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Can I See Some I.D.?

by Miriam Axel-Lute May 24, 2012

When Kristen Eck of Delaware Avenue, Albany, went to vote on the school budget last week, she took note of the signs saying ID was required. So did one of the people behind her in ...

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Moron in a Hurry

by Paul Rapp May 16, 2012

Trademark law can be a lot of fun. Some of you ancient folk might remember the great QE2 debacle of the late ’80s when Dave and Char Shortsleeve got a nastygram from Cunard Lines, telling ...

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In his widely-touted and widely-covered commencement address at Liberty University last week, Mitt Romney emphasized that “marriage is a relationship between one man and one woman,” perhaps with the knowledge that when some people hear ...

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Suburban State of Mind

by Miriam Axel-Lute May 10, 2012

Have you visited our lovely suburbs Schenectady and Troy lately? No, I haven’t become a proponent of some weird dedensification plan. I’m just following the classifications that Wendell Cox, author of War on the Dream: How ...

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A Good Kickstarter in the Ass

by Paul Rapp May 3, 2012

By now, you all must be familiar with Kickstarter, the crowd-funding site. It (and similar sites like Indiegogo, Sellaband, etc.) allows for bands, filmmakers, inventors, almost anybody, to raise money for a project from the ...

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A Tree Is a Tree

by Jo Page May 2, 2012

The last time my older daughter visited, she and her younger sister had a conversation about Shel Silverstein’s renowned book, The Giving Tree. Whether you’re five, 45 or much older, you probably know The Giving Tree. But ...

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Bone Headed

by Miriam Axel-Lute April 25, 2012

Cracked.com’s “5 Ways Modern Men Are Trained to Hate Women” did not initially appeal to me, but after seeing it repeatedly recommended, if with warnings about it being “depressing,” I behaved like a predictable social ...

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Cloudy With a Chance of Infringement

by Paul Rapp April 19, 2012

I just became aware of a two-part article about what’s wrong with copyright law that ran recently on the business news site Bloomberg.com. It’s by the brilliant copyright scholar (and Google counsel) William Patry, and ...

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I Am . . . I Said

by Jo Page April 18, 2012

It is true that I don’t like labeling. I don’t just mean in the racial-profiling, gender-stereotyping, bigoted kind of way. Nobody likes that (well, nobody is supposed to like that, but that’s another column). I ...

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Just Say No (To Drugs)

by Miriam Axel-Lute April 11, 2012

You probably don’t expect me to mean that literally. But I do. Let me tell you why. I assure you it has nothing to do with feeling any right to control what you put in ...

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Savage Love

by Dan Savage April 4, 2012

I have an awesome relationship with an awesome guy. He loves me and takes care of me. I’m GGG and he’s vanilla. I only draw the line at poop, animals, and children. But he’s never ...

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Woolly Bully

by Paul Rapp April 4, 2012

The drapes got pulled last week on one of the most absurd aspects of major media culture—the MPAA’s movie rating system. The MPAA’s Film Ratings Board, the people who attach the G-PG-R-NC17 ratings on mass-distributed ...

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Raising Our Equity Grade

by Miriam Axel-Lute March 29, 2012

I adore the Capital Region, as most of you know. But when it comes to racial equity, we flunk. Don’t take my word for it. Take the Urban Institute’s, which ranked Albany-Schenectady-Troy 93rd out of ...

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Unhappiness Is . . .

by Jo Page March 22, 2012

A word about unhappiness. First and foremost, of course, we’re not supposed to talk about it. I mean, you can if some unforeseen or protracted tragedy strikes and it is safe to verbalize your fears and ...

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The People in Gray

by Paul Rapp March 22, 2012

A number of folks have pointed me to reports that Internet companies are about to start some heavy-duty spying on their customers. That’s kind of right, and if you had nothing better last summer than ...

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Who’s a Socialist Now?

by Miriam Axel-Lute March 15, 2012

In a recent Doonesbury cartoon, a telephone operator at a company called MyFacts.com helpfully suggests to a grateful anti-Obama caller that an acceptable new definition of socialist is “A black man with power.” That is certainly ...

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Crazy Hate

by Stephen Leon March 15, 2012

Rick Santorum doesn’t like cities. At least, he doesn’t like New York and Los Angeles. Speaking in the Midwest and making vague appeals to voters’ Heartland values, he said, “. . . you don’t live in ...

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Google Vision

by Paul Rapp March 8, 2012

Gotta love this. The Wall Street Journal reports this week that one of the fastest growing segments of the electronics industry is sales of . . . television antennas! What’s going on is that, as ...

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Fools Rush In

by Paul Rapp March 8, 2012

Oh, my my my. A couple of weeks ago the Obama administration let it drop that it would require contraceptive care to be included in all employers’ health plans, including those in institutions associated with ...

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Let Me Tell You a Story

by Jo Page March 8, 2012

I’ve always been intrigued by the process of making, hearing, charting and evaluating stories. Because stories aren’t just one kind of thing. They are many kinds of things. There are true stories, short stories, fabrications, misrepresentations, ...

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Ouch, My Wrist

by Miriam Axel-Lute March 1, 2012

For all the fanfare over the National Mortgage Settlement that was eventually agreed to by 49 state attorneys general, you’d think the banks were actually being held accountable or something. I know, that would be nice. It’s ...

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The Inkwell of Loneliness

by Jo Page February 22, 2012

I realize it’s Britainand they do things differently over there, but I found myself intrigued by a piece from The Guardian in which the author Teju Cole (Open City) selects his Top Ten novels of ...

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Brother, Can You Spare Some Time?

by Miriam Axel-Lute February 16, 2012

“As people become wealthier, time becomes their major scarce resource. Suppose that you are very rich but have only a few hours a week of spare time. Give some examples of steps you can take ...

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Pop Quiz

by Jo Page February 9, 2012

Every year, late January, I buy a desk calendar in which I record the names of agents I query, journals I send stuff off to over the next twelve months. To be perfectly honest, it ...

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Readying For Round Two

by Paul Rapp February 9, 2012

The dust is still settling from the epic defeat of SOPA/PIPA last month. Most major media outlets are still mischaracterizing it as a battle of Big Tech vs Big Media, which is a convenient way ...

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