Founded 1983: Liberal Mindset; Conservative Morality

September 15, 2026

Make a Game of Life

In North Loup, Nebraska, where I spent my boyhood summers with my grandfather, the television pulled one signal out of the sky, channel 10/11, and when the picture dissolved into snow the day still had eight hours left in it. A boy in a town like that learns the oldest technology on earth. Boredom is a raw material. A long afternoon wants shape, and shape comes from rules: the stick is a bat because we agree it is, the crack in the walk is a foul line because we say so, the score matters because we decide it matters. Nobody sold us that afternoon. We manufactured it ourselves, on the spot, out of dust and agreement, and the dust became the best part of the summer.

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May 24, 2013May 24, 2013

The Pancake Rules: Crowdsourcing Edition

In the delicious spirit of How to Make Toast and Where Frosting Belongs and The Great American Brownies Debate, I bring you: The Pancake Rules — where we will properly crowdsource the rules of how to properly create, serve, cut and eat the ordinary pancake.

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December 21, 2011

The New Elevator Rules: Ten Sentence Story #144

Based on some experiences I have had in the last year with my fantastic baby Chaim Yosef, I have come up with some important rules to take in consideration when using the elevator in mass transit locations.

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September 26, 2006

The Rules of Writing: A Concrete Conversation

In a recent comments thread we kidded around with The Rules of Writing. That fun exchange — well, probably more fun for me — pushed me into thinking about the more serious Rules we have all discovered for making our writing better.

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December 22, 2005April 12, 2012

30 Second Rule

We’re all familiar with the five second rule where anything you drop on the ground can be picked up and eaten within five seconds of hitting the ground; but what about a 30 Second Rule where you can eat anything that hits the ground after waiting a full half minute before picking it up. Would you still eat something on the ground that had been there for 30 seconds? Does the 25 seconds really make that much a difference?

December 10, 2005April 12, 2012

Man to Man

What does the phrase “I want to talk to you man to man” mean?
Growing up in Nebraska, it always meant you wanted to have a discussion about a woman.
In New Jersey, I recently discovered “I want to talk to you man to man” means you want to fight. I was lucky I used that phrase with a friend who waited to have the discussion first before telling me he thought I wanted to beat him up.
In Nebraska that phrase is subtle and quiet while in New Jersey it is an indicator of the violence to come.
Have you ever used the “I want to talk to you man to man” phrase before? If so, in what instances was it forged and do you find that phrase has different meanings in different social or regional circumstances?