Assistant Village Idiot

Someone at work asked if Quora is a reliable source of information.  I gave an incomplete answer off-the-cuff, and am writing one out here....

There are articles circulating in supposedly objective news sources about the large number of recent fires - 6 - at black churches since the...

Identifying this song has been an irritation in the back of my mind for a decade or more. I knew that I could do the labor-intensive work of...

Without examining, at least at present, the fairness of my prejudice, I will simply note it: when I encounter less-educated people, I expect...

I don't usually overlap my FB and AVI posts, but I thought this was too long for wone and too short for the other, so I did both. ...

I haven't posted on flamingoes for a long time, having switched to the occasional meerkat instead.  But a giant of American culture has ...

I had forgotten this song - liked it mildly when it came out but paid little attention. There was a followup set of verses I had never heard...

Ben and I discussed last night how rapidly the various media, with the support and encouragement of all of us, rapidly tries to find the one...

Steve Sailer points out that the young golfers leading at the US Open aften 3 rounds are all "Generation Ǝn," that is, their names...

I am surprised to search and find I have never mentioned the book here.  It came out when I was in college, and as I had to read all of Thor...

It seems that acting morally counts for very little, but saying the right things, and in the right way, is now the signature of virtue. Or r...

One of the main topics of Theodore Dalrymple's In Praise of Prejudice is pointing out the many weaknesses and hypocrisies of those argu...

Personal Note:  My wife is recovering nicely and is being wisely cautious.  She expects to get the okay to return to light duty at work at h...

Yeah, that's it. I don't expect my prose to be deathless (and I don't write poetry).  Nonetheless, I do have a certain eye to ...

Attention to the blog has been light because I brought my wife to the ER Monday night, and she had her appendix out the following morning.  ...

You may not have heard of the Riley Taylor Videos, illustrating the Acts of Apostles using flannelgraphs - sort of. Here's the first one...

A silly argument keeps popping up whether one can be an atheist and still be a moral person.  Well of course you can, I've seen it mysel...

The NYTimes carries an ope-ed from a man who has defaulted on his student loans, and explains why . Because this is much in the news, I leap...

I have had harsh things to say about Bill McKibben in the past, but his sit-down with Anthony Watt s was apparently quite pleasant. Credit w...

At cafeterias when I was a lad, bowls and plates were stacked into tubes with a spring-loaded platform at the bottom.   As you took you...