I was born and raised in the South, a region that’s often misunderstood and mischaracterized by those who’ve never been there. When I moved to the Midwest for grad school I encountered […]
WordsDay: "The Day Daddy Died"
It’s around 9 a.m. May 1, 1994. My stepmother, Kathie, has spent the night at Forsyth Memorial Hospital with my father, Larry, who will die late this afternoon. Their next-door neighbor, Wayne, […]
A memory from the day Martin Luther King, Jr. died
by JS O’Brien When I first heard, I was jubilant. For a 10-year-old white kid living in a South we all thought was under siege, hearing that Martin Luther King was dead was […]
Paulson's rescue plan: Rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic

By Martin Bosworth I was deeply amused to read the breathless news coverage of Hammerin’ Hank Paulson’s “ambitious” and “sweeping” plans to restructure the federal financial regulatory structure. It says something about […]
NYT on Obama: "Can a liberal be a unifier?" Progressives: "YES!"

By Martin Bosworth I’ve seen a lot of brain-crushingly stupid stuff coming out of the so-called “paper of record” in recent years, but this just takes the aneurysm-inducing cake: To achieve the […]
Microsoft, Google and the joy of a competitorless world
Eric Schmidt, CEO of Google, believes that a Yahoo / Microsoft tie-up would be awful for the Internet. Schmidt issued the vague sequitur that we should all beware of, “the things that […]
Rebels. Without a clue.
Idiots. Jonathan Walton puts it this way: I confess that I find this somewhat tragic, as I too have Southern pride.
Who has access to your personal data? Everyone–except you

By Martin Bosworth Last month the Associated Press cast a harsh light on a dark secret of many big public industries–that workers have far too much access to personal data of customers, […]
John and Elizabeth Edwards agree: Getting us out of Iraq can end the recession
By Martin Bosworth After the sad event that was John Edwards ending his run for president, I wondered what he would do with himself next. While Clinton and Obama furiously courted him […]
Another couple of journalists who don't understand basic science
by JS O’Brien Yesterday, I wrote about a Florida columnist who’s so poorly educated and ill-read that she could neither construct a cogent argument nor recognize a ridiculous misstatement about Newton’s second […]