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Why “This Land is Your Land” Should Be Our National Anthem
The Star-Spangled Banner is a fine song for remembering the war of 1812 and giving some attention to our flag, but it doesn’t really embody the values that have made America great. It’s hard to sing and uses language that most people find obscure. (What are ramparts anyway?) By contrast Woody Guthrie’s This Land is…
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American Unreason
Reading Susan Jacoby’s The Age of American Unreason made me very uncomfortable. The book chronicles the history of anti-intellectualism in American culture from the Revolutionary period to the present. It’s an excellent book, well-written, carefully researched, intelligent, and witty. Jacoby, a self-avowed secularist and freethinker, is evenhanded in her treatment of what she calls “junk…
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First Computer
My first computer was a Sinclair ZX-81, a masterpiece of low-cost design. The entire computer was smaller than a medium pizza box, but it did have some drawbacks. To keep down costs, it did not include a monitor, but to encourage wider adoption, it produced NTSC video, so it could be used with most television…
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A Halloween Reflection
Sometimes it’s good to remember how fleeting popularity is. President Bush’s popularity is the lowest of any President since Richard Nixon was forced from office by scandal. Yet for a few months following September 11, 2001, he was golden. The man hasn’t changed, but our perception of him has. Once he rose to the occasion,…
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Halloween
One of my earliest memories is of dressing up to go trick-or-treating. My mom draped a sheet over me and I wore a ghostly mask. My younger brother watched the whole process, but whenever I put the mask on he would cry in terror. If I took it back off, he would stop crying. I…
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