Self-serve politics

I make a lot of snap political judgments the same way investment bankers make stock picks.

The Andersen Principle: If a proposed political action -- rent control, offshore drilling -- has an obvious, powerful rationale, then it's a bad, overvalued idea and not worth investing in. If, on the other hand, a policy is complicated and hard to explain the benefits of -- cap-and-trade, the EITC -- it's undervalued and you should give it the benefit of the doubt.

First Corollary to the Andersen Principle (Also known as the Greater Wonk Theory): Policies that are hard to explain are also easy, once enacted, for highly motivated rich people to fuck with.

Darwinian socialism

The guy who sits next to me at work just stopped in for the first time after his son's birth, and looking at his familiar face I felt this sudden rush of warmth -- a desire to do favors for this friend and his family.

It's a gift from my ancestors, sowed in my heart: one, two, ten thousand moments of reciprocal kindness in a long, long line.

The blockbuster we deserve

Halfway through Dark Knight I actually thought: "I hope the war on terror ends soon, so every time I go to the movie show I don't have to do so much work." And then, right about the time Michelle Obama blew out her brains all over an early conference committee draft of FISA, the movie show reminded me -- for the first time in years -- that it's not going to end. Ever. It was a horrific realization, and I shook.

Leaving Flatland

I spend almost all my social life thinking fast, spinning, smashing into one face after another. Like a billiard ball. Clonk! Clack! Thud!

All abstraction; no time for anything more accurate.

Yesterday, on a hike, I lingered on the top of a hill while my friends walked away from me. They shrank to the size of my arm, then my hand, then my thumb, and then they were just a part of the forest that I happened to know very well -- bouncing hair, black coats, cocked elbows. They became concrete. I'd never felt so protective of them, or so proud.

Songs for getting laid off

Not me, but a friend, a colleague and a better reporter than I'm likely to become.

1. Shove This Jay-Oh-Bee, Canibus
2. Cotton, The Mountain Goats
3. Spanish Pipedream, John Prine
4. I Love My Boss, Moxy Fruvous
5. One-Trick Pony, Paul Simon
6. Love Love Love, The Mountain Goats
7. Barney's Epic Homer, Leon Rosselson and Roy Bailey
8. It's Not My Place (In the 9 to 5 World), The Ramones
9. Alienation's for the Rich, They Might Be Giants
10. To Beat the Devil, Kris Kristofferson
11. Everything is Free, Gillian Welch
12. The Mary Ellen Carter, Stan Rogers

Elrond, Toffler and the breakdown of the family

I saw Fellowship of the Ring tonight for the first time in four or five years.

I think one of the more touching things about Lord of the Rings, and maybe sword-and-scepter epics in general, is the presence of powerful parents. Literally. The books are scattered with the fantasy of vigorous, independent adult children whose parents are still at the top of their game.

Maybe this circumstance is actually a lost treasure of the entire pre-industrial past, the days before everything we learned was constantly being torn apart by discovery.



Frodo is wounded, lying on the ground in a forest. "We have to take him," Arwen says, "to my father."

On the job

Even these days, being part of a newspaper's big voltron body requires a close acquaintance with caprice. We tear through the day on a few dozen slapdash decisions whose outcomes are probably worth tens of thousands of dollars to the beneficiaries or the victims.