March 2006

On a particular bookstore.

March 23, 2006

My dream-self has acquired the ability to cleanly and safely detach body parts, like a robot or mannequin. Say I dream about having a splinter in the sole of my foot. I can simply take off my foot, set it on the table, get the splinter out, and snap my foot right back into place. [...]

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‘Roids.

March 16, 2006

A lot has been made of “shocking” new revelations about Barry Bonds’s “alleged” steroid use. Should his records be stricken from the books, or have an asterisk put by them? ShouldSelig investigate? Should Bonds, if guilty as charged, be banned from baseball like Pete Rose? What about Rafael Palmeiro, who flat-out lied to Congress about his steroid use? What [...]

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The Suicide Iron.

March 10, 2006

[Note: Most of the names have been changed to protect the identities of those people whose names have been changed.] In late 2000, I was living in Clemson, South Carolina and looking to move into a new apartment. I found one which happened to be right next door to an apartment I used to live in, which was [...]

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Responses I wish I had given to application questions.

March 8, 2006

Q1: Why did you become a teacher? I misread the salary schedule. Q2: In what ways do you plan to influence the lives of your students? This application is for a teaching position, right? I plan to teach them about an academic subject. Any other ways in which I influence them—paranoia, obsession, nightmares, hopelessness—are purely incidental. [...]

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On curricular speech.

March 4, 2006

Two investigations of teachers made the national news this week. In both cases there was concern that the teacher was ramming certain viewpoints down the students’ throats. That concern is probably not justified in one case, and probably is in the other. Case One: At Parsippany High School in New Jersey, Joseph Kyle’s AP Government class conducted a mock war [...]

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