A life in words

  • Phil’s Lesson

    In Groundhog Day, Phil Connors (Bill Murray’s character) lives February 2nd over and over and over again. Such an experience would be maddening—no relationship you built would persist, no accomplishment would be lasting. Yet it would also be liberating—a chance to live life without permanent consequences aside from the learning you take with you. You could…

  • The Klonopin Kid

    I was eight years old. It was a day that most kids would receive as joyously as a mountain of Christmas presents: the last day of school. Yet there I was, past my bedtime, curled up on the floor outside my parents’ bedroom door, sobbing, sobbing. I was crying because second grade was over, and…

  • DOS Games of My Youth

    Once I learned about the Archive.org MS-DOS games collection on a recent episode of Mike’s Weekly Geek News Show, I knew what I had to do. I now present to you an idiosyncratic anthology of DOS games from my youth, mostly played on our trusty Tandy 1000 and Wyse computers. For each game, click on the image and you…

Whoever would overthrow the liberty of a nation must begin by subduing the freeness of speech … Without freedom of thought there can be no such thing as wisdom, and no such thing as public liberty without freedom of speech, which is the right of every man, as far as by it, he does not hurt or control the right of another: and this is the only check it ought to suffer, and the only bounds it ought to know. … A free People will be shewing that they are so, by their freedom of speech. … Freedom of speech is ever the symptom, as well as the effect of a good government. … Guilt only dreads liberty of speech, which drags it out of its lurking holes, and exposes its deformity and horror to daylight.Benjamin Franklin, Silence Dogood no. 8, 1722 (orthography and spelling modernized)