the Scott Stein

I found this Citizenship Test at MSNBC through Hit and Run and thought my readers (do I have readers yet?) would have fun with it. I scored 95% (I guessed incorrectly for #19).

This blogging thing is much easier when you link to stuff instead of writing your own content. I'm finishing rewrites for my new novel this week. Will be posting more original content when I'm done (any day now).

For the very ambitious, from the preamble:

Destroying the Earth is harder than you may have been led to believe.

You've seen the action movies where the bad guy threatens to destroy the Earth. You've heard people on the news claiming that the next nuclear war or cutting down rainforests or persisting in releasing hideous quantities of pollution into the atmosphere threatens to end the world.

Fools.

The Earth is built to last. It is a 4,550,000,000-year-old, 5,973,600,000,000,000,000,000-tonne ball of iron. It has taken more devastating asteroid hits in its lifetime than you've had hot dinners, and lo, it still orbits merrily. So my first piece of advice to you, dear would-be Earth-destroyer, is: do NOT think this will be easy.

This is not a guide for wusses whose aim is merely to wipe out humanity. I (Sam Hughes) can in no way guarantee the complete extinction of the human race via any of these methods, real or imaginary. Humanity is wily and resourceful, and many of the methods outlined below will take many years to even become available, let alone implement, by which time mankind may well have spread to other planets; indeed, other star systems. If total human genocide is your ultimate goal, you are reading the wrong document. There are far more efficient ways of doing this, many which are available and feasible RIGHT NOW. Nor is this a guide for those wanting to annihilate everything from single-celled life upwards, render Earth uninhabitable or simply conquer it. These are trivial goals in comparison.

This is a guide for those who do not want the Earth to be there anymore.

Read the whole thing here.
Source: Hughes, S.D. How to destroy the Earth [Internet]. Things Of Interest; (2006 May 25 21:23 UTC). Available from: http://www.qntm.org/destroy.

I was called today by a group named Working America and asked by a recording to participate in a one-question poll. The recording informed me that Congress had given itself many pay raises in the last ten years but had not raised the minimum wage, and made it clear that this was unfair to working families. The voice actress was certainly the sort you hear on political commercials. I think maybe somber music played in the background. The poll question was: Did I support an increase in the minimum wage?

After the call I googled Working America and learned that it is "A Community Affiliate of the AFL-CIO." So when you read in a newspaper that the AFL-CIO says x percent of people polled are in favor of increasing the minimum wage, see if the story mentions that the poll question set-up is designed to make the respondent feel like a greedy, uncaring lout if he answers "no."

The set-up to the question could point out that Congress raising its own salary at the taxpayers' expense has no relation to the minimum wage, since the workers in question are not getting a raise at the taxpayers' expense, but at the expense of businesses that employ them, which means at the expense of the businesses' investors and customers, which means at the workers' own expense, since some of them will be fired to keep investors and customers from having to shoulder the expense of giving them a wage that their productivity doesn't merit. Congress, on the other hand, doesn't get fired. Incumbents get re-elected almost as a matter of course. And even if a pay increase angers voters and they vote out an incumbent, someone new is voted in and the total number of Congress-people is unchanged. The same cannot be said for minimum-wage workers.

Yeah, that's probably too long. Maybe the set-up for the question could just mention that increasing the minimum wage causes unemployment. And keep the somber music.

Besides, is anyone really hoping for an increase in the minimum wage so they can get their first raise in ten years? Why the hell would someone making minimum wage ten years ago still be making minimum wage today? Most jobs that pay minimum wage are entry level. You're not supposed to stay in an entry-level job for ten years. Pick up a skill. Or two. Per decade.

I have allergies like you read about in Allergies magazine: animal dander (dogs, especially cats); trees; grass; dust; ragweed--air, basically. In addition to shots and prescription medication, I occasionally take a decongestant. Not a big deal, except a few months back the Government started treating Sudafed like it was the active ingredient in a dirty bomb. You know, the kids with their cell phones and their rock and roll, buying up all the Sudafed to use in their labs, causing the Meth epidemic.

To get Sudafed now, you have to ask the pharmacist for it. Last time I was at the local CVS I was in a rush, so I bought the substitute that's available without waiting for the pharmacist. It was based on some non-Meth ingedient, but the box said it was a decongestant, and I figured it would work as well. I was wrong.

It was like taking nothing. Which made sense. The Government forces Sudafed behind the counter, and a week later the Sudafed company has a new over-the-counter decongestant that's just as good? If it were as good, it would have been offered for sale in place of the evil-Meth version voluntarily, before the law said. The reason it wasn't is simple--it doesn't do anything.

My lovely wife went today to CVS to get a few things and I asked her to pick up some Sudafed--the real stuff (or the generic version), with the ingredient that actually relieves congestion. I told her she'd have to ask the pharmacist. She went, with my almost-four-year-old son, and asked for a single package of Sudafed. My wife looks like the opposite of whatever you imagine a Meth Queen looks like, even without our son in tow. Not only did she have to show ID and sign for the Sudafed (they even took down her address), but she had to buy it at the back counter from the pharmacist--she couldn't carry the box around while she shopped and pay for it at the front of the store. She ended up waiting on a long line with a cranky child, who "had to have" every piece of candy and crappy toy he saw, behind old people getting prescriptions filled, so she could get me a decongestant that does not require a prescription.

Meanwhile, the only epidemic I'm aware of is the epidemic misuse of the word epidemic (which might be a pandemic by now). This whole Sudafed and Meth crackdown thing probably has all sorts of social consequences--people in jail, escalating prices, black market violence. But what really pisses me off is, from now on--my wife informs me--I'll be buying my own decongestants.

"A former handyman has won more than $400,000 in a lawsuit over a penile implant that gave him a 10-year erection."

Insert your own joke here. Well, maybe not insert...

Source: CNN

A quick look at a list of Aaron Spelling's productions confirms the critics' view that he wasn't making art--he called it "mind candy", they called it "mindless candy"--but his is truly an American success story.

The warm feelings we might associate with his shows probably have a good bit to do with nostalgia. It's hard to argue that many of the shows he produced have lasting value or hold up (suggestions, anyone?), to the extent that this matters. But he gave people what they wanted, and they rewarded him. Good for him if his mansion had an entire floor devoted to closets.


Source: CNN and CNN

For the first "Featured Author" entry, we have one of the greats. Maybe it should be Greats. Or GREATS. Fyodor Dostoevsky is about as good as it gets in fiction. I would start with a couple of the short works, novellas really: “Notes from Underground” and “The Gambler.” His first novel, Poor Folk, is also a good early choice for those working up to the long, famous novels. Then, Crime and Punishment is the great novel you need to read. Of course, this is Dostoevsky we’re talking about, so they’re pretty much all considered great. And I don’t mean great as in, “That was a great sandwich.” Someone once said (or at least I remember hearing or thinking) that while it could be argued that Crime and Punishment is the greatest novel ever written, there is disagreement over whether it is even Dostoevsky’s best. But it’s my favorite.

The Associated Press reports that Rogers, Arkansas, has passed an ordinance limiting the ownership of fowl in nonagricultural zones:

Linda Bishop supplements her small disability income by raising chickens behind her home and selling their eggs. But a new city ordinance in her hometown of Rogers might change that ... Bishop's flock of 23 hens and a rooster is too large under the terms of the ordinance, which limits hens to four per home and outlaws roosters. She says she's kept chickens for 10 or 12 years and thinks that's unfair.

"I've never had no problems or no complaints from any of my neighbors," Bishop, 57, said in a telephone interview.

Double negatives aside, I'm conflicted here.

I don't like government telling people what to do with their property, and I know that zoning and other city council legislation can easily be used to further petty tyranny and intrusion. So I sympathize with Bishop, who had the rules changed on her:

[S]he recently bought a $1,600 henhouse and says the city has told her she'll have to spend more money to have her property rezoned as an agricultural area if she wants to keep her chicken business going. She said she simply doesn't have the cash and is looking for someone to help her.

One danger of democracy is that people often outlaw what they don't like, intruding on the property rights and privacy of their neighbors. Still, imagine that you lived next to Ms. Bishop. Would you object to all of the below provisions?

The ordinance puts in place several other restrictions, including a requirement that the birds be kept in a clean, secure enclosure at least 25 feet from the nearest neighbor's home. Slaughtering birds outside is prohibited. The resolution also requires people to obtain a permit and pay a $5 annual fee to keep fowl.

Maybe Bishop and her birds were there before her neighbors, so they can't claim ignorance when they moved in, and maybe they have no complaints. But this law isn't targeting Bishop. There might well be others who decide one day to go out and buy a few dozen chickens to roam the backyard (not having been to Arkansas, I can't say). I wonder how this affects property values next door.

I know all about the dangers of regulation, the inefficiencies of political solutions, the potential of market solutions, the unintended consequences and slippery slopes at work when government starts meddling with property rights. I get it. I'd love to see private solutions implemented instead of political ones. In a private community, it would still come down to a vote, but one might imagine some variety. Chicken-people could start their own development, and write chicken-owning rights into the homeowners association constitution. It would be preferable to a one-size-fits-all law. If one town passes this ordinance, others might follow. It could become a state law. Then the chicken people have nowhere to go. Competing private communities give people more choices. But this is a town, not a private community, so a political solution is what we have, and a one-size-fits-all law might be down the road, which I generally oppose. With all that said, I still wouldn't want my next-door neighbor coming home with 40 chickens.

To which we might ask, what of mine would my neighbor choose to outlaw, if given the power? Which is why my neighbor and I aren't given the power to outlaw each other's decisions at every whim. One must persuade a city council, and one can only hope that city councils are not overzealous and property rights are not trampled in the process of regulation. Of course, this leads in many directions: Perhaps such trampling is the rule rather than the exception; perhaps much regulation is to benefit donors and friends of the politicians; perhaps the chicken law is by itself a good idea, but it doesn't exist by itself--it is the product of a government that is also going to pass a whole bunch of laws that are not good ideas; perhaps it would be better, on balance, to have to put up with chickens if it meant that the government would not be doing all sorts of other things to private property, like taking people's homes to turn into tax-revenue-producing mansions.

To sum up, I don't like government intruding on property rights. And I don't like my neighbors owning too many chickens that run loose next to my house.

I guess what I'm really saying is I'm glad I don't live in Arkansas.



The full article, for as long as it remains online, is here:
http://www.cnn.com/2006/LAW/06/23/chicken.ordinance.ap/index.html

This gripping account of the bombing of Dresden begins with a history of the city prior to World War II and then takes apart the view that during the war Dresden was unique among German cities, the view that it was not an important part of the war effort, that it was not a Nazi stronghold. It is clear in Dresden that this was not just an innocent cultural center, somehow outside of and disconnected from the events all around. This isn't to say that Taylor attempts to justify the bombing of civilians. He doesn't. He does argue--persuasively--that there is no reason to think that Dresden was a less appropriate target than any other city in Germany, as some have claimed. Taylor's no apologist, though. The terror of those on the ground in Dresden is made perfectly clear, as is the barbarity of total war, the reducing of life to chance and error and confusion, the utter destruction. Whether or not readers can justify the bombing and similar bombings in the context of the circumstances, Dresden is a profoundly sad story well told.

Support this site by using the below link to buy Dresden. Better yet, buy my new novel Mean Martin Manning and my first novel Lost.

On the local evening news several months ago, a self-appointed expert was warning us of the danger of digital cameras. A similar story ran on a different station last month.

Our poor children, apparently, aren’t going to have memories of their childhood, because too many people are using digital cameras instead of traditional film cameras. The reporter nodded seriously while the expert flipped through a photo album, telling us it was a shame that our children would not be able to do the same when they grew up. He offered statistics as proof that people just weren’t using the old cameras. Of course, he’s right that people are using digital cameras instead of the old film ones, but so what?

When I consider how many "slides" my father took during my childhood, now sitting in a box somewhere, that no one will ever view, I can't get worked up just because some digital pictures will be lost to crashed hard drives. Some people will learn painful lessons about backing up their files, to be sure. But in total these losses might be offset by other pictures not lost to fire or flood, because they existed online somewhere. And these losses are certainly outweighed by the increase in total photos shot per person.

People are taking more pictures than ever--far more pictures--now that they don’t have to worry about wasting film (no, I don't have any data on this, but it must be true). They are ending up with far more pictures that they actually like. Many of these pictures are in albums in the computer or on CD and can be looked at on the screen. It isn’t clear to me that our children are being deprived of memories simply because the photo album they view is on a screen instead of being a physical object.

And plenty of these pictures end up being printed. Online services like shutterfly.com print out just the shots that you like at low prices. My wife is compiling physical photo albums at an unprecedented rate. The local news need not fear for my son’s childhood memories.

All of this seems obvious to me, and probably to you. But once again the experts and the journalists had no idea how the technology was being used.

The desire to have pictures of our children cannot be wiped away by a computer.

I just read my first "Jeeves" novel, The Code of the Woosters, by P.G. Wodehouse. I'll write about it separately as a Book Note.

Jeeves is the prototypical super-butler always saving the day, always calm, possessing the most level head in time of crisis. Bertram Wooster is the wealthy gentleman always finding trouble. Lucky for him that he has Jeeves by his side.

Of course, portraying the rich as buffoons and their servants as sophisticated or witty is a well-worn comic premise, and the Wodehouse model has many recent echoes--think of Benson in Soap and Benson, Florence in The Jeffersons, the movie Arthur, the TV show Mr. Belvedere. Can you name others? I'm sure there's a long history of this going back way before Jeeves.

Aside from comic strategy, though, is there anything else at work in this narrative model? Psychological comfort for the poor to see the rich portrayed as stupid or concerned only with the trivial? Wishful thinking, that the only reason the rich are rich is the good fortune of birth?

Not that anything in Wodehouse's funny novel ought to be taken seriously. Using the wealthy as comic foils is fine by me. I did a fair bit of this in my first novel Lost. I guess I was less ideological then. Still, whatever gets the laugh.

A couple of weeks ago Reason.com's blog Hit & Run had a bit about whether the ease of Internet research was killing serendipity.

For the past several years I have had my students read an essay by journalist Ted Gup called “The End of Serendipity.” In it he mourns the loss of spontaneous discovery that he enjoyed as a kid. Technology, he laments, has made it too easy for our kids to find what they’re looking for. Intellectual curiosity, it seems to him, is doomed. He remembers looking up salamander in the The World Book Encyclopedia as a boy:

I would invariably find myself reading instead of Salem and its witch hunts or of Salamis, where the Greeks routed the Persians in the fifth century B.C. ... In my youth, information was a smorgasbord. Walking past so irresistible an array of dishes, I found it impossible not to fill my plate. Today, everything is à la carte.

Students see through Gup’s error instantly. Serendipity hasn’t ended. It’s just moved from one delivery system to another. Unlike the experts who cling to a romanticized version of the past, the students have actually searched for information online. They’ve found themselves reading Web pages they never intended to discover. They’ve distracted themselves for hours on spontaneous intellectual adventures. They’ve experienced the same joy of unexpected learning that Gup says has disappeared. And they’ve done it without having to purchase a bulky and expensive set of encyclopedias that would be out of date before the ink dried.

The Gup essay is popular with freshman writing instructors and textbook anthology editors. Maybe it's because of some nostalgia for maddening hours wasted in university library stacks. Or envy at how easy research has become. After all, we had to walk uphill to school, both ways, and so should everyone else. Until the end of time. Or some anti-technology bias that is fashionable among some in the humanities, sure that kids these days with their loud music and their cell phones will be the end of civilization. Or something.

In any case, professors and journalists need not fear. Human beings are human beings, and intellectual curiosity and the joy of discovery cannot be wiped away by a computer.


Work Cited: Ted Gup, pp. 478-481 in The Blair Reader, edited by Laurie G. Kirszner and Stephen R. Mandell. 4th edition, Prentice Hall, 2001.

I don’t know that I’ve read anything quite like Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell. It’s been called a novel of the fantastic, which it clearly is, since the story revolves around two magicians. It’s been called a novel of manners in the tradition of Jane Austen, for its portrayal of English life and its close attention to character and relationships. But this is unlike any fantasy novel I can recall. And while Clarke skillfully employs literary devices to give the reader the sensation of reading a novel from early 19th Century Britain, once I was immersed in the story, it made me think of nothing but itself. Maybe we sometimes forget why we first fell in love with reading novels. Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell is a welcome reminder. I got lost in another world, enjoyed all of the nearly 800 pages, and didn't worry when the plot seemed to be advancing slowly. The novel is so rich with joyful invention (including footnotes that sometimes are stories unto themselves), it didn’t matter, when the end approached, that I knew it could not pay off with the sort of meaning and impact we sometimes demand from our fiction. I was happy to just bask in the pleasure of the journey.

Support this site by using the below link to buy Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell. Better yet, buy my new novel Mean Martin Manning and my first novel Lost.

If you’d battled and defeated some of the most heinous forms of cancer, went on to win seven consecutive Tour de Frances, and were (at one time) making it with Sheryl Crow, you might be thinking to yourself, "I'm pretty hard." Others would agree. But then you might realize that you’re not even the hardest man with your last name. Because there’s this other guy named Armstrong who did a little thing called being the first human in all of history to walk on the moon. Not that you’re a slouch--winning the Tour de France is manly, and staring down cancer is hard--but you just can’t trump walking on the moon. Neil might not be the boastful type, but if you got up in his face about how hard you are, he might say, "Did I mention that I was the first man to ever walk on the moon? Good luck with that bicycle thing, though." And what can you say to that?

You know the old story--boy stranded in a lifeboat in the middle of the ocean with a full-grown Bengal tiger. Martel’s skill in making the implausible plausible is impressive--the tale practically drips with authenticity. We care so much about the protagonist Pi, believe so fully his plight, the pages keep turning. It’s a shame the ending goes postmodern, creating doubt that any of it happened, after the author did good work to make us certain that it did. There’s a bit about meeting up with another lifeboat that also stretches credibility, even in a novel that has a fantastic premise to begin with. Lesson: trust your story, make it real, and respect your reader’s belief in your work--which Martel does most of the novel. Too bad the author or his editor did not choose to leave postmodern literary games out of it. Still, The Life of Pi sucked me in and held me, even if I felt let down and found myself skimming the last few pages. Despite the ending, highly recommended.

Support this site by using the below link to buy The Life of Pi. Better yet, buy my new novel Mean Martin Manning and my first novel Lost.

We’ve all heard that birth control “sometimes fails.” Of course it sometimes fails (everything does), but every couple I’ve ever known--and I’ve known a few--who “had an accident,” and ended up with a fourth kid, meant by “accident” not that the birth control had failed, but that they’d neglected to use any. “A miscommunication,” they said. Or, “The tequila did it.” Not one said, “The condom ripped.” Which brings us to the location of the greatest concentration of irresponsible doctors ever: television.

I didn’t even watch ER regularly, but even I know that one doctor--the handsome one--got the nurse pregnant, by accident; another doctor--the bald one—got the British doctor pregnant, by accident; another doctor--the rich one--got the AIDS worker pregnant, by accident. My wife tells me that, more recently, two other ER couples--a doctor and an EMT and two doctors (the News Radio one and the foreign one)--also had accidents. So we have ten people on ER--seven doctors, one nurse, an EMT, and an AIDS worker--an AIDS worker--who didn’t practice safe sex or use birth control.

And don’t forget the unexpected pregnancy on the first season of Grey’s Anatomy--the two surgeons apparently hadn’t heard of condoms, or didn’t know how to use them, or weren’t aware of the methods by which a person gets pregnant. Other doctors on the show have so far avoided unintentional conception, though it’s a young show. At the rate these people are sleeping with each other...

Six sets of doctors/nurses/EMTs/AIDS workers capable of performing open-heart surgery but not able to keep from exchanging intimate bodily fluids. I would bet there are others, but mercifully, my knowledge of TV medical dramas ends here.

Five of the pregnancies were on the same show. TV writers need plot devices, we know--and how many helicopters can they have spin tragically out of control at a single hospital? Certainly not more than two. And after you’ve had your doctors addicted to drugs, stabbed to death, die of cancer, convert to lesbianism, you’ve got to do something.

I’ve seen the following on bumper stickers: “Evolution is a theory” or “Evolution is only a theory.” The point, of course, with theory in italics, is to make Evolution seem like it’s just some guy’s idea. We all have theories, after all, about all sorts of things. Some people have a theory that God planted the dinosaur skeletons deep in the ground to test our faith. Theory here is being used in a disparaging, nonscientific way to mean any old idea we happen to entertain, as distinct from fact, which is understood as supported by evidence and true. This can be seen in a variation of the bumper sticker that goes something like: “Evolution is a theory, not a fact.”

In scientific circles, theory has no such disparaging connotation. So, though scientists agree that Evolution is a theory, not a fact, it is not because they doubt that some version of Evolution occurred and is occurring. It’s because of the meaning of theory and fact in a scientific context. As an example, water boiling at 212 degrees Fahrenheit under controlled conditions is a verifiable fact. Explaining why it does so, and taking into account a large body of other related facts, requires a theory. Some theories are stronger than others, but in science, calling something a theory does not imply that it is wrong or false or just some guy’s opinion. The bumper sticker implies otherwise, and its effectiveness depends on a general misunderstanding of how scientists use words.

Anyway, here’s a bumper sticker I’d like to see: “Gravity is only a theory.”

Because it is. But that doesn’t mean we jump off the roof.

The title gives it away—this is the first post on "the Scott Stein." I am, of course, the the in "the Scott Stein," but you can call me Scott.

Actually, this is the second post. Off to quite the auspicious start, lying already, on the first, that is, second post no less. But the first post was just my bio, in case anyone cares, so it doesn't count. This is the real first post, the one that tells you what you can find here.

As something* of a libertarian, I'll be commenting on a range of topics, including economics, crime and law, education, technology, government, and the news in general.

As a satirist, fiction writer, English professor, and former editor, I'll be writing about books, literature, adventures in publishing, recent publications, language, and writing.

As a person, I won't limit myself to writing as "Scott Stein the libertarian" or "Scott Stein the author/professor." I'll take on whatever else interests me, from whatever point of view I like.

That's it for introductions. Have at it—your comments are welcome. And feel free to check out my other sites and greatest hits (see the right sidebar) and my books (see the left sidebar). My latest novel is Mean Martin Manning.


*I say something not as an apology, but because libertarian means different things to different people, and I don't really like labels. I've read my Friedman, Rothbard, Mises, Rand, Postrel, Bastiat, Spooner, Sowell, and Hayek, to name a few. They don't always agree with each other and I don't always agree with them ... or myself, so I won't try to define and explain my every last principle and premise here or anywhere. Still, it's fair to say that I prefer, for ethical and consequentialist reasons: liberty; as limited a government as possible; individual rights; free markets; evidence; and a dose of consistency and common sense.

However my politics might be defined, on "the Scott Stein" you can be sure that the ridiculous will be pointed out and the absurd duly noted.

Scott Stein's second novel Mean Martin Manning (ENC Press, 2007) was called “a gem of a book” by the Philadelphia City Paper, which also said, “If Franz Kafka were funny, if, while down at his local pub in Prague, he had fired off one witty, sarcastic rejoinder after another about the absurdity of the world, then he would have written a novel like Scott Stein's Mean Martin Manning.” Per Contra described the novel as “serrated social commentary disguised as a hilarious journey from hermit to unwilling and uncontrollable ward of the state” and said that it provided “a healthy dose of laughter.” In selecting Mean Martin Manning as a 2007 summer book pick, Liberty’s editor wrote, “It’s smart and it’s funny .... Its images, ideas, settings, and characters will linger in your memory far beyond this summer.” Stein has created four interactive Web sites related to the novel: Mean Martin Manning’s site; Mean Martin Manning for President; It’s Dr. Karen; and Caseworker Alice Pitney’s blog. These sites were profiled in 2007 by the Philadelphia Inquirer. In 2007, he was interviewed about the novel by The Bibliothecary and Reason magazine.

In 2001, in its review of his first novel, Lost, the Philadelphia Inquirer said, “There are a million laughs in the big city, as a sharp-eyed writer shows … Stein has a keen eye for the details of our cultural landscape … wonderfully comic … a page-turner … insightful tweaking of city living and modern times.” Lost was a BookSense.com daily pick—they called it a “witty, deadpan debut novel” and said “... with hilarious and winning effect, Stein captures an ordinary guy’s life as it descends into an existential car chase through the twisty turns of New York City—getting lost has never been so enjoyable.” Lost also received favorable press from the Bucks County Courier Times, the Queens Courier, Washington Square News, and the Triangle.

He was the founding editor of the online magazine When Falls the Coliseum: a journal of American culture (or lack thereof), about which New York magazine said, “no matter what your personal politics, WFtheColiseum will spark a thought or two … hip, sardonic … quirky.” It featured more than two dozen writers from across the country. Consisting of essays, fierce debate, satire, and some silliness about issues such as crime and law, politics, economics, religion, language, and entertainment, the site had thousands of readers. At least one of its essays was cited in a scholarly journal (the Annual Review of Cognitive Linguistics discussed Stein’s “Literally Decimated, Figuratively Speaking”). When Falls the Coliseum was made into a book in 2001.

Stein's short fiction, essays, and book reviews have been published in The G.W. Review, Art Times, Liberty, the Drexel Online Journal (DOJ), the Philadelphia Inquirer, and the Publisher’s Marketing Association Newsletter.

He is acting director of the Certificate Program in Writing and Publishing in the Department of English and Philosophy at Drexel University in Philadelphia. He teaches writing fiction, writing humor and comedy, creative writing, and freshman writing. The book Drexel University Off the Record (the unauthorized guide for prospective students) lists “Scott Stein’s Humor & Comedy Writing class” as one of the “Ten Best Things About Drexel.”

Stein received his MFA in creative writing/fiction from the University of Miami, where he studied fiction writing with (and occasionally substitute-taught undergraduate creative writing courses for) Lester Goran, author of numerous novels and story collections, including the New York Times Notable Book Tales from the Irish Club. He also studied the South American novel in a form in fiction course with visiting writer Nelida Piñon, as well as poetry writing with John Balaban. Stein was a fiction editor for the MFA program’s literary journal, Mangrove.

He received his MA in liberal studies from New York University, where he studied Dostoevsky, (way too much) Nietzsche, (way, way too much) postmodernism, the philosophy of humor, the Bloomsbury Group, Darwinism, and Nineteenth Century European politics. He wrote his thesis on Kafka under the supervision of Friedrich Ulfers.

His BA in English (with university honors and departmental honors in creative writing) is from the University of Miami. In addition to studying with Lester Goran, he took creative writing courses with Kathleen Martell Gordon, Peter Schmitt, and Evelyn Wilde Mayerson. He minored in philosophy, studying with, among others, the late John Knoblock (classical Chinese philosophy, honors introduction to philosophy) and Susan Haack (honors twentieth century philosophy, metaphysics).

Stein taught writing for a year at Cheyney University of Pennsylvania before coming to Drexel University in 2000. He has also taught courses for Drexel’s Department of Culture and Communication, including writing for the world wide web, public speaking, grant writing, and business writing. For nearly six years he taught a course called “The Individual, Society, and Freedom” on an adjunct basis for the Critical Writing Program at the University of Pennsylvania. It was a course in persuasive writing that focused on social issues and placed individual rights at the center of the debate. He has developed a new course for the University of Pennsylvania called “What’s So Funny?” It examines humor in writing.

Prior to teaching, he worked as an editor and grant writer for Temple University; the director of marketing and public relations for the Educational Alliance, a large nonprofit social service agency in New York City; and a copywriter for One World Solutions, a New York boutique advertising agency with clients in the toy and wine industries. In 1994, he was a double finalist and won honorable mention in the Gannett Outdoor Creative Challenge, a competition open to all advertising professionals in New York City. While he has no wish to return to the industry, he sometimes dabbles in it, developing brochures, slideshows, special events, and other projects for Drexel’s Department of English and Philosophy.

On an ongoing basis since about 1995, he has pursued self-education in libertarian philosophy, free-market economics, and public policy issues, studying and contrasting such writers and thinkers as Milton Friedman, Ludwig von Mises, F.A. Hayek, Ayn Rand, Murray Rothbard, Rose Wilder Lane, Thomas Sowell, Frederic Bastiat, Lysander Spooner, David Friedman, Robert Nozick, and Virginia Postrel, to name a few. He also has more than a passing interest in Evolution. But his first love (not counting, of course, his wife and son) is fiction. His early reading consisted of Encyclopedia Brown, Judy Blume, The Black Stallion series, science fiction and fantasy, comic books (mostly Marvel), the back of cereal boxes, and whatever else he could get his hands on. His more recent reading can be seen on his book shelf.

Other interests and hobbies include playing tennis (at one time wasn’t bad); ping-pong (still deadly); basketball (before back injury, no-look fade-away hook shot was unblockable—really, it was—yes, he knows he’s short, but you should have seen this thing); bowling (he was on his high school team—go ahead, laugh); chess (a bit rusty); playing with his son (all superheroes all the time); bantering with his wife (yes, it’s true—plus, she might read this—but it’s still true); cooking (mean BBQ, Italian); listening (can’t play a thing) to jazz (especially Miles, Monk, Coltrane) and classical (Beethoven, of course, but also especially Mahler) and very loud rock (a long list, embarrassing in spots); arguing (don’t get him started); and assembling preassembled furniture (that’s been disassembled for packing purposes) with a variety of Allen wrenches and easy-to-follow instructions in four languages provided by the manufacturer. When he was young and fit, he worked as a lifeguard (never needed to save anyone, but had a very good tan); got NAUI certified in Scuba diving (if you haven’t noticed, there aren’t any oceans in Philadelphia); and climbed Mt. Katahdin in Maine (it isn’t exactly Everest, but then he’s no Sir Edmund Hillary). His adventures these days are far more likely to entail trying to get a five-year-old to go to sleep at a decent hour.

Scott Stein grew up in Bayside, Queens, attending Bayside High School, I.S. 25, and P.S. 169. He has lived on Manhattan’s Upper and Lower East Sides and now lives near Philadelphia with his family.