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…

He who knows only his own side of the case, knows little of that. His reasons may be good, and no one may have been able to refute them. But if he is equally unable to refute the reasons on the opposite side; if he does not so much as know what they are, he has no ground for preferring either opinion…. Nor is it enough that he should hear the arguments of adversaries from his own teachers, presented as they state them, and accompanied by what they offer as refutations…. He must be able to hear them from persons who actually believe them; who defend them in earnest, and do their very utmost for them. He must know them in their most plausible and persuasive form….John Stuart Mill, On LIberty