Recent Comments

1. about 6 hours ago on Loose Parts

   My interests are earlier, Hellenistic kingdoms, late Republic and early Empire. Seems like a lot of textbooks on late Western Empire get a bit simplistic. It was a complicated era. The curse of textbooks… The only way to be broad enough for a survey course is by being very shallow.

2. about 10 hours ago on Loose Parts

   Whatever they’ll pay me to teach. Usually history. I was there for a class on comparative religion, I’m not sure what the students were there for.

3. about 17 hours ago on Adam@Home

   Inside man at the skunk works. (I was assuming the comment was a L’il Abner reference.)

4. about 17 hours ago on Baldo

   Well, there is always the day the truck arrives from corporate with new merchandise that has to be unloaded.

   That’s a break from the daily routine. And tons of fun.

5. about 17 hours ago on Crabgrass

   That was my thought. Hopefully it is wired in to the ejection spring – and works really, really fast.

6. about 17 hours ago on Ink Pen

   Snooze control.

7. about 18 hours ago on Dick Tracy

   Guy isn’t very bright if he says freedom of the press covers blackmail. Like libel it is very much not covered. And, unlike libel, there are no arguments about the definition.

   And, talk about time skip… (Okay, you weren’t talking about time skip, but let’s mention it anyway.) It was going to be months – probably more than a year – between arrest and conviction.

8. about 18 hours ago on Broom Hilda

   Wikipedia article has a big chunk of information on the bassoon as a jazz instrument (while admitting it isn’t common). If you can use it for jazz you can use it for the blues…

   But, yeah, it provides a timbre most blues instruments don’t have.

9. about 18 hours ago on Garfield

   Garfield is looking for a vitamin “proven in clinical trials” that will give you muscle tone and take weight off (regardless of how much you eat) while you sleep. Don’t you see the ads on television, Jon? But wait, call in now and we’ll double the supply.

   Notice there is never a mention of the credentials of those running the “clinical trials.”

10. about 18 hours ago on La Cucaracha

    A classic of generalized experience / anecdotes being presented as universal truth and a lack of examination of some of the deeper economic underpinnings.

    Not that it is unique in that. All kinds of memoirs from all shades of the political spectrum reflect the same limitations. I don’t call any of them classics.