Recent Comments

1. about 12 years ago on Heart of the City

   Love it or hate it, JJ Abrams didn’t whitewash the Star Trek universe. The first movie made it clear that going forward would be an alternate timeline (so if anything, it’s looking at a Rembrandt as a reference for your own art). Also, the second movie comes out this summer, so he didn’t just walk away.

   The bigger issue is no one man should be at the helm of the two biggest sci-fi franchises in the world. They’re different stories, they need different story tellers.

   Also, Heart, I’m disappointed. As a tween girl, I expected you’d be on tumblr. Which means you’d be fanning over ST: Into Darkness because Benedict Cumberbatch. So most of this should have been old news to you.

2. almost 13 years ago on Ted Rall

   @Pemigewasset People often will rise (or fall) to expectations set upon them by others, and crime and poverty are not unique to any subset of our society. We lose something fundamental to our humanity if we take such a derivative stance as suspecting folks of wrong doing simply because of what they’re wearing on their head (whether hoodie or turban).

   As a nation and as an individual, the moral high ground is lost once it is decided to take preemptive action using deadly force. Even in the “best” case scenario (and it’s really hard to consider any possibility in the case good), there are unconscionable actions that need to be answered for. I hope I’m never in such a situation, but if I ever shoot someone in self-defense, I expect to be taken into custody—even if I didn’t kill the person.

   While there are occasions when deadly force is necessary no one should be able to use it with complete impunity.

3. almost 13 years ago on The Meaning of Lila

   I think it was a play on Tiger Mom.

4. about 13 years ago on Chan Lowe

   not from florida, but the news story is a man adopted his 42-year old girlfriend so that she would be a beneficiary of a trust. i believe the man was on trial for allegedly driving while intoxicated and crashing into another car and killing the driver.

5. over 13 years ago on Lisa Benson

   So, I look at this picture and see that spending is the only thing that is keeping us from falling into the pit and that even the smallest spending cut would send us off the precipice. I do not think this is what Ms. Benson meant (being no fan of the “liberal” agenda). I think perhaps Ms. Benson so think her analogies through a bit more.

6. almost 14 years ago on Steve Breen

   @TCL: Isn’t that statement a bit extreme?? ;-)

7. almost 14 years ago on Glenn McCoy

   I do believe Glenn just announced the second coming of Jesus.

8. about 14 years ago on Signe Wilkinson

   i don’t think she’s condemning abortion; look at all the security cameras. our society is very selective about who we scrutinize. i think the point she’s trying to make is that we would find ‘bad apples’ anywhere if we looked.

9. about 14 years ago on Ted Rall

   well joseph is a saint, so he rates a halo. normally, it’s just not as shiny as mary’s and jesus’s normally has a cross running through it.

10. over 14 years ago on Lisa Benson

    “…the next gas station is 500 miles away and this car gets 24 MPG at best and has a 16 gal tank. Yeah go ahead step on it.”

    Bruce, that may very well be the case. I was merely pointing out that the metaphor seemed flawed.

    I wasn’t advocating for stepping on it. I’ve done my share of driving my car on empty, but only when I’m in town and close to a station [yes, it’s bad for the car]. But I make sure to fill up and see to it that everything’s in good working order when I go out for long trips.

    It seems to me there are a couple of options…

    We say “screw it” and leave that form of transportation [capitalism] to rust on the road where we left it

    or [since there isn’t already a gas station near by–and I do fault the Bush administration for blowing the surplus, and choosing to invest in “gas stations” in places we didn’t need them, e.g. Iraq.]

    We build a gas station where we are [yes, on borrowed money] so that we can drive somewhere where we’ll be able to make the money to pay off the gas station[s] we need to build along the way to get there.

    That’s how I see this whole metaphor playing out. And I don’t think that’s what Ms. Benson meant. Hence my original comment.