white with foam

Click for largesse.

Today marks the fourth anniversary of the crash of Comair flight 5191, the deadliest since the November 2001 crash in Rockaway, Queens, as the country was still reeling from 9-11. At the controls that August morning in Lexington, Kentucky was First Officer James Polehinke, only a year or so older than me. The plane inadvertently [...]

My close friend (and best man) Rob Southall lost his mother late last week. Since then, I’m ashamed to admit, I’ve performed only the most distant of sympathetic gestures: a few words on Facebook, a donation to Literacy Kansas City, the organization to which she gave some of her retirement time. But me shortchanging Rob [...]

If you’re looking for a pure distillation of the freak show of religious hatred, look no further. Point by point, “reason” by “reason,” these folks are giving Phelps a run for his money. (The rhetorical damage this kind of talk does to reason itself is incidental, and only worth mentioning parenthetically.) Mencken had some finely [...]

I don’t want to give away the ending, but there’s some wisdom in this article I wish I’d had before. And by ‘before,’ I don’t mean, like, twenty years ago. I mean before I proudly donned my so-stylish dunce cap even this morning. By the same token, I’ll try to heed the inherent warning to [...]