Facebook conversations are...well, sub-optimal. The site is good at what it does, but it isn’t great for really discussing things at length, for several reasons. One of them is this: even assuming that you and the person you’re talking to manage to be concise and still eloquent, a few days later that conversation has been flooded by all the other ( Read more... )

These days I write almost nothing long-form. The closest I get to real writing is exchanges in comments sections, and I just happened to run across this while looking for something else. I like what I said here, and I wanted to make sure I didn’t lose it ( Read more... )

Okay, slightly drunk, and went on Facebook (which I know I shouldn’t do when I've been drinking). Saw a post by a fella recounting the story of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, and repeating the tired old motif that “man shouldn't tamper in God’s domain.” I hate that sort of message, and although I had some whiskey in me I really like what I wrote in ( Read more... )

I have a friend named Ray who is a librarian in Baltimore. His Facebook status today is “Just had a patron say to me that he thinks librarians are as important as doctors. We are ‘priceless.’ Very nice sentiment--not sure it’s true, although I do (for obvious reasons) think librarians are valuable. I do know the pay disparity between doctor and ( Read more... )

There’s a big argument going on right now in the internet skeptic community, which can basically be boiled down to “Atheism vs. Agnosticism.” I don’t have very many readers, of course, and I am not going to influence this debate by writing here, but I’m gonna tell ya what I think anyway ( Read more... )