I Hate Mitt Romney. Mitt Romney for President!

Last updated on: September 16, 2011 at 4:00 am By Paul Fidalgo

I don’t think those of us in the reality-based community are sufficiently panicked about the prospect of a Rick Perry presidency. First, it’s foolish to think that Barack Obama has this election in the bag no matter who the GOP nominates. Second, Rick Perry is running away with this primary right now, besting Romney by double digits in most national and state polls. Third and most importantly, he’s just the right combination of dumb, ruthless, and insane to be formidable, electable, and... Read more

This Isn’t the William Shirer You’re Looking For: Thoughts on Steve Wick’s “The Long Night”

Last updated on: September 12, 2011 at 4:00 am By Paul Fidalgo

Readers of this blog may already be aware of my deep affection for the thousand-plus-page tome The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, journalist William Shirer’s invaluable 1960 history of Hitler and his Germany. It was with great delight, then, that I was made aware of a history of that history, Steve Wick’s The Long Night, telling the story of Shirer’s years covering the tumult in Europe, mostly from the eye of the storm itself, Berlin. Though I feel... Read more

Listening to 9/11: My Experience of the Attacks from Brooklyn

Last updated on: September 11, 2011 at 4:00 am By Paul Fidalgo

In September of 2011, I had just decided not to go back to school. I had been agonizing over whether to return to the Actors Studio Drama School (then at the New School University) for my second year of training toward a master’s degree in acting. I had just moved from Edgewater, NJ to Brighton Beach in Brooklyn (about 45 minutes by subway from Midtown), and for a couple of weeks since this fateful decision, I had been hitting the pavement, searching for... Read more

What Obama’s Bad National Numbers Definitely Don’t Tell Us

Last updated on: September 6, 2011 at 4:00 am By Paul Fidalgo

A “Blue Wall.” A new poll today has some grim numbers for the president. Though it shows him besting Perry and Romney in head-to-head match-ups, it’s well within the margin of error, and his numbers for job approval, whether the country is on the right track, and in a head-to-head against a generic Republican are rather discouraging. That said, his general election percentages are causing a bit of exaggerated analysis. At NBC news, for example, Mark Murray is quoted as saying that... Read more

Save Science by Not Talking about Science, Ctd.

Last updated on: September 5, 2011 at 4:00 am By Paul Fidalgo

Side note: My dad actually bought me this shirt. I love it, and my wife hates it when I wear it. She just thinks it makes me look stupid. I don’t think she cares about the rabbit. John Timmer at Ars Technica places a plague o’ both your houses when it comes to the convenient rejection of scientific fact. And he’s right. For many in the US, expertise has taken on a negative cultural value; experts are part of an... Read more

Save Science By Not Talking about Science

Last updated on: August 30, 2011 at 4:00 am By Paul Fidalgo

”At last! I have discovered the formula for making the uneducated feel even MORE inadequate!” I almost wasn’t going to read the recent Paul Krugman column on the proud anti-science stance of mainstream Republican thought. You know, “this also just in: Fire is hot.” But it got so much attention in my social media circles, that I decided to read it anyway, and I’m glad I did, if only for the closing paragraph: Now, we don’t know who will win next year’s... Read more

In (Reluctant) Defense of Mitt Romney

Last updated on: August 25, 2011 at 4:00 am By Paul Fidalgo

EXCLUSIVE: Human beings enjoying the company of Mitt Romney I have no love for Willard “Mitt” Romney. He has consistently proven that he is an unprincipled opportunist who bends with every minor political breeze. There is no shortage of statements he’s made and positions he’s held that deserve criticism and ridicule. So my feeling is, let’s stick to criticizing those, and not go grasping at straws and doing what we liberals accuse the right of doing: taking things unfairly out of context... Read more

Cory Booker: Maker of Twitter Lemonade

Last updated on: August 24, 2011 at 4:00 am By Paul Fidalgo

The mayor has indicated that, should your schedule permit, he would like to put a little love in your heart. If you have at all dipped your social media teacup into the political Twitter river, you will no doubt have happened upon several servings of Newark mayor Cory Booker’s near-obsessive interactions. I say “interactions” because unlike most tweeting pols, Booker not only makes 140-character statements and quips, but he reacts in real time to the concerns of his constituents. He... Read more

Obama in the Fog

Last updated on: August 18, 2011 at 4:00 am By Paul Fidalgo

I know, it’s easy to continue to beat the I’m-disappointed-in-Obama drum from the comfort of my MacBook. But there’s a couple of new news items that are adding fuel to my sickly fire. Let’s begin with the older item, one reiterated by Maureen Dowd a few days ago. In Cannon Falls, Minn., the president compared negotiating with House Republicans to negotiating with his wife. That’s right. I sincerely hope Obama doesn’t really think this analogy is anywhere close to apt: “In my house,” Obama noted, “if I said,... Read more

So Long, and Thanks for All the Text

Last updated on: August 16, 2011 at 4:00 am By Paul Fidalgo

The text stops here. My webby little heart is broken, as I have just read that author and scholar Alan Jacobs is retiring his blog Text Patterns. It’s hard for me to overstate Text Patterns’ influence on me and this blog. Jacobs opened up a whole new world of topics to cover in my own blog writing, helping me discover a passion I barely knew I had; exploration of the history, fate and role of the written word in our modern technological landscape. This is... Read more