Category Archives: Uncategorized

Thanks, AI.

What I love about this sketch is that you can sense the punchline before you know exactly what it will be. Good comedy, much like good teaching, isn’t wholly bound up in surprise, but in confirming what we already suspect. And yet, this video also follows the rule of three, and the way Robert WebbContinue reading “Unbelievable Timing”

“He is a man who is worthy neither of the great censure nor the great praise presently attached to his name. Nonetheless, there is little disagreement on what he has actually said and done. There is only disagreement on what it all means. The very same qualities of his personality which drive his admirers to hail him promptContinue reading “Character Sketch”

The day my son Laurie started kindergarten he renounced corduroy overalls with bibs and began wearing blue jeans with a belt; I watched him go off the first morning with the older girl next door, seeing clearly that an era of my life was ended, my sweet-voiced nursery-school tot replaced by a long-trousered, swaggering character who forgotContinue reading “Charles (1948) by Shirley Jackson”

From “Act of God,” the fourth episode of Season One of The Crown.

Of all the vices, none is easier to hide than cowardice.   In a prosperous society like ours, vices like lust, greed, envy, and gluttony are provoked constantly, but cowardice is a vice that can go unpracticed and unnoticed for years.   When his luck is good, the average man has no need of courage. He canContinue reading “Cowardice in Peacetime”

We’re screwed.