Amusing &Art &Basketball &Blog &News &Video Eugene Fischer | 02 Jul 2011
On Robert Krulwich’s NPR blog, a post about the shape of stories as drawn by Kurt Vonnegut. Includes one of my favorite science cartoons ever. The Genderfloomp Reading List. I won a copy of Whipping Girl as my prize for being Best Dressed. I’ve only read the introduction so far, but it looks very good. [...]
News Eugene Fischer | 02 May 2011
I stayed up much later than I intended to, streaming C-SPAN, so I could watch the President announce something historic. For reference, here is the video. I’m still parsing what I think about this, but I have some initial responses. I cannot agree with the President when he says that “justice has been done.” Justice [...]
News Eugene Fischer | 12 Jan 2011
So it seems clear at this point that the fires of Jared Loughner’s insanity were not directly stoked by the language of violence that the Tea Party uses to excite its base. (Its use of such language is still wrong, and should still be decried, but it has yet to motivate an actual instance of [...]
News Eugene Fischer | 09 Jan 2011
18 people were shot, 6 killed. The dead: John Roll, 63, a conservative federal judge. Dorothy Morris, 76. Dorwin Stoddard, 76. Phyllis Schneck, 79. Gabrielle Zimmerman, 30. Christina Greene, 9 years old and, in a meaningless but poignant bit of coincidence, born on 9/11. Gabrielle Giffords is still in critical condition, but considered to have [...]
News Eugene Fischer | 08 Jan 2011
US Representative Gabrielle Giffords was shot today during a public event outside of a grocery store in Tucson. As many as nine other people were also critically wounded. At the time of this writing it is reported that she is still alive and in surgery. The gunman is alive and in police custody. No further [...]
News &Writing Eugene Fischer | 26 Dec 2010
Today NPR’s program On The Media featured a fascinating discussion with Lawrence Weschler on the topic of the inherent fictitious aspects of journalism and nonfiction. Weschler proposes a nuanced view of what constitutes truth in journalism and nonfiction, but more interesting to me is his implicit identification of the responsibilities of a reader. Weschler says [...]
Blog &News &Video Eugene Fischer | 10 Aug 2010
Here’s a roundup of some things that are worthy of note. • The very best thing to happen recently is Judge Vaughn Walker’s decision in Perry v. Schwarzenegger, overturning prop 8 and granting homosexuals the right to marry in California. The whole decision can be downloaded here, but there are articles all over the place [...]
News &Texas Eugene Fischer | 11 Feb 2010
In a lovely bit of validation for my “This man must lose his job for the good of the country!” rant of two days ago, the New York Times Magazine has just published a ten page article on Texas education guidelines, with profiles of Don McLeroy, Gail Lowe, and Cynthia Dunbar. (Dunbar is perhaps the [...]
News &Texas &Video Eugene Fischer | 19 Nov 2009
So way back in 2005 the Texas legislature, in its alarmingly finite wisdom, passed an amendment to the state constitution to outlaw gay marriage. So eager were our elected representatives to protect us from the loathsome evil of same sex unions, it seems they may have overshot the mark somewhat and protected us from all [...]
