"It is my practice at this hour to read some improving book..."

I grew up in a house full of books. Jeeves would not have found all of them improving, but for a young writer many of the books definitely were: Strunk and White's Elements of Style, Fowler's Modern English Usage,/… Read full post »

A friend on Facebook recently asked me how to delete all of one's Wall posts (the Facebook equivalent of an OS post) at one go. For people on the job market, this is a useful thing to think about. Of course, Facebook doesn't allow you to do this, given their business model. You… Read full post »

Here are five things you may not know:

On language: We sometimes choose our words carefully, because two words describing the same general concept may have slightly different shades of meaning.  Are there any words in English that mean exactly the same thing? There's just one pair of exact synon… Read full post »

I'm mostly oblivious to fashion. The other day I put on a pair of pants that I hadn't worn for some time. My wife looked at them dubiously. "Do guys still wear pants with cuffs and reverse pleats?" she asked. "They did in 1990," I said, after a bit of calculation.… Read full post »

Two people walk the same path. One takes sure, steady steps. The other treads more carefully, considering the path ahead. One looks at the buildings, the passers-by, and the sky above; the other's eyes keep to the ground. When asked what they have discovered during the day, one describes the joy… Read full post »

My favorite way to see a city is to walk through it. Cities have textures of different kinds; I like the feeling of being immersed in a city, moving at a slow enough pace to appreciate what it has to offer. Not all texture is to be felt: much of it… Read full post »

Renovations on the outdoor swimming complex near our rented apartment are not quite complete, but nearby we can see a tiny stone-covered beach. I set off.

To get there, you walk along a dusty street, bordered by parked cars and a low concrete barrier on the cliff side. The wind is… Read full post »

I'm walking down a cobblestoned side street on the island of Madeira. The street is typically narrow and steep, though not steep enough for steps. The buildings give welcome shade from the sun. In the near distance, beyond the end of the street, I can see the Atlantic Ocean. Its… Read full post »

Years ago I used to read books about how to write fiction. I've forgotten most of what I read then except for two things: Lawrence Block (in Writing the Novel) convinced me that writing a novel isn't really that hard; John Gardner (in The Art of Fiction) convinced me that writing/… Read full post »

I've been scribbling away on my book, with occasional interruptions from my subconscious: You've neglected your Open Salon blog for months! What about your legions of fans? To pacify the little guy, I'm reposting this, from September 8, 2008, even though things have changed since then.

%… Read full post »

I'm not entirely sure what day it is, but my computer is telling me it's Saturday. This post originally appeared on June 26, 2009, under the title "Equal Pay for Equal Work". A number of very good comments are now, unfortunately, buried in the OS archives.

 … Read full post »

I've been asked via email to explain how to repost an old Open Salon post so that it looks just as it originally appeared. Here's one way. It involves a bit of clicking around and such, but it's a straightforward process.

Click the More menu on the upper right part of… Read full post »

Gabby Abby recently announced a call for Saturday reposts. I'll start things off:  this was my first post to Open Salon, on July 30, 2008. It was an Editor's Pick and gained a total rating of 5. 

I confess--I have no children, and yet I read children's books. Sometimes I simply don't have the mental energy to crack open a serious adult book (think The Wind-up Bird Chronicle, by Haruki Murakami, or Truth, by Simon Blackburn) or even a piece of light fiction (think Carl Hiaasen or/… Read full post »

It has been... actually, I have never posted a confession on Open Salon before. But I know the drill.

I have violated the terms of service. It was out of curiosity about... numbers. I could see which of my posts were most read, but I wanted to know by how… Read full post »

A few years ago, before the advent of the federal Do Not Call list, I met an earnest young person who worked as a telemarketer, in the comments section of a political blog.  I'll call this person Mary Din (not her real name). She'd had no luck finding a job that… Read full post »

A number of posts have appeared on OS concerning plagiarism. On one side, Catherine Forsythe publicly flagged an unattributed copy of an article in the New York Times, an obvious example of plagiarism. On the other side, perhaps, Placebostudman recently wrote, "So, why the flying-fuck-in-he/… Read full post »

During my senior year in college, I followed a regular daily schedule: Wake up, walk to classes on campus, walk back to the house, and turn on the TV at 6:00 to watch a re-run of Star Trek. It was good period in my life, a time of deep… Read full post »

Remember the old days, when paper wasn't electronic? And when a "reader" wasn't a handheld computer but the person who was doing the reading? You could go to a "bookstore" and walk down the aisles, pulling out and browsing through books made of processed tree fibers and sometimes even bovine integume… Read full post »