Whose Safety is Secured through Obscurity?
The rules of the game determine how it is played. And if few but the players know the rules, the spectators can be confused. They might believe in an ideal vers...
Author: Will Cox
Publish, or Die Trying
My father is a Presbyterian minister, and has been for fifty years. Sometimes I hear rumors that he’s retired, but it’s a working retirement. His la...
A Confederacy of Dunces
One style of fiction I most enjoy is what is known as alternate history or, if presented academically, counterfactual history. This genre asks what might have b...
Who Forged These Chains?
For someone who works with computers, I have very little respect for them. Perhaps that’s left over from a programming class where the teacher reminded us...
Be Careful What You Wish For
Norway’s SlowTV film of the Bergen to Oslo railway is beautiful and deeply moving: nostalgic. Though I’ve never been to Norway, I’ve ridden tr...
It’s a Grand Old Flag
I do not think I come from unique circumstances, nor that I am exceptionally gifted an observer, but I continue to be astonished at the number of people I know ...
Evolution in Action: Civilization Edition
The land disappears beneath the sea at high tide in places where it hadn’t until recently — places such as Hampton Roads and Norfolk, Virginia, whic...
My Fellow Americans
Who is American?
What Are You Here For?
I have, since I found out about it, wanted to go to space. I remember, vividly, watching Star Trek in color in the basement of a friend who had television and s...
I Wish I Could Go Back to College
No. 1 Daughter is a junior in high school this year. My how time flies. Her next act on the world stage approaches. Last year, to be helpful, because she was re...
On Trusting How We Count the Votes
There’s some discussion in the news that the Russians might be influencing the results of the U.S. presidential election by hacking the machines various j...
Transitioning to a Post-Westphalia World
What prevents the signatories of the TPP or TTIP, and their ilk, from just saying no when the investor-state dispute settlement provisions don’t go the wa...
What is Work? What is Rest?
I spent the other day driving around. First to the doctor, where he confirmed my self-diagnosis of bronchitis, and then across the county for an x-ray to elimin...
Qualification
Certain things aren’t talked about — or at least are avoided because they are uncomfortable to talk about — in polite society; that is, beyond our immedia...
Broken Windows Theory of Web Site Management
Once one spam comment gets through, all your base are belong to us. Oh well. I should have disabled comments if I was going to abandon this building for a coupl...
School, a Poem
Locks us inside 3 minute breaks in between 42 minutes “School,” a poem by Number Two Daughter (13) Number Two Daughter brought this poem home from s...
To the Stranger in a Strange Land
All are welcome here. My father did not approve of locking the doors to the church. Anyone who needed to was welcome to enter. Anyone who was passing through to...
my lover gave me some poems by Billy Collins
Oh, Beloved!TheseThese words I must readIn their certain intentSlowly and surely andWith ever the thought of your love
Chaperone on the Field Trip
Without constant external stimulation, we might have to face the anxious terror of consciousness. And so the increasingly urgent demand in a first grader’...