Posted Fri, Apr 11, 9:59 a.m.

RE: good article: Chuck, I would think the accomplishments you mention say more about the existence of tenacious reporters with a sense of purpose than about the newspaper as an institution. I wonder how many journalists would disagree here, especially if they've had good stories turned down because they were ...

Posted Thu, Apr 10, 10:35 p.m.

good article: I always hate to see people lose their jobs, but like you, I also have trouble relating to a nostalgic view of newspapers. I know what you mean by reading papers with a sense of distrust. I don't understand the widely held view that newspapers facilitate democracy by ...

Posted Fri, Apr 4, 8:44 a.m.

hmm: I guess you have your answer. =)

Posted Wed, Feb 20, 10:17 a.m.

wow.: I almost can't believe what I'm reading. You're implying Michelle Obama should be grateful for the opportunities she's had, despite the fact that African Americans should never have been barred from them in the first place. And you're saying Americans should be glad that at least the U.S. isn't ...

Posted Sun, Feb 10, 11:19 p.m.

when reality settles in: I'm with the skeptics. It's not that I doubt Obama's sincerity or ability. It's the fact that the challenges faced by the next president are enormous: ending an occupation without making things worse, reinvigorating a national economy in an era when transnational corporations are more powerful ...

Posted Thu, Jan 10, 10:36 a.m.

perfection?: I've come across many variations of the analogy Matt Evans draws between politics and software, but they're never convincing. "Software people know that we have perfect computer languages and perfect machines to execute our desires": um, on what planet?! Every new generation of CPUs contains new hardware bugs. Programmers ...