I’ll be back in August, but in the meantime, my summer advice is Go See SiCKO–and make everyone you know go. And even though you’ll want to move to another country after you see it; don’t. Stay here and help fix this one.

I was too depressed to write about the Supreme Court this week, but luckily the NY Times said it for me.
I don’t want to reveal my historical ignorance by going on a rant about how the Court is “becoming” political or “losing” any pretext of objectivity, as I’m sure that it’s gone through such periods [...]

I’ll be taking July off, including a hiatus from blogging. As I’m planning my vacation, I’d appreciate suggestions of good books–any genre, pretty much. I tend to read a lot of nonfiction, science, philosophy, although I spent my first winter in St. Louis plowing through all the “Master and Commander” books by Patrick [...]

America’s largest retailer has decided not to fund LGBT-rights groups anymore because of threats of boycotts by right-wing fundamentalists. Wal-mart’s new policy specifically says they will not nationally fund “controversial” groups or issues anymore. I look forward to the day when it’s more”controversial” to bow to misinformed prejudice than to support human rights.
If [...]

I mentioned the New Humanism conference in a recent blog entry; the Harvard Humanist Chaplaincy (which sponsored the conference) has a revamped website including podcasts from the conference. Tony Pinn, whose picture is currently featured on the site, edited an anthology on African-American humanist writing titled By These Hands. I had a seminar [...]

Hello–no, I’m not on vacation yet. I’ve been at the national assembly of the American Ethical Union. It’s been a great week reconnecting and learning from colleagues and Societies from across the nation. The highlight of the conference was probably the tremendously moving speech by David Kaczynski on the ethical dilemmas he [...]

A poem of mine appears in the current issue of Barrelhouse, a newish literary and pop culture magazine. I haven’t read this issue yet, but the previous ones have had some fun and interesting fiction and nonfiction in them. If you’re a literary mag person (you know who you are), I recommend checking [...]

To continue our bug theme, I’ve just finished a history of the Mosquito (Mosquito: The Story of Man’s Deadliest Foe, by Andrew Spielman and Michael D’Antonio). This year also happens to be the 100th anniversary of the birth of Rachel Carson, who wrote Silent Spring and is widely considered the mother of the modern [...]

Our house is infested with tiny ants, and we have been battling them. We squash them, vacuum them, poison them. So far they are not impressed and we are researching more lethal poisons.
I realize this is morally inconsistent for a vegan. Summertime seems to bring up these dilemmas. Last year it was [...]