ECHIDNE OF THE SNAKES

Author's Query: Can you identify a Speaker or potential Speaker of the House to the left of Nancy Pelosi? 1999–2006 Dennis H...

W hile I’m trying to get back the piece lost to a power outage or to reconstruct it, you might like to read Derrick Z. Jackson on the effect...

These are words. To know what they mean you have to read all of them. Yes, this can be hard but it is how they work. They do not work if...

Cognac for your ears: My muse (Erato, not to be confused with the other Erato) doesn't want to tell me what to write today. He's ou...

From one extreme (picture from swampcracker): To another extreme (plum p's Henriette with a drinking problem):

John Edwards has thrown in the towel in the Democratic primary race. Now it's time to dissect all the reasons for his not doing better....

I recommend Hildegard von Bingen's music for meditation and for those times when everything is just too much.

I haven't written very much on this type of discrimination, even though it's something that the laws make illegal and even though th...

They tell me that the United States is still interested in watching the mental and physical disintegration of Britney Spears. Somehow she h...

I've had a fun morning thinking about the codewords in Maureen Dowd's and David Brooks' columns. By codewords I mean those some...

Now that John Edwards has bowed out from the Democratic primary white guys will have to vote either their gender or their race. Or sit at h...

Is this: Shouldn't the talking heads interpret the Florida results (or at least the early exit polls ) as a defeat of fundamentalism (H...

Globalization has hit the shadier aspect of the organ markets: As the anesthetic wore off, Naseem Mohammed said, he felt an acute pain in l...

It is "to transmogrify", meaning to " change into a different shape or form, especially one that is fantastic or bizarre....

U not goan maek us listen to chimpy R U? That is the comment of fourlegsgood's Maddie , and I sort of agree. I have decoded the previou...

Concerning the FISA bill : The Senate yesterday left the fate of a new electronic surveillance law backed by the Bush administration up in t...

When I was a very small goddess I used to dream about Superwoman skills: to be able to fly, to be invisible when desirable and to be able to...

Do you ever listen to the BBC news? If you do, you are familiar with the odd feeling one gets when the news about the U.S. they discuss are...

Parag Khanna's "Waving Goodbye to Hegemony" is necessary reading for anyone interested in the question of the U.S. role in th...

That's what a headline says George Bush has: big plans for the 357 days left of his reign. He was supposed to be a rubber duckie presid...