On the way to a party this weekend (the third in a week, but I'm not yet a party animal, more of a party vegetable) Anitra "Party Duck" Freeman and I shared a bus stop with a man who turned out to be studying law. He said, "Ask me any question about torts." Naturally, I asked him what the etymology of "torts" was, concerned as I am to avoid bready sweets. It turns out torts have nothing to do with bready sweets. The word comes from the root word that gives us "torque." The root means to... Read Full Story

First, what is right with the world. On the day this appears in print tomorrow will be July 17, Yellow Pig Day, a happy holiday for celebrating yellow pigs and for honoring the number 17. 17 is the funniest of all numbers. Typical math jokes involving 17: "17 is the smallest prime number exactly equal to 17." "17 is the only prime the sum of whose digits is 8." "A map of the original 13 colonies cannot be colored with 17 colors." My favorite math joke involving 17: "17!" July 17 is also the... Read Full Story

I'm old. When you read this, I will be older in accordance with that convention regarding birthdays, wherein you age a year all on one day. I hate convention but it's all I've got so I embrace it like a bald man embraces his comb-over. The Special Theory of Relativity says that you don't age so much as you hurtle, at enormous speed, up your world-lines in the space-time continuum. (I've always wanted to say "up your world-lines.") It's a good thing we are hurtling into the future where... Read Full Story

The latest term of the US Supreme Court ended Thursday. We're not in a labor camp yet. Let's all share in a collective sigh of relief. Talk like that often gets me pegged as an extreme liberal, as if conservatives all welcome being sent to labor camps. That's not how it works. A conservative is someone who doesn't mind if YOU are sent to a labor camp. What part of my editorial "We" didn't we understand? I'm actually so far right I look left because the Universe is curved. A good issue with... Read Full Story

Last Friday, our very own Mayor Greg Nickels shared top honors with some Indiana dude in the 2008 Mayors’ US Conference of Mayors/ Wal-Mart Stores Climate Protection Awards Program for his "outstanding and innovative practices to increase energy efficiency... and to help curb global warming." Learning of this, suddenly it all became clear. All his strange behavior lately, his obsession with banning plastic bags, plastic bottles, polystyrene, and beach bonfires, and his pushing compact... Read Full Story

I get the Seattle Times every day for the sudoku. The P-I has one, but the one in the Seattle Times has superior "kachiku" ("cattle.") "Sudoku" means "pointless." You fill a grid with the digits 1 through 9, so rows, columns, and some 3x3 blocks have no repeated digits. When you're done, it spells a magic word! Ha! No! When you're done you have a grid filled with digits. Also pointless is arguing with Seattle Times editors. It's like arguing with beanbag chairs that blow when you sit on... Read Full Story

Today our ongoing History of Poverty is continued with Parts R1, R2, R3, and Parts U1 through U6: Zoning ordinances. Let the hilarity ensue! Last time we danced around construction regulations. We said those have deprived poor people of the kind of cheap housing they've used in times past. To the degree that is so, the government (that means all of us -- it's our government) is responsible for that much homelessness and has a moral obligation to correct the negative effects of those... Read Full Story

Every week this column is undertaken in the spirit of a challenge. Generally, that challenge is: Out of which gaping chasm of Hell will my allotted 666 words spew? This week's gaping chasm is called the Kellogg Brown & Root Company, or KBR. Don't confuse KBR with the other Kellogg-named company that has brought us such delightful mascots as the Keebler Elves, their cousins Snap & Crackle & Pop, Toucan Sam, and Tony the Tiger. When it broke away from Halliburton in April, 2007, KBR took over... Read Full Story

Time for another installment of the History of the Poor! Poverty, or poorhood, is usually thought of as a state of moneylessness. But it can also be a poverty of options, or a combination of the two. For example, suppose the guy down the street is doing some renovations to his house and he's clearing out a lot of paneling. I can buy his paneling because he'd rather sell cheap than have to pay the dump to take it. Now I go to a vacant lot, let's say to some little clearing on the public... Read Full Story

Consider these three recent headlines chosen "at random": "Report: Quake leaves 5M Chinese homeless", "Summertime is Nickelsville Time!", and "[Chicago's] plan to end homelessness by 2012 threatened by subprime meltdown". Watch me pull a column out of them, Rocky! For some time, a certain fellow editorial committee person for this rag (not me -- the one with musical talent) has been drumming on and on about how totally unprepared Seattle is for a big earthquake and how we here at Real Change... Read Full Story