated on: August 13, 2014 at 1:31 pm By Paul Fidalgo

Earlier this year, I was asked if one of my original songs, “Selfless,” could be used in a film being produced that a friend of mine is involved in. I was delighted, and I recorded a fresh version that I thought sounded a little stronger than the 2004 original. Then a few weeks ago I was told they decided that actually they weren’t going to use it. That kind of sucked. But it also means that I can now post... Read more

They’re On Their Way to Get Loki

Last updated on: August 13, 2014 at 1:31 pm By Paul Fidalgo

For Winter, Respect. For Summer, Contempt.

Last updated on: August 13, 2014 at 1:31 pm By Paul Fidalgo

It is summer, which is a bad thing, I await the change of seasons, but things are not as simple as they once were. There was a time when winter didn’t bother me in the least. Not only am I an introvert, and therefore already inclined to spend my time indoors, and therefore unhampered by the inability to engage in outdoor activities, but I also have a powerful aversion to heat and humidity. This aversion is related to my distaste... Read more

Threats, Trade-offs, and a Tinderbox

Last updated on: August 13, 2014 at 1:31 pm By Paul Fidalgo

Pratap Bhanu Mehta at the Financial Times compares American perceptions of threat and the liberty-security balance, which leads me to contemplate an unpleasant state of affairs coming our way. Mehta says: How do societies draw the line on what constitutes an acceptable trade-off? The American debate is peculiar because the standards seem perversely different in different contexts. By all accounts, gun violence kills upwards of 20,000 people a year in the US – yet the trade-off between security and the... Read more

The Enemies of All Mankind

Last updated on: August 13, 2014 at 1:31 pm By Paul Fidalgo

I am no libertarian. I find them, frankly, scary in their bizarre faith in markets and contracts to keep civilization from eating itself alive. And very often, libertarianism is used as a thin veil to disguise things like institutionalized racism. Which is why this post from Jason Kuznicki at the Libertarian Party’s blog was so goddamned refreshing, at least on one important issue; the libertarian view of the Confederacy, declaring, “Any affinity for the Confederacy marks one very clearly as... Read more

A Website You Can Talk Over: Assigning Responsibility for a Meaningful Blog

Last updated on: August 13, 2014 at 1:31 pm By Paul Fidalgo

What do I want this blog to be? Perhaps using that very word, blog, assumes too much, imposing a definition. What to I want this website to be? A little while back, I posited that perhaps the essay as a format was something that more bloggers ought to rely on, as opposed to, say, the hasty, knee-jerk missive. The reason, essentially, was to lessen the noise, the pointless butting of heads and scoring of points. To encourage more thinking and... Read more