I am and have always been cool with people not liking me or what I write; being disliked is as comfortable for me as my old coat. But I would really, truly appreciate it if people would stop attacking me for a position that I don’t hold and didn’t express on the issue of TNR […]

Hey friends, I’m writing from my home in Connecticut on Christmas morning, which I’m celebrating with family. I just wanted to take a moment and thank you all for your various forms of support. The Christmas Funding Drive was far more successful than I could have imagined and saved my bacon this holiday season. I […]

Here are a few things I have done this morning. Bought shuttle tickets to get me to and from Chicago for my flight home to Connecticut for Christmas. Paid the gas bill. Paid my cellphone bill. Salted down my credit card. Bought Christmas presents for my nieces. Enjoyed a nice seasonal IPA. I also have […]

I wanted to see how people were responding to my piece for the Week, on how the presumption of the truth of all sexual assault accusations actually makes it harder for us to fight rape. I was particularly interested because the topic is so controversial. So as I often do, I plugged the link into […]

This morning I received a gift, from an anonymous reader, of Dana Goldstein’s The Teacher Wars. I’m super excited to read it over Christmas break, and once again grateful and humbled by the generosity of my readers. I’m afraid I am once again going to test that generosity. It’s the holidays and I’m broke. There’s several […]

  Well gang, Thanksgiving is here again. It’s not hard for me to be thankful. I get about as much of what I need as most anybody I know. Big changes are coming for me, for good or for bad, and I will be ready for them. For now, I’m enjoying where I am and […]

Today I received two wonderfully thoughtful, generous gifts from my Amazon Wish List from readers of this blog. These beautiful images were taken with a camera lens from a reader that arrived today. I also received the book Text Analysis with R for Students of Literature by Matthew Jockers, which though I am not in literature […]

If every time someone you know speaks, your hands reflexively clench; if you follow someone’s work obsessively, driven by annoyance and resentment; if the mere mention of someone’s name causes you to furiously type out your angst; if you feel so moved by your negative feelings towards someone or their work that you have to […]

Is a truly left-wing, internationalist foreign policy possible? I discuss with the University of Kentucky’s Robert Farley. Had a lot of fun.

As a leftist yourself, why do so many of your arguments critique those on the left? Because the struggle for social justice is the most important task that human beings undertake, it is necessary for people of conscience to evaluate how well that struggle is going and whether current tactics are effective. When we talk […]