Garrison Keillor goes for Gold

Keillor's Op Ed piece in today's NYT is brilliant satire, especially the part about conservatives being like people who drive a car into a swamp and then start throwing mud balls at the tow truck.

Stupid is as Stupid does

If America's the "best country in the world" why are so many Americans so angry that they think it's "understandable" to fly a plane into a building to protest taxes?

Why do Tea Baggers think that if a family can't afford to pay 20% of their income for private health insurance, they should just go bankrupt if someone gets cancer, but if you don't pay your taxes so you can own a Cessna you have a right to feel homicidal?

Isaac Newton's detective work

I have just caught up with the new book from Tom Levenson NEWTON AND THE COUNTERFEITER (Houghton/Harcourt). The premise alone is very intriguing, and I love Tom's approach to history.

I worked with Tom, who runs the MIT Masters Program in science writing, when he published EINSTEIN IN BERLIN, and he is one of the very best history of science writers around. He also has a background as a NOVA producer.

I'm experimenting with listening on audio and reading the Kindle version on my laptop (you can do that with the free KindleforPC software on Amazon). More to come on how that works for me.