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Midweek Staff Meeting – Back Talk


They don’t make ’em like they used to (intellectuals, that is).

Talking back to your voices.

Greatest damn thing about living in DC.

What Dungeons & Dragons character are you?

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Tuesday Morning Staff Meeting – Murder The Rainbow


Romantic scientists.

Define ‘good walk.’

Injured writing.

It’s never a simple answer.

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Weekend Reading – There Are An Infinite Number Of Turtles


Turtles all the way down.

Will the real nights please stand up?

Camus’ desert.

Can coffeeshops overthrow governments? Maybe.

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Monday Morning Staff Meeting – I’m Afraid I Can’t Let You Do That, Emily


‘Neats’ and ‘scruffies’ in AI research.

Emily Dickinson is not an AI… yet.

Rise of the Tweet!

LA isn’t that bad for dating, but yes, DC is better.

Saved by twitter.

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Monday Morning Staff Meeting – Monaco Is Officially The Least Poetic Nation In The World


Tor/Forge (sci fi and fantasy division of Macmillan) has a DRM free e-book store coming.

The Folger Shakespeare Library is releasing its editions as e-books.

You’re not procrastinating quickly enough.

There is simply no poetry in Monaco. None. Zip. Nada.

Who are your poets?

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Happy Birthdays


Happy birthday to the great Chilean poet, Pablo Neruda, and also to semi-crazed genius, Buckminster Fuller.

I have noticed young people continue read Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair and continue to be somewhat crazed, so perhaps the influence of these two gentlemen will go on for a while yet.

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Thursday Morning Staff Meeting – KHOJ ÖZEERI


“A last speaker with no one to talk to exists in unspeakable solitude.”

I only know automats from Edward Hopper paintings.

Something is always in decline (but yeah, book reviewing is in decline these days; the St Pete Times got rid of its old, full spread of Sunday book reviews years ago and the Washington Post has followed suit).

But it might help if so many contemporary novels weren’t such c–p.

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Midweek Staff Meeting – Slow & Steady Wins The Tasty Seal


Ron Silliman’s poems are never finished.

Greenland sharks really are that slow.

Starbucks will now brew bad tea in specially designed tea houses.

The grammar nerd will never die (just look back over the fuss about the Oxford comma).

Thankfully, power lines are buried in my neighborhood.

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Monday Morning Staff Meeting – Utopia Is A Good Poem


At least, it (utopia, that is) is according to (poet) Charles Simic.

Was Darwin a good writer?

How cheap paper reduced plagues.

Hemingway’s nouns. 

Are DC taxi cabs in danger of extinction?

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I’m Building My Time Machine (For Real This Time)


Researchers have found a new particle consistent with what they think to be a Higgs boson at a sensitivity level of sigma 5.

Apparently, sigma 5 is very good.

So, I’m moving proactively on this and will be advertising on Craigslist for graduates of Phoenix, Strayer, Devry, and ITT Tech to build a time machine in my garage. Wages will comply with DC living wage laws.