They Will Rise Again From the Tundra

There are few activities more masochistic than golf.  The twisted nature of the sport has been covered all too well by golfers and comedians alike, so I will spare you the banal jokes.  I’m in no mood for them after what happened this afternoon.

I’m not one of those people that plays golf often as I find it is best enjoyed sparingly and only after adhering to a months-long regimen of intense meditation, masturbation, and dieting.  Anything less might allow for my violent competitiveness to creep in and ruin the day for everyone.  Indeed.  No one who competes against me in anything, be it darts, pool, basketball, or jacks (etc.) will end up enjoying himself very much.  If I perform well, I normally win by a large enough margin to make the game seem pointless, and if I am losing, I will fall into petulance and throw a conniption fit … Read more

When George Orwell’s famous protagonist from 1984, Winston Smith, begins to read The Theory and Practice of Oligarchical Collectivism, supposedly penned by the revolutionary Emmanuel Goldstein, Orwell writes that the best books are the ones that tell you what you already know. Granted, Winston arrives at this revelation while hiding from the eyes [and telescreens] of the oppressive government of Oceania, but despite the obvious political differences between 1984 and life in our Information Age, Lawrence Lessig’s Code: Version 2.0 (also known as Codev2) often elicits the same sensation and serves, in no small part, to vocalize many of our nagging intuitions and fears about the internet.

When the World Wide Web first popped up in the late 1980s and 90s, there was a feeling that this was the new Wild West, that cyberspace would be unregulated and anonymous for the rest of its days. I was … Read more

The rants don’t come easily these days — at least not as easily as they once did — save for a few impromptu outbursts when something ruffles the feathers or playing the jester.  Other than that, there is little to be said about current events.  Things continue much as they always have, Barack Obama or not, and the Republicans, as clinically insane as ever, need not worry too much about a paradigm shift to the Left.  The Democrats are not a party built for political hegemony.  Infighting and weak knees normally derail any such hopes and all for the better, I suppose.  Perhaps the Dawn of the Third Party is not so far away as it seems to be, though the dim hope that the American voter might realize the stagnation wrought by the two-party yo-yo is one better left unspoken lest the eventual disappointment proves too much to bear.… Read more