Author: Eric Scheie

It isn’t every day I get photographed with a tyrant, but it happened today. Here I am at the Toledo Art Museum with Domitian. I’d almost rather have a Republican looking over my shoulder.

I am delighted to report that my proposal for sex withholding to force Ann Arbor to repair its roads (as is being done in Barbacoas, Colombia) was linked by P.D. Lesko’s A2Politico, Ann Arbor’s leading political blog. Better yet, an important classical reference was added. Withholding sex to induce behavioral compliance is a very old…

Coco has a new friend. A baby bulldog named Woodson is staying next door for at least a few days. Coco is quite taken with the wrinkly little chap and wishes he’d move in permanently. (He leaps into my lap and showers me with slobbery bulldog kisses, and has repeatedly tried to follow me home.)…

Here’s an annoyance which has happened one time too many. The problem of disappearing cash register receipts! I have been in the middle of a long project for which I need to save receipts (both for tax purposes and in case things need to be returned), and when I was going through receipts yesterday, I…

In Ann Arbor where I live, there are potholes galore, and many people complain about the city doing a piss-poor job of fixing them. As one local analyst puts it, “Ann Arbor Has Third Worst Roads in Michigan and Some Seriously Fed Up Residents“: Since 2008, Ann Arbor has been at the top of MITA’s…

A headline in today’s Wall Street Journal proclaims, “New York Gay Marriage Vote Alters Political Battle Lines.” Obviously, it is an indication of changing public attitudes, but I think (especially because of poll numbers) it might be a mistake for either side to see gay marriage as the issue worth a major showdown in politics…

I cannot stop thinking about a comment to my post about panhandling. According to commenter John, no one using public transportation in Seattle can be required to pay a fare: Got hit up by a guy in Seattle who needed money for the bus because he only had 50 cents and bus fare was $1.50.…

Earlier I found an almost comical example of ignorance and stupidity which nonetheless shocked me. Not that comically ignorant stupidity is shocking per se, but it frightened me to see the kind of thinking that emanates from a chief of police in one of America’s largest cities. That’s because idiots with power are scary. Anyway,…

I don’t know why, but my heart just goes out to this 7-year-old boy who wanted to see his father so badly that he purloined his stepfather’s car and tried to drive to his dad’s place. When the cops finally pulled him over, he was crying and terrified: The boy was stopped while driving his…

The most frequent criticism I hear about libertarians is that they are selfish. Cruel, even. The kind of “rugged individualists” who would leave people to sink or swim. Literally. For example, not wanting to fence off, hire lifeguards, armed goons, and a bureaucratic staff to police a river or natural lake (and of course raising…

Took this the other day after feeding some giant carp. Wish I had the same kind of enthusiasm, but if you’re a fish, its eat or be eaten. One way of avoiding being food is to be poisonous. If you are (or if you just want to look like you are), it helps to advertise.…

Occasionally people renew my faith, and the latest is Hillary Clinton’s former aide Sammie Spades, who ditched a possible career in politics for more honest work: During her tenure with Clinton, Spades performed a myriad of office and administrative tasks but ultimately wanted to be a lawyer and political figure. “I was planning on becoming…

It was (and still is) he longest day! I “celebrated” by making a rain barrel out of a 55 gallon barrel in the 95 degree heat. Here’s the finished product: The trickiest part was drilling the hole and fitting the hose bib in such a way that it hopefully will not leak. I’m letting it…

I get asked for money on a regular basis, because I live in Ann Arbor, where all sorts of “homeless” (a word I use reservedly, as many of them are in fact homed) people congregate, and various panhandlers make a living asking passersby for money. I am quite accustomed to being accosted and treated to…

Earlier today I saw a piece of pre-owned vintage nostalgia I thought might be helpful to a certain congressman who is out of a…. what was it? A job? Times are tough. And isn’t he already prequalified as a driver?

I haven’t said much about GOP politics, but so far, what I have seen absolutely makes me want to vomit. First, I don’t like Mitt Romney because he is a classic RINO who favors socialized medicine. Michele Bachmann is an anti-evolution so-con. And Rick Perry, while he may be good on economic issues, is no…

Found earlier in a random scoop of pond water:   It measured around in inch in length, which makes it a toad tadpole. Most likely it is an American Toad, Bufo americanus. (If you look closely, you can see the warts.) Cute, eh? URGENT UPDATE: I just fixed the picture, which I now realize is…

Via Ed Driscoll, I loved this very insightful remark from  a review of Among the Truthers: A Journey Through America’s Growing Conspiracist Underground: Conspiracy theories provide what has always been demanded in a secular age, “a cosmic explanation for evil,” and this also has taken place in today’s postmodernist intellectual environment in which, as Kay…

I don’t know whether it rates as a modern Aesop’s fable, but I think there is a moral lesson in this video: Sexual confusion is not limited to humans. Or maybe… Choose your soul mate wisely and take your time, lest you end up with a sole mate! Either way, sex without love wears on…

A statistician I am not. Which is why I am having a hell of a time evaluating the relative risk of these unregulated bicycle baby trailers I am seeing all over the place. They look like this: Only the one I saw yesterday was piloted by a helmetless dad towing an equally helmetless baby down…