Metadata I think I missed my contribution to National Public Radio during the pledge drive last week. I had a panic attack in my bed when the BBC show that normally wakens me on Sunday with the Football Association news was abruptly displaced by a chipper male voice announcing Universal Time in fifteen-second intervals from […]

Books “I like books.” Those are the words I put on my application for my first grown-up job. They were vacuous but true. I like the heft of them, and the smell, and their ability to seduce. That is what I meant, of course, even if the thought seemed incomplete. They sufficed to get me […]

Godless and Alone Europe is godless and alone. I read the words and blinked. They were penned by a man named Karim Raslan, who is a lawyer and a Muslim from Indonesia. The words were in the New York Times, and were part of the flurry that seeks to understand what is happening across the […]

The Lupercal I think the snow is going to melt today, and I should be on the road to New Jersey. The two thoughts have a relationship, or a sequence, if tenuous, so bear with me. There is nothing on my calendar because I am not supposed to be here; that would give me the […]

The Unready The great city is not paralyzed by the remnants of the storm, though preudently, most of the schools are closed or opening late; the closer-in districts like Alexandria City and Arlington expect their administrative workers to be in on time, even if the children are summoned to appear a few hours late. They […]

12 February 2006 Maldon The snow is deep here, or since this is a town of relativism, relatively so. I see about five inches on the railing of my balcony, and the trees limbs are cloaked in white, and the flakes are still coming down. North and west of the city there may be over […]

Stockpiles It is beginning the blizzard as I write. They say it will come on through the day, heaping up. The first flakes began just at dawn, but the ground is still warm enough that it is melting. That will change, they say, or and begin to accumulate. But this being Washington, there is a […]

Chemicals They are saying that there is snow out there, coming at us, a thick white blanket that will wrap up the weekend, seal us in Big Pink, and call for tons of chemicals to clear the streets. Sometimes the prospect of snow is enough to just send me back to bed. We have only […]

Policy Watching hubris explode in this town is the only thing that rivals the passion for the Redskins. The people on horseback with the One True Answer show up, and they crash around for a while and presently the systems dulls them, or breaks them, or begins to ridicule them. But right at the beginning […]

High Noon The chair was too narrow, or maybe we are all just too big these days. The auditorium was jammed with concerned citizens in nice suits. We were there for a technical panel on the problem of processing different levels of classified information on government computer systems. The company that cracks the problem is […]