offhand remarks

A Great Day in California

Today's news is really wonderful -- that the California Supreme Court has overturned two laws that stood in the way of same-sex marriages. It's a ray of hope in what's been a pretty dark decade so far for my country.

Of course, there was a mind-blowing moment that accompanied the news. It came in the form of this little bit of context:

The California Supreme Court was the first state high court to strike down a law barring interracial marriage, in a 1948 decision called Perez v. Sharp. The United States Supreme Court did not follow suit until 1967.

I'm not exactly sure what that says about the pace of justice in America, but looking at these issues in hindsight, it certainly seems like we're taking way too long to sort out "All men are created equal."

Story of Our Lives

Jenny and I met at a reading at Kepler's Books in Menlo Park on May 17, 2000. We both knew Charles Baxter from our college days. Jenny had taken a couple of classes from Charlie at Michigan. I'd met him when he was a visiting writer at George Mason. We hadn't both seen Charlie since before we got married. In fact, we hadn't seen him in a very long time -- not until his recent appearance at Stanford University, where he read from his new book, The Soul Thief, and was as charming and wonderful as ever. It was good to catch up with him after all these years. Here's a blurry photo to commemorate the occasion...

It's not a bug, it's a feature

I stopped looking at the Yahoo! homepage a long time ago, but on this first day of the post-Microsoft-takeover-bid era, I thought I'd check in and see if the big Y had anything to say for itself. Instead, I found my favorite kind of Yahoo! insanity, which I used to think was a big fat aberration that no-one could manage to fix. Now, I realize that putting inane "Featured" content front and center, while footnoting mass casualties in consumer-irrelevant parts of the world, is actually the strategy, not a sign of incompetence. Good for you guys! Stick to your guns. Enjoy...