Some good news to fill your glass

Written by David Vogel Tuesday, 18 September 2012 14:24

The evening news didn’t win any awards by covering a joyous event. A charity never reached its goal by saying how great things were. A reporter never made the front page by writing about a cupcake contest.

I know I’m not necessarily always a half-glass-full kind of guy, but I don’t prescribe to the glass-half-empty thinking either.

I’m just happy to have a glass to begin with—at least until Mayor Bloomberg takes it away and gives me a smaller one.

Several months ago I read an article in Reader’s Digest written by the “rational optimist” Matt Ridley. In a world cowering in fear of economic crisis, ferocious natural disasters, fuel shortages and the presidential choice between Obama and Eastwood, I thought it might be...

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Lunchroom politics hard to digest

Written by David Vogel Tuesday, 04 September 2012 13:57

I don’t like to get involved in the subject of politics. It’s impossible to discuss it rationally.

Take the issue of inflation: A person starts out expressing his feelings about the unusually high number of pre-popped balloons they had raining down at the end of the Republican convention and a few minutes later he ends up calling his friend an un-American chunk of terrorist scum stuck to the bottom of Hitler’s made-in-China shoes.

But sometimes a government-sanctioned action comes along that doesn’t need correcting as much as it needs mocking. These are the moments when I step up to the podium, point my finger, lean into the microphone and make the noise of a loudly deflating Cushion of Whoop.

This is just such a time.

The...

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This cat is graceful but never agile

Written by David Vogel Tuesday, 28 August 2012 13:03

I enjoy reading magazines like National Geographic and Popular Science because it makes me feel—however fleeting the sensation may be—just a little more intelligent.

Articles about deep space exploration, mass digital data creation, the fate of the Dragon Blood Tree or explicit directions to build my own robot from scratch using the utensils in my kitchen deeply interest me.

The big words all seem to make sense, and there’s a brief glimmer that, just maybe, one of those articles will inspire me to do something that will lead to a Nobel Prize, or at the very least have a documentary about myself narrated by Morgan Freeman.

But deep down I know that science is not an area in which I am particularly gifted. In high school, the...

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For Sight was a predictable choice

Written by David Vogel Tuesday, 14 August 2012 13:06

The NFL’s preseason began last week, and football has been on my mind ever since. I usually don’t find myself terribly attached to a certain team, but for the sport of it, I like to pick one to root for throughout the season.

But the pickings are starting to get slim. I’ve been for this team and for that team, but each one that I’m for lets me down.

Here’s a recap:

Last year, for example, I rooted for Sight, but I was soon able to predict their downward spiral.

The same thing happened when I rooted for Seeable.

Thankfully, it wasn’t as bad when I rooted for Shadowing, though there were definite hints throughout the season that it wouldn’t end well.

When I was for Closure, the team’s efforts just didn’t pay off...

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