Yesterday morning, Tyler Hilinski, the projected starting quarterback for the Washington State Cougars football team, was found dead in his apartment, the victim of a self-inflicted gunshot wound to the head. He was just 21 years old. This is a kid who was carried off the field on the shoulders of his peers just weeks…
This Christmas, my sister sent my kids $25 Amazon gift cards. Given the absolute bounty my children received, I promptly set these cards aside and, I am ashamed to admit, forgot about them until late last week when I finally thought to mention them. The results were entirely predictable. My son, who has a surprising…
Please welcome my lifelong friend, Jadrice Toussaint, as he shares his thoughts on the alleged recent comments made by Donald Trump regarding Haiti—Bark I’m Haitian, and I’m proud. As a matter of fact, as I write these words, I am in Haiti, celebrating my birthday with my friends and family. And I’ve asked all of…
Could 1970 have been Peak GM? That’s a divisive assertion to make, but I happen to think it may be true, despite all the goodness present in the 1965 GM lineup. Everything looked good in ’65, from Corvair to Cadillac, but 1970 was also pretty great for fans of The General. Incidentally, it was also…
(This guest post by John Marks originally appeared on his music-related site, The Tannhauser Gate — JB) James Agee (1909-1955) had a difficult and comparatively brief life. Born in Knoxville, Tennessee, his life was upended at age six when his father was killed in an automobile accident. Thereafter, Agee and his younger sister Emma were…
We’re on the BookFace. I know that many of you (including Jack) are vocally anti-social media in general, and Facebook, in particular, and that’s cool with us. But if you’d like to follow us there, you can do it by clicking here. All of our posts are automatically shared there. That’s all. Gracias.
(Many thanks to Michael Briskie for some insight on this! — JB) The import/export business can be confusing – just ask George Costanza. What used to be American-as-apple-pie brands like Cadillac and Buick are now putting Chinese built inventory into their patriotic showrooms, and the CT-6 Hybrid and Buick Envision are just the start. By…
Now that my son is in middle school, it’s getting close to the point where he will need his own cellular phone. Unlike his younger sisters, he has yet to ask for one but there have been some times when having his own phone would have been handy. Thus far, when he has had to…
Based on the positive reaction to last week’s Brief Introduction to Jazz post, I decided to create a new weeklyish column called “The Listening Room,” where I introduce you to new artists/styles of music, and you tell me if you think they’re any good. Deal? Deal. Today’s post features the musical style known as “Neo-Bop,”…
(Pete’s second post on Bitcoin is a sequel to his original post and my followup — JB) So how does Bitcoin actually work? It works by the voluntary association of peer-to-peer computer nodes all around the world, much like BitTorrent. Except whereas BitTorrent each carry slightly different files on them, each Bitcoin node carries the exact…
