A life in words

  • City water caused my acid reflux; filtering eliminates it

    City water caused my acid reflux; filtering eliminates it

    For over a decade I’ve had on-and-off heartburn. But mostly it was no big deal—just one of those discontents of modernity—until a few years ago, when out of nowhere I started to have acid reflux. Not just any acid reflux—it was nasty. I’d wake up with pains shooting through my entire body. Or not be…

  • Harris and class

    First I’ll mention race: Harris’s ancestry is so mixed that in a sense it’s an error to assign her to any one of the traditional (and arbitrary) racial categories. She truly is a product of globalization of the gene pool, and is a taste of the inevitable future when Americans broadly have ancestors from all…

  • Where I’m at with Mormonism: a ramble

    Where I’m at with Mormonism: a ramble

    The question was always there in the back of my mind.

The principal difficulty lies, and the greatest care should be employed in constituting this Representative Assembly. It should be in miniature, an exact portrait of the people at large. It should think, feel, reason, and act like them. That it may be the interest of this Assembly to do strict justice at all times, it should be an equal representation, or in other words equal interest among the people should have equal interest in it. Great care should be taken to effect this, and to prevent unfair, partial, and corrupt elections.John Adams, Thoughts on Government, April 1776