Blog Archives

Quote of the day: Saladin Ahmed on satire

Posted on 2015-01-10 by

From Saladin Ahmed’s Times piece today: The question for writers and artists, then, is not whether we ought to limit ourselves, but how already limit ourselves. In a field dominated by privileged voices, it’s not enough to say “Mock everyone!” … Continue reading →

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Quote of the day: Atul Gawande on priorities

Posted on 2014-12-19 by

Everywhere I see the mistake of ignoring that people have priorities in their lives besides merely surviving another day. Even in severe illness or frailty, people desire connections to others and to purposes of their own choosing. I think we’ve … Continue reading →

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Quote of the Day: Fred Vultee on the Fox Agenda

Posted on 2014-11-23 by

It’s been a while since I’ve posted a Quote of the Day (Month?). Here’s Wayne State journalism prof Fred Vultee riffing on a partisan jab from the Baltimore Sun‘s TV writer: Fox might or might not think its viewers are … Continue reading →

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Chocolate tasting results: championship week 2

Posted on 2014-10-02 by

After three months, hundreds of dollars, and numerous trips to various stores, it has come down to this. Quoting once again from our wiki: I guess the members of our panel like generic supermarket chocolate, because the runaway winner was … Continue reading →

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Chocolate tasting results for (extra dark) championship week 1

Posted on 2014-09-16 by

We held the first of two championship tastings Monday, concentrating on the 70% end of our “extra dark” range. As I wrote on our wiki: In order to keep the championship round at two weeks, we ended up with eight … Continue reading →

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Chocolate tasting results for week 7

Posted on 2014-09-11 by

I was expecting week 7, chock full of artisanal chocolates from boutique American makers, to be the culmination of our two months of preliminary heats. Boy was I wrong: This tasting was a bit of a disaster for the artisanal … Continue reading →

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Week 6 chocolate tasting results

Posted on 2014-08-31 by

I noticed that I forgot to post the results of our sixth weekly chocolate tasting. From our wiki: Once again, one of our “reference” chocolates took top honors: the Jelina Noir 72% that we had previously tasted back in week … Continue reading →

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Quote of the day: Libertarians don’t make everything better

Posted on 2014-08-23 by

From Andrew Wheeler’s “Antick Musings”: A friend of mine is fond of saying “everything’s worse with libertarians” — it’s cruel and reductive, and definitely not true universally. But there’s a certain kind of libertarian, particularly here on the Internet, who … Continue reading →

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Week 5 chocolate tasting results

Posted on 2014-08-20 by

This week’s chocolate tasting was a tough one, compromised somewhat by low attendance and a very similar set of chocolates. My summary from our wiki: With only six participants, abd seven very similar products, it’s difficult to name a clear … Continue reading →

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Week 3 chocolate tasting results

Posted on 2014-08-05 by

We had our third weekly chocolate tasting today, finishing up (for now) our set of mixed-origin chocolates with some boutique and artisanal products — which, surprisingly, did not rate especially highly. I summarized the results this: Contrary to week 2’s … Continue reading →

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